Dental Intelligence vs Practice by Numbers: Which Analytics Platform Is Right for Your Practice?

Overview: two very different approaches to practice analytics

Based on our analysis of 58 practitioner reviews across G2, Capterra, Reddit, and DentalTown, Dental Intelligence and Practice by Numbers have evolved in opposite directions. Dental Intelligence started as a pure analytics platform and remains primarily that as of early 2026 — the patient communication features exist, but they're thin compared to dedicated platforms like Weave or NexHealth. Practice by Numbers started with analytics and has aggressively expanded into a full practice platform: communication, scheduling, payments, forms, and insurance verification.

That strategic difference shapes everything: pricing, feature depth, where each product is strongest, and what kind of practice gets the most value from each.

Feature comparison: analytics vs. platform

Where Dental Intelligence leads

Dental Intelligence is, at its core, an analytics product — and the core works. The dashboards track production, collections, reappointment rates, case acceptance, outstanding treatment, patient flow, insurance breakdowns, and provider-level KPIs. On G2, DI scores 8.9 on "Meets Requirements" — the highest of any platform we reviewed in this category. Those analytics features deliver what they promise.

What separates DI from PMS-built reports is how those analytics get used day-to-day — specifically through the morning huddle tool (more on that below). DI is also distributed through Patterson Dental, which gives it deeper integration with the Patterson ecosystem and a built-in sales channel that Practice by Numbers doesn't have.

Where Practice by Numbers leads

Practice by Numbers tracks over 600 dental-specific KPIs — the deepest metric library in the category. That includes granular metrics like hygiene production per hour, same-day treatment conversion rates, and insurance adjustment percentages broken down by procedure code. In our read of practitioner discussions on DentalTown and G2, most practices describe using a working set of 15-20 metrics day-to-day — the rest sit in the dashboard untouched. If that matches your experience, a platform with 600 metrics isn't necessarily better than one with 50 well-chosen ones. The breadth matters only if you have someone on your team who will actually explore it.

The bigger advantage is scope. Practice by Numbers lists patient communication (reminders, two-way texting), phone call tracking, recall management, online scheduling, payments, digital forms, insurance verification, and reputation management as part of its platform. We haven't independently verified whether these communication and scheduling features match dedicated platforms like Weave or NexHealth in depth — ask for a live demo of each module before assuming the all-in-one replaces your current stack. Our patient communication tools guide covers what dedicated platforms offer if you want a baseline for comparison.

Practice by Numbers scores 9.4 on G2 for Business Intelligence, 9.4 for Patient Experience, and 9.8 for Quality of Support — among the highest in the dental analytics category based on our review of G2 data as of early 2026. The pattern across reviews is consistent: complaints cluster around pricing at higher tiers, not the product itself. Practices credit PBN's automated reminders and two-way texting with reducing no-show rates, though none of the reviews we analyzed gave a specific percentage.

Pricing analysis: the real cost of each

The sticker prices look straightforward, but the actual cost picture is muddier than either vendor makes it seem — especially for multi-provider practices.

Dental Intelligence prices per user, not per practice. At $399/user/month, a solo provider pays $399/month. A 2-provider practice pays $798/month. A 4-provider practice pays $1,596/month. DI also offers Silver ($2,000/month for 5 licenses) and Gold ($7,500/month for 21 licenses) tiers where the per-user cost drops slightly, but the minimums are steep. Add the $1,000 setup fee, and a 2-provider practice is looking at $10,576 in year one. The contract is annual and auto-renews — you need to give 30 days' notice before the renewal date to cancel. The auto-renewal clause has frustrated some practices that missed the cancellation window and got billed for another year. Always get per-provider pricing in writing before comparing any headline rates.

Practice by Numbers starts at $249/month for the Core plan — $2,988/year, roughly a third of DI's year-one cost for a 2-provider practice. Core excludes reactivation campaigns, review management, and online booking, so most growing practices will need the higher-tier Flow or Scale plan. Neither is publicly priced; both require contacting sales. Based on what practices report paying, budget for at least 1.5-2x the Core price for those tiers — we couldn't verify that independently, but it's more useful than silence.

Implementation adds to the first-year bill. Dental Intelligence's onboarding process targets key feature setup within 14 days, includes 5 structured training sessions, and provides weekly live webinars throughout. Budget 4-6 weeks before the platform is fully integrated into your daily workflow. During that ramp, you're paying full monthly fees — for a 2-provider practice at $399/user/month, that's roughly $800-1,200 in costs before the tool is fully operational. Practice by Numbers' implementation timeline isn't publicly documented, but their 9.8/5 G2 support score suggests a responsive onboarding process. Either way, factor implementation time into your year-one cost comparison.

Before you commit, ask about trial access. Practice by Numbers offers a free trial — request it at practicenumbers.com before signing an annual contract. Dental Intelligence offers demos (with a $50 gift card incentive to show up) but we found no evidence of a self-serve trial period. If you can't test either platform with your own PMS data before signing, invest more time in the demo: bring your real KPIs, real reports, and the questions your team would actually push on. A polished demo with synthetic data tells you nothing about how the tool handles your actual workflow.

