Our practice websites are spread across four-plus platforms, dozens of hosts, and hundreds of separate domains, and a lean team cannot manage or improve them at that spread. This memo lays out the operating model that fixes it: standard layers, shared tooling, and clear governance that let a small team move the whole estate. Consolidating onto one platform is a lever we use where it pays off, not the goal in itself.
SGA owns the patient's first impression 260 times over, but those 260 websites live on incompatible builders, hosts, and registrars. A lean team cannot push one improvement, measure performance apples-to-apples, or absorb an acquisition without a custom project each time. The goal is not to replatform everything. It is operating leverage over the whole estate: standardize the layers that do not need a rebuild, automate improvements across the sites we keep, replatform where it clearly pays, and reserve custom builds for flagships.
As SGA has grown to 260 practices, and absorbed the 68 Gen4 locations on top, the website estate grew the way most DSO estates grow: one acquisition at a time, each arriving with whatever it was already running. The result is a portfolio held together by manual effort.
The cost of the current estate is not a line item. It shows up as growth we never capture, work the team does twice, and risk we carry quietly.
The objective is operating leverage, not a platform purchase. We want a small team to make one decision and have it reach the whole estate. That leverage can come from a shared platform, from automation layered onto the sites we already run, or from both. The principle holds either way: decide once, apply everywhere.
Design is one layer. Hosting, DNS, SEO, analytics, and embeds are the layers underneath. Most of them can be standardized across the estate without rebuilding a single site.
The win is making one change reach 260 practices without manual touch. A single platform is one way to get there. API automation across the sites we keep is another. We use whichever pays off per cohort.
The design system, component library, conversion playbook, and tooling are what compound. Author them once and apply them across the estate, however each site is hosted.
Spend a lean team's leverage on the surface area where dental practices actually compete: conversion patterns, local SEO, and brand storytelling. Buy or automate the infrastructure underneath so the team never hand-maintains 260 sites.
A website is seven layers working together, not just a page editor. Today each layer is decided ad hoc per practice. The opportunity: most of these can be standardized across all 260 sites now, through shared tooling and automation, with no replatforming. Layers 1, 4, and 7 gain the most from a shared platform. The rest we can fix in place.
This is what leverage looks like in practice. On a shared platform the builder pushes one change to the whole network at once. On the sites we keep in place, the same outcome comes from API automation, for example the programmatic schema and SEO work already underway on Innovative Dental's Webflow site. Either way, the team edits once.
Replatforming is one route, not the plan. The right answer is almost certainly a portfolio: standardize everywhere first, then sort each practice into the route that earns its keep. This avoids a full 260-site migration we may not need, and it gets improvements live far sooner.
Keep the site, standardize its layers, and push improvements by API and automation. Best for sound sites on workable platforms (much of Webflow and modern WordPress). Fastest payback, no migration.
Move onto one multi-tenant platform for true one-to-many publishing. Best for the long tail of weak, dated, or legacy sites where a rebuild is overdue anyway.
Bespoke sites on shared SGA design tokens. Reserved for the five to ten flagships, like Innovative Dental and Ressler, where distinctive design drives high-value cases.
For the replatform tier, the constraint that matters is the team that has to run it: five AI-literate coders and a small visual-builder design team. That hybrid ships fast on a platform whose multi-tenant architecture is already solved, and stalls on anything that asks it to architect a multi-tenant CMS from scratch. Scored on team fit, multi-tenant publishing, design ceiling, SEO and conversion control, and cost at scale:
| Platform | Team Fit | Multi-Tenant | Design Ceiling | SEO Control | Monthly Cost at 260 | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duda | 9.0 | 9.5 | 7.0 | 7.0 | $4K to $8K | Recommended. Closest fit to this team. |
| WordPress + Bricks | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 9.5 | $2K to $3.5K | Runner-up. Pick it only if cost is the binding constraint. |
| Builder.io | 6.5 | 8.0 | 9.5 | 9.5 | $1.5K to $3.5K | Right answer in 18 months, not today. |
| Custom Headless | 3.5 | 6.5 | 10 | 10 | $1K to $3K + people | Maximum ceiling, maximum risk for this team. |
| Pages for Pros | 3.0 | 5.0 | 6.0 | 8.5 | $8K to $15K+ | Pays for in-house capability we already have. |
Stand up the operating model first: the SGA design system, the standard analytics and tracking layer, and domain consolidation, applied across the whole estate. Then run a small paid pilot, a replatform test on Duda (with WordPress + Bricks as the cost-driven runner-up) against API-managed in-place sites, and let conversion data decide how much of the estate actually needs to move. Replatform the cohorts that clear the bar, manage the rest in place, and keep flagships custom.
The strategy is only worth it if the floor rises everywhere. We already run a 50-plus point audit across ten categories that defines what a strong dental site looks like. Replatformed, managed in place, or custom, every practice is scored against it and held to the same bar.
The design system, component library, conversion playbook, and tooling are SGA's assets and survive any decision underneath. We build those first, raise the floor across all 260 sites with no migration, then let data decide how much of the estate actually moves.
None of these are blockers to starting. Each is a decision or a hire that determines whether the build holds up at 260.
| Gap | Risk if ignored | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Senior design-system lead | The component library underperforms and the conversion program is capped by inconsistent patterns. | Hire one lead, or engage a fractional senior for the first 12 weeks. |
| Documented conversion playbook | We buy a vendor's playbook by accident instead of authoring SGA's own moat. | Spend two weeks codifying what converts, using audit, attribution, and paid media data. |
| 260-site QA process | One bad template push breaks the entire network at once. | Define a staging-to-production gate. Bulk pushes go to staging, get smoke-tested, then promote in waves. |
| Flagship plan | Cosmetic-led practices like Innovative Dental and Ressler outgrow the shared template. | Reserve five to ten custom slots built on the same SGA design tokens. |
| Domain & DNS consolidation | Renewal risk and no single source of truth across hundreds of domains. | Centralize registrars and DNS under SGA as the first infrastructure workstream. |