How much does dental marketing cost in the UK?
On this page
How much does dental marketing cost in the UK? Among the UK dental marketing vendors I found that publish their own prices, monthly fees run from £999 to £2,975, before ad spend, with setup fees of £1,000 to £2,000 where one is charged.12 Ad spend is paid on top, and it's often the larger number.
Dental marketing cost is hard to compare because vendors mix three different things into one quote: a setup fee, a monthly fee, and the money that goes to Google or Meta. Pull them apart and quotes become comparable, and so does what a cheap quote tends to cost later. Every price below is one a vendor publishes itself. I have not included "average" figures, because I could not find one with a traceable source.
The short answer
Of the UK dental marketing vendors I reviewed for this site, most quote on request. Two publish full package prices on their own pages. These are their figures as published on the day I checked them.
| Vendor and package | Monthly fee | Setup fee | Minimum term | Ad spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xcelerator Dental: Essentials | £1,425 | £1,000 | 6 months | Listed separately as a "managed budget" of £1,500 a month |
| Xcelerator Dental: XCEL | £1,975 | £1,000 | 6 months | Listed separately as a "managed budget" of £5,000 a month |
| Xcelerator Dental: Xceed | £2,975 | £2,000 | 6 months | Listed separately as a "managed budget" of £5,000 a month |
| Dominate Dental: Get Found (SEO) | £999 | Not stated | 90-day rolling | Not applicable |
| Dominate Dental: Attended Patient System | £1,500 | Not stated | 90-day rolling | On top, paid to Google |
| Dominate Dental: Market Dominance | £2,499 | Not stated | 90-day rolling | On top, paid to Google |
Table sources: Xcelerator Dental costs page, prices excluding VAT;1 Dominate Dental pricing page.2 Both accessed 1 October 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before relying on them.
The chart makes the point the rest of this page depends on: the ad budget can be larger than the fee, so the total monthly outlay is the two together. The Xcelerator page doesn't say in so many words whether the managed budget is paid to the platform directly or through the vendor. Ask any vendor that question before you compare.
Many vendors quote on request only. Those quotes can't be compared here, and some competitor pages that discuss "typical" prices are vendor estimates rather than their own price lists, so I have left them out.
Pricing models compared
You will meet five pricing models. Most vendors use one or a mix.
| Model | How it works | Good for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | A fixed fee each month for an agreed scope | Ongoing search, content and ads management | Scope drifting down while the fee stays the same |
| Setup fee plus retainer | A one-off project fee for research and builds, then a retainer | Engagements that need tracking, a site rebuild or a page plan first | A setup fee that buys nothing you keep |
| Percentage of ad spend | The management fee is a share of what you spend on ads | Very large, stable ad accounts | The vendor earns more when you spend more, whether or not it works |
| Fixed package | A set bundle at a set price | Small, predictable needs | Packages built for the vendor's efficiency, not your market |
| Pay per lead | You pay for each enquiry delivered | Rarely a good fit for private dentistry | Leads may be shared with other practices, and a lead is not a patient |
Percentage-of-spend pricing deserves a plain explanation. If a vendor charges a share of your ad spend, every increase in your budget is a pay rise for them. That doesn't make every such vendor dishonest. It does mean the incentive points the wrong way, and you should know that when they recommend spending more.
Pay-per-lead needs the same care. A lead is an enquiry: a form, a call, an online booking request or a message. If the provider owns the ads and the landing page, the same enquiry can be sold to more than one practice, and you have no account to keep when you stop paying.
Setup versus retainer
Setup and retainer pay for different things, and a quote should show both.
Setup is one-off work that has to happen before the ongoing work can succeed: research into your market and competitors, a plan of every page the site needs, the tracking build that connects your practice management system (PMS) to the ad platforms, and any site changes needed to carry the strategy. It's project work, and it should be priced as a project.
Retainer is the ongoing work: publishing pages, running campaigns, keeping your Google Business Profile active, and reporting.
A quote with no setup fee isn't necessarily cheaper. Either the foundation work is absent, or its cost is spread over the minimum term. Ask which. If you want the website part priced separately, what a dental website costs covers that.
Ad spend is separate
Ad spend is the money that buys clicks and impressions on Google, Meta or TikTok. It isn't the vendor's fee, and it should never be reported as if it were.
The cleanest arrangement is for the practice to pay the platform directly, on its own card or invoice, in an ad account it owns. You then see exactly what was spent, and nobody can add a margin to it. At least one vendor with a public price page states that ad spend is paid directly to Google through the practice's own account.2
Ask three questions of any quote:
- Is ad spend included in this price, or on top?
- Who pays the platform, and in whose account?
- Is any fee calculated as a percentage of spend?
How much ad spend a practice needs is a separate question from what the vendor charges. For Google specifically, see how much to spend on Google Ads. For the total marketing budget, including fees, see setting a total marketing budget.
What cheap costs you later
A low monthly fee is attractive, and sometimes it's the right choice. The risk is in what gets left out to reach the price.
| What gets cut | What it costs you later |
|---|---|
| Tracking and attribution | Nobody can say which spend produced patients, so budget decisions are guesswork |
| Research | Campaigns and pages built on assumptions about your market |
| Account ownership | You lose conversion history, the profile or the domain when you leave |
| Compliance review | Copy that breaks GDC or CAP rules, and the time spent fixing it |
| Senior attention | Junior staff running your account behind a senior name |
| Negative keywords and targeting | Spend on searches that were never going to book |
The most expensive of these is usually tracking. Without it, you can't tell a cheap vendor that produces patients from a cheap vendor that doesn't, and you keep paying either way.
A useful test for any quote is the cost per booked consultation it will let you see. If the answer is "we report leads", the cheaper fee may just be buying you a number you can't use.
If you're still deciding what kind of vendor to hire, the wider guide on how to buy dental marketing covers the other decisions.
What I charge
I use a setup fee plus a monthly retainer.
- Setup is priced as a one-off project: market and competitor research, the page registry, the tracking and attribution build, and any site work the strategy needs.
- The retainer is sized to the modules you engage. A full-stack engagement and an organic-only one are different retainers.
- Ad spend is paid by the practice directly to the platform. I never hold or invoice your ad budget.
- I do not offer percentage-of-spend, pay-per-lead or revenue-share pricing.
Why there's no price list here. The price depends on what your practice already has: how much of the tracking and website has to be rebuilt, how many treatment lines and sites are involved, and which modules you take. A single published price would overcharge a practice with good foundations or underprice one that needs a rebuild.
What you get instead is a written proposal before you commit to anything. After I have looked at your site, ads and local results from the outside, which costs you nothing, and we have talked it through on a call, I send a fixed setup price, a fixed monthly retainer, the minimum term and the notice period. The full research is part of the paid setup. You can judge the proposal against the published prices above.
What each module covers is set out on what an engagement includes. If you send me your website and catchment at Fayez@imfayez.com, I will look at your site, ads and local results from the outside at no cost and tell you which modules I think you need and why.
Sources
-
Xcelerator Dental, "Costs", https://xceleratordental.com/costs, accessed 1 October 2026. Monthly fees £1,425, £1,975 and £2,975; setup fees £1,000, £1,000 and £2,000; minimum 6-month contract; "Costs exclude VAT". ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
Dominate Dental, "Pricing", https://www.dominatedental.com/pricing, accessed 1 October 2026. Packages at £999, £1,500 and £2,499 a month, the latter two "+ ad spend"; 90-day rolling agreements; ad spend described as paid directly to Google through the practice's own account. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4