Distributors 

We get many phone calls from people interested in selling Open Dental in one form or another. We directly provide our customers with software (and updates) and support. We do not provide the compiled version of Open Dental to others who only want to resell it and provide support. However, under the GPL License, anyone is allowed and encouraged to distribute (package, sell, and support) the software themselves.  

We understand that our license is unique, yet believe this choice and availability greatly benefit the dental community. We firmly believe that open software is the only viable long-term solution for the dental software industry. Ten years from now, we hope these policies have resulted in worldwide acceptance of Open Dental as the dental software standard.

If you are interested in becoming a distributor, please start by reading the Open Source License information on Programming Resources. Then read this page, which should answer the remainder of your questions. If you still have questions, need more information, or would like to become a referrer, contact Business/Marketing at

Suppliers and Consultants in the Dental Industry
If you are a supplier or consultant to those in the dental industry, and have customers who would benefit from Open Dental, please refer them to us for the purchase of software support. This includes:

• Computer IT networking and support companies
• Hardware consultants: You would assist with hardware and networking. We would provide software support.
• Equipment and supply dealers
• Dental Integrators
• Consultants
• Supplemental software vendors (e.g. clearinghouses, digital imaging, appointment reminders, patient communication, etc.)

The customer would contact us for software and support, but contact you for other services. For installation issues, we can work together to make it easier for the customer. 

Distributors
All Distributors: 

• Adding Functionality to Open Dental: If you do not make any changes to the software before distributing it, you are welcome to use the Open Dental logo and name. If you make changes before distributing the software, you must address trademark issues. See Programming Resources under Adding Functionality to Open Dental, Forking.
  
• CDT License: The full version of Open Dental includes copyrighted CDT content, including the ADA claimform, and the ADA procedure codes.  Because this content is copyrighted, we are not allowed to include it in the source code. We have a license to distribute this content to our paying customers only. Distributors can also obtain their own license to distribute this content. Go to https://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-catalog/cdt-products/licensing-for-commercial-users and apply for the "Practice Management Software License". Once a distributor obtains an ADA license, we can provide technical documentation on how to include CDT content in the executable. There are no licensing issues for Canadian procedure codes.

Distribute Only
If your customers don't need or want support, you can package and sell the software yourself. Packaging includes compiling the Source Code and obtaining the CDT License (USA only). This requires programming experience.  An installation program is not included in the source code. See Programming Resources.

Distribute and Support
If you are very experienced with dental software, you can package, sell, and support Open Dental customers yourself. To make this profitable, you should have at least a few dozen customers so you can roll it into a package deal. If you are in the USA, start by obtaining the CDT license (see below), then see Programming Resources.

Support Option: Your users will need help installing and using the software. They may have complicated questions about how features work or how to get the most out of the software. You can sign up for a support contract with us in case you run into a difficult question you can not answer. The contract will cost you the same as a single dentist office. See Fees for Software and Support. We will provide a reasonable level of support to you, but will not have direct communication with any of your customers. They are your responsibility, not ours.

We are very open to this type of relationship, so don't worry about us trying to compete with you. We will respect your customer relationships and never try to take customers from you. Keep in mind some users may call us on their own, we may not be aware of your relationship with them, and we may inadvertently try to sign them up. If we become aware of a previous relationship, we refer the customer back to the original company. If a company cannot provide adequate service, we sometimes agree to support the customer after an honest and reasonable attempt at reconciliation. To prevent this from happening, provide good customer service. It is important to answer the phone and to return messages promptly.

Foreign Countries
Because of time zone and language differences, we are not able to provide extensive support to dental offices in many Foreign Countries. We are expecting local software developers to distribute and support Open Dental themselves. 

Support Options: As described in Distribute and Support above, you can sign up for support with us, then in turn support your local customers. If providing support yourself seems too hard, we can provide direct support to the dental offices, but it may mostly be via email or during our daytime hours. We try to do the best we can for foreign countries, so if the office has purchased support from us, we can work directly with you to resolve issues faster. Eventually we will extend our telephone support to 24 hour service, but that will not solve language problems or the local laws and regulations that will hinder us. See Contact Us for our hours of operation.

Counting Users
If you become a distributor, we would love to know how many copies are going out so that we can have an idea of how many users there are.

Supplemental Services
Open Dental Software, Inc. provides a number of supplemental services to customers. Distributors may need to do extra work to provide the same services to their customers.

Online Forms: Distributors can offer this service to customers only by reselling the service provided by Open Dental. Contact us to set up a reseller portal account.
Mobile: Distributors can offer this service to their customers only by reselling the service provided by Open Dental. Contact us to set up a reseller portal account.
Patient Portal: Distributors can offer this service to their customers only by reselling the service provided by Open Dental. Contact us to set up a reseller portal account.
Electronic Prescriptions: Electronic prescriptions for reseller customers is available in version 13.2 or greater. There are two eRx solutions available as of 17.4.12.

1. DoseSpot eRx: Distributors can offer this service to customers only by reselling the service provided by Open Dental. Contact us to set up a reseller portal account.
2. Legacy eRx

EHR Functionality: Certification for EHR is a vendor/product combination, not just a product. CMS dictates that any contract for an EHR purchase must be directly with the vendor (Open Dental). Distributors must go through their own certification process with Drummond to achieve certification. No resellers of Open Dental are authorized to contract with a user for a certified EHR product.