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Switching from Open Dental to Curve Dental: What Changes
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Ezra Angelo
- • February 4, 2026
Open Dental is built around data ownership. Your patient records live on a server your practice controls, and the software is open-source with no vendor lock-in. Curve Dental is fully cloud-based with no local server requirement and no software to install.
Switching from one to the other is a meaningful infrastructure shift. Here is what to expect.
Open Dental gives your practice full ownership of its database. When you move to Curve Dental, your data lives on Curve’s cloud infrastructure.
Before switching, confirm in writing with Curve how your data can be exported and in what format. This is especially important for practices that may want to switch platforms again in the future. Cloud platforms vary significantly in their data portability policies, and this question is easier to answer before you commit than after.
What You Gain and What You Give Up
No on-site server to maintain, patch, or replace when it ages out
No hardware refresh cycles for the practice management server
No backup management for the practice management database on your end
Curve’s infrastructure team handles software updates and uptime
Direct control over your data: patient records move to Curve’s cloud environment
Open Dental’s flexibility: cross-platform support and full database access
Operation without internet: Curve requires connectivity to function
Data sovereignty: for practices with strong preferences around data ownership, this tradeoff is worth thinking through before committing
What Changes in Your IT Environment
Check each infrastructure change your IT provider has confirmed is addressed before your migration date.
What Happens to Your Open Dental Data
Patient records migrate through Curve's onboarding process
Curve Dental handles the data conversion from Open Dental. Patient records, scheduling data, and treatment history migrate through their onboarding process. The conversion team will confirm what transfers directly and what may require manual entry. Before conversion begins, your IT provider should export a clean, verified copy of your Open Dental MySQL database as a backup.
Imaging data does not automatically migrate and requires advance planning
Historical X-rays and clinical images are stored in Open Dental's format and may not be directly accessible in Curve. Work with your IT provider and Curve's team before migration to determine how historical imaging will be handled. Discovering an incompatibility during go-live is far more disruptive than resolving it two weeks before migration day.
Internet Requirements Before You