Seven questions neither platform answers publicly

We couldn't find public documentation on any of these. Treat your demo as a negotiation — push your rep on each one before signing.

• Data sync frequency — and what happens when it breaks. How often does the platform pull data from your PMS — real-time, hourly, or once daily? More importantly: what happens when the sync fails? Practices have reported multi-day gaps between their PMS data and their analytics dashboard — the kind of gap where you're making staffing decisions based on stale numbers. Ask each vendor: (1) How frequently does your platform sync with my PMS? (2) Am I notified when a sync fails? (3) Can I manually trigger a resync? (4) What's the longest sync outage your customers have experienced in the last 12 months? If they can't answer the fourth question, they haven't thought about it enough. Verify key metrics against your PMS directly for the first 30 days after going live.
• Implementation timeline. Dental Intelligence targets key feature setup within 14 days, with 5 training sessions and weekly webinars included in onboarding. Budget 4-6 weeks before you have a full week of data you trust — and you're paying monthly fees during the entire ramp. A month of delayed onboarding is effectively a price increase.
• Customer support model. Dental Intelligence assigns a dedicated Onboarding Specialist and includes lifetime support at no additional cost. Their Patterson Dental distribution means a Patterson rep may also be involved in your setup — which can mean faster escalation or just another layer to navigate, depending on your rep. Practice by Numbers' 9.8/5 G2 support score is the highest in the category, but whether that reflects a dedicated CSM or a responsive shared support queue isn't publicly documented. Ask both vendors the same question: who is my point of contact after onboarding ends? If the answer is "submit a ticket," that's a different experience than "here's your CSM's direct line."
• Data portability if you cancel. Can you export your historical KPI data, and in what format? These tools derive much of their value from multi-year trend analysis. Losing that history on cancellation is a significant hidden cost that neither vendor publicly addresses.
• Exit penalties and switching costs. DI has a known annual contract with an auto-renewal clause. PBN's contract terms aren't publicly disclosed. Ask directly whether there's a penalty for early cancellation — and whether your historical analytics data comes with you if you switch.
• Staff adoption after six months. The most common failure mode for analytics software isn't the tool — it's adoption. After the initial onboarding honeymoon, daily usage often drops. Ask each vendor: what percentage of your customers have daily active users six months in? Do you provide ongoing training or re-engagement support? If the morning huddle feature only works when someone opens the dashboard, it only works when someone opens the dashboard.
• Acquisition risk and platform continuity. Dental Intelligence is venture-backed, which introduces real acquisition risk. If the company is acquired or pivots its strategy, your analytics history and workflow integrations could be disrupted. Ask about data portability (can you export historical analytics in a usable format?) and whether your contract includes any commitments to feature continuity. Practice by Numbers hasn't publicly disclosed its ownership structure or exit strategy either.

Where each wins

Where Dental Intelligence has the edge

• Morning huddle workflow — the single most cited feature by DI users in the reviews we analyzed (more below)
• Focused analytics depth — production, collections, and case acceptance tracking is polished and consistently delivers on G2's "Meets Requirements" metric
• Patterson Dental distribution — practices in the Patterson ecosystem get tighter integration and support
• G2 "Meets Requirements" score of 8.9 — the highest of any platform we reviewed; the analytics features deliver what they promise
• Dedicated onboarding structure — DI assigns a named Onboarding Specialist, includes 5 training sessions and weekly webinars, and provides lifetime support at no additional cost

Where Practice by Numbers pulls ahead

• KPI breadth — 600+ metrics vs. DI's narrower (but deep) set; valuable if you have someone who will actually explore them
• All-in-one value — analytics, communication, scheduling, payments, forms, and insurance verification in one platform (verify feature depth in a live demo)
• Stronger user satisfaction scores — 9.4 on G2 for Business Intelligence, 9.4 for Patient Experience, and 9.8 for Quality of Support; complaints in reviews focus on pricing, not the product
• Lower entry price — dramatically so for multi-provider practices — $249/mo Core vs. DI's $399/user/month ($798/mo for 2 providers, $1,596/mo for 4)
• Team adoption — a dozen G2 reviews singled out the interface as easy to learn for non-tech-savvy staff, without extensive training
• Free trial available — you can evaluate PBN with your own practice data before signing; DI offers demos but no self-serve trial period

The morning huddle: Dental Intelligence's defining feature

The morning huddle tool is DI's most frequently cited differentiator in the G2 reviews we analyzed — it comes up more than any other single feature. It pulls the day's schedule, highlights patients with outstanding treatment plans, flags reappointment gaps, and surfaces production targets in a format designed for a 10-15 minute team review before the day starts.

The team sees exactly which patients have unscheduled treatment, which hygiene patients are overdue for reappointment, and how the schedule tracks against production goals — without manually pulling individual charts before the day starts. That's a genuine workflow advantage for practices that run disciplined morning meetings.

