Switching from Eaglesoft to Open Dental

PickMyPMS Editorial · Last reviewed Sep 28, 2026

Quick answer

Patterson does not publish Eaglesoft prices or a cancellation fee, and it locks Service Club customers into a 24-month enrollment. Open Dental publishes its fees outright: $199 a month per location for the first year, $149 after that, for up to three dentists, plus $20 a month for each additional dentist. Moving your data costs $1,450 per database on Open Dental’s own conversion page, with X-rays and documents priced separately.

The bigger risk is that Patterson has not published what happens if you leave Eaglesoft before your 24-month enrollment ends, or a format and fee for exporting your data. Its published conversion terms cover moving data into Eaglesoft. Get both answers from Patterson directly, in writing, before you set a switch date.

What it costs to leave Eaglesoft

Eaglesoft is sold through five Service Club plans (Base, Starter, Foundations, Professional and Growth), and Patterson does not publish a price for any of them; each is quote-only. A third-party estimate from a vendor blog, which cites “Patterson Dental support documentation and industry estimates” without linking to either, puts Service Club support somewhere between $300 and $500 a month. All five plans require a 24-month enrollment and bundle the software license into the plan itself, with no separate license fee shown.

We found no published early-termination fee for leaving before the 24 months are up. Patterson’s public pages state the enrollment length but not the consequence of breaking it, so this is one to confirm against your own signed agreement rather than assume from the marketing page.

Patterson does publish a conversion policy for Eaglesoft, written for practices moving onto it. Its product page says Patterson has converted from more than 250 programs and that a typical conversion takes 4 to 6 weeks. The only conversion price it gives is an offer for new offices: 50% off an advanced data conversion, stated as a $1,000 value, through Oct 31, 2026, with imaging conversion excluded.

None of that covers exporting data out of Eaglesoft. We found no public format or fee for an export, so ask your Patterson account representative directly, in writing, before you commit to a timeline. The same page says most imaging software does not support image conversion, so old images stay in the old software. That note is about practices arriving at Eaglesoft, but it is a good reason to get a direct answer from Open Dental on your X-rays.

Patterson does not support running Eaglesoft, or any of its other software, inside a virtual machine, and full remote access requires a separate remote-desktop tool. If your current setup depends on either of those, confirm how your data is stored before you request an export.

What it costs to arrive at Open Dental

Open Dental publishes its full fee schedule. Support costs $199 a month per location for the first 12 months, then $149 a month, covering up to three dentists, with each additional dentist priced at $20 a month. Support fees carry a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is a meaningful backstop if the conversion or the new workflow does not go as expected.

A hosted option, Open Dental Cloud (currently in limited release), costs $430 a month for the first provider and $150 a month for each additional provider, with a one-time $400 migration fee, according to Open Dental’s own pricing page. That removes the on-site server requirement that both Eaglesoft and standard Open Dental depend on.

The published conversion fee is $1,450 per database, with X-rays adding $900, documents adding $850, and each additional clinic adding $400. None of that is specific to converting from Eaglesoft; it is Open Dental’s general published rate for bringing data in from any prior system. An eServices bundle covering online booking, forms and reminders costs $165 a month per location as an add-on, with texting priced separately at $5 a month for an assigned number, $20 a month for a landline number, plus $0.04 per message sent in the US.

What transfers and what to ask about

Open Dental’s conversion page lists a flat fee schedule without naming Eaglesoft or specifying which of Eaglesoft’s record types are guaranteed to come across. Before you sign anything, get written answers on:

• Whether the $1,450 base fee includes patient demographics, the ledger, treatment plans and insurance setup coming from Eaglesoft specifically, since the published schedule is generic.
• Whether images captured through Eaglesoft Advanced Imaging convert cleanly at the $900 add-on price, given that Eaglesoft integrates with several third-party imaging systems, including Dentsply Sirona Sidexis and DEXIS, that may store files differently.
• Whether clinical notes and any charting data carry over, since neither company’s public pages address this directly.
• What Patterson will provide, if anything, to support an export out of Eaglesoft, since its published conversion policy covers moving data in.
• What training is included for staff moving off Eaglesoft’s interface, given that reviewers describe Eaglesoft’s own reporting as hard to navigate, which suggests your team may already be working around workflow quirks that will not exist in the new system.

Treat any record type nobody confirms in writing as a risk to check manually after the conversion, not an assumption to build your go-live date around.

Timeline and contract timing

Eaglesoft’s Service Club plans commit you to a 24-month enrollment, and Patterson’s public pages do not state a notice period or an early-exit cost. That is a longer minimum commitment than either Dentrix’s or Ascend’s 12-month terms, so check your specific signed order form for the exact language on ending the plan early, since the marketing pages will not have it.

Open Dental’s own term is 12 months, then month to month, with a 90-day money-back guarantee on support fees. That gives you room to reverse course on the Open Dental side if something goes wrong, but it does nothing for whatever remains on your Eaglesoft enrollment.

A workable sequence is to request your Eaglesoft export and a written Open Dental conversion quote at the same time, confirm with Patterson exactly where you stand in your 24-month enrollment, and only finalize a cutover date once you know both the data timeline and the contract timeline. Running Eaglesoft and Open Dental in parallel for a short verification period is normal, but keep it brief, since neither vendor discounts you for double-running.

A checklist before you sign

• Get a written quote from Open Dental covering the $1,450 base conversion fee, plus confirmation on whether your X-rays ($900) and documents ($850) are included.
• Pull your original Eaglesoft Service Club order form and confirm where you are in the 24-month enrollment and what, if anything, it says about leaving early.
• Ask Patterson in writing for the export format and any fee for leaving Eaglesoft. Its published conversion terms, including the new-office discount, apply to converting into Eaglesoft.
• Confirm how many dentists you have. Open Dental includes three in its base fee; each additional dentist is $20 a month.
• Decide between a self-hosted Open Dental setup, which still needs a server like Eaglesoft does, and Open Dental Cloud at $430 a month for the first provider plus $150 per additional provider and a $400 migration fee.
• Get a specific answer on whether your Eaglesoft-integrated imaging system’s files will convert, rather than assuming all imaging comes across the same way.
• Set a target go-live date that accounts for both the conversion timeline and your Eaglesoft enrollment status.

For full sourced profiles on both products, see Eaglesoft and Open Dental. The cost calculator totals five-year costs once you have real quotes, and the Find my PMS quiz can check whether either product fits your specialty and size.