How we rate software
Every tool we review gets two scores, and we keep them separate on purpose. Here's exactly what each one means and how we build it — so you can see our work.
Two scores, never one
We never roll everything into a single "best overall" number. A blended score hides the most useful thing you can know: a tool can be loved by its users and still do only half of what you need. So we always show two, side by side.
Score 1 — Customer rating
This is the satisfaction score real users give the tool on independent review sites like Capterra. We pull it straight from the source and always show the score, how many reviews it's based on, and the date we checked. We don't adjust it. It tells you one thing: whether the people using the tool today are happy with it. Watch the review count as much as the number — a 4.8 from 30 reviews is less settled than a 4.4 from 700.
Score 2 — Our marketing-capability score
This is our own rating, from 0 to 5, of how much a tool helps a practice bring in and keep patients. It answers a different question than the customer rating: not "do users like it," but "how much of the patient-getting job does it actually do." We build it the same way for every tool, using the fixed checklist below — so it's consistent, and you can see exactly how we got there.
The six things we score on
Every tool is scored on how well it handles these six parts of bringing in and keeping patients. They're the same six for any practice, in any field we review.
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1. Getting found and booked
Can a prospective patient find the practice online and book without having to call during office hours?
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2. Staying in touch
Appointment reminders, texting, and filling last-minute cancellations — plus bringing back patients who have drifted away.
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3. Reputation
Getting happy patients to leave reviews, and keeping an eye on them.
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4. Capturing new patients
When someone calls or fills out a form, does the tool capture it — and record where they came from?
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5. Running ads and offers
Help with ads, landing pages, and promotions.
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6. Seeing what is working
Turning all that activity into a clear answer: which efforts are actually bringing patients in, and what each one costs. The part most tools skip — and the one that saves practices the most money.
For each of the six, a tool earns full, partial, or no credit based on how well it actually does the job — not just whether the feature exists on a checklist. We weight the six toward what a practice at that tool's stage really needs (a small practice isn't marked down for lacking tools built for big advertisers), then turn it into a score out of 5. Same method, every tool. It's a rating you could reproduce, not a gut call.
Keeping the numbers honest
- Every price and rating we show carries the date we pulled it and a link to its source. We re-check them when we update a review.
- Our own software won't let us publish a price or rating without a date and source attached — so a number can't quietly go stale or appear from nowhere.
- We earn a referral fee on some tools and not others, and that never changes a score. More on how we're paid →