If your practice doesn't do huddles and isn't interested in starting, this feature won't move the needle. For practices that already run them — or want to build that discipline — DI's tooling is more structured than what PBN currently offers.

The all-in-one question: Practice by Numbers' value proposition

Practice by Numbers is betting that practices would rather buy one platform than stitch together analytics, communication, scheduling, and payment tools from different vendors. The pitch: instead of paying $399-798+/month for DI (depending on provider count) plus $200+/month for a dedicated communication tool, get everything in PBN for less.

The trade-off is depth vs. breadth. PBN's communication features earn high marks from users — but a dedicated platform like Weave or NexHealth will have deeper functionality in that specific area: VoIP phones, AI receptionist, broader messaging campaigns. We haven't done a side-by-side depth comparison of PBN's communication module against dedicated platforms — do that evaluation yourself before replacing a tool you depend on. Our patient communication tools guide gives you a benchmark for what best-in-class looks like in that category.

For most single-location practices, the all-in-one approach reduces complexity and vendor management. For larger or more sophisticated operations, best-of-breed tools in each category may be worth the extra cost and integration overhead.

Do these platforms actually improve practice performance?

Neither Dental Intelligence nor Practice by Numbers has published independently verified outcome data. Vendor case studies cite improvements in case acceptance, collections, and reappointment rates — but these are self-reported, without methodology details, sample sizes, or third-party validation. No independent sources we reviewed — MGMA surveys, ADA data, or academic research — corroborate specific improvement claims for either platform.

If a vendor tells you their platform delivers a "20% improvement in case acceptance," ask for the study methodology, sample size, and whether it was conducted by a third party. Vendor case studies are marketing materials, not evidence.

What both platforms genuinely provide is visibility and workflow structure: dashboards that surface problems you might otherwise miss, and tools that make acting on that data easier. Whether visibility translates into measurable production improvement depends almost entirely on how your team uses the tool — and whether anyone actually looks at the dashboard every day. The software doesn't improve your numbers. It shows you where to focus so your team can.

Jarvis Analytics: the DSO alternative

For DSOs and multi-location groups, Jarvis Analytics (part of Henry Schein One) is worth knowing about. Henry Schein One built Jarvis for enterprise dental organizations that need cross-location analytics across different PMS systems — if your group has acquired practices running Dentrix, Open Dental, and Eaglesoft, Jarvis aggregates all of them into unified dashboards without forcing a PMS migration. DI and PBN don't offer that.

Jarvis scores 7.9 on G2's "Meets Requirements" metric — below DI's 8.9. Pricing is enterprise sales only with no public rates. Solo and small group practices will find DI or PBN better suited and less expensive. We cover all three in our best practice analytics guide.

Who should choose Dental Intelligence

The clearest case for DI is a practice that already runs morning huddles — or is committed to building that discipline. That feature drives the most consistently positive feedback in the reviews we analyzed, and it's DI's genuine differentiator against every other analytics platform in this category.

Three other situations where DI makes more sense than PBN:

• You already have a communication tool you like. If you're mid-contract with Weave, NexHealth, or another communication platform, DI's focused approach means you're not paying for features you can't use.
• You're in the Patterson Dental ecosystem. DI's distribution through Patterson means tighter integration and support for Eaglesoft practices especially.
• You want focused analytics without feature sprawl. Unlike PBN, DI hasn't expanded into payments, forms, or scheduling. That focus is an advantage if analytics is your only gap — you're not subsidizing features you'll never configure.

Two caveats worth naming before you sign. First, DI is venture-backed, which introduces acquisition risk over a multi-year contract — ask about data portability and contractual commitments to feature continuity. Second, confirm per-user pricing for your actual provider count. For a solo provider, DI's $399/month is competitive. For a 3-4 provider practice paying $1,197-1,596/month, the math looks different.

Who should choose Practice by Numbers

PBN makes the most sense for practices currently juggling multiple vendors — analytics from one platform, patient reminders from another, online scheduling from a third. The consolidation value is real: PBN Core at $2,988/year is less than a third of DI's year-one cost for a 2-provider practice ($10,576 with the setup fee). Even if you need PBN's higher-tier Flow plan, you're likely spending significantly less than DI plus a separate communication tool — though get a quote before assuming.

Two situations where PBN is clearly the right call:

• You want deep KPI access without the learning curve. 600+ metrics sounds overwhelming, but a dozen G2 reviews praised PBN's interface as intuitive enough for non-tech-savvy staff. The breadth doesn't appear to come at the cost of usability — though in practice, most teams will gravitate to a working set of 15-20 metrics and rarely venture further.
• You don't have communication tools you're locked into. If you're not mid-contract with a dedicated communication platform, starting fresh with PBN's all-in-one approach avoids adding another vendor to manage.

Take advantage of PBN's free trial before committing. Testing with your own PMS data and your own team is the only way to know whether the interface lives up to the G2 reviews — and whether the communication features are deep enough to replace whatever you're currently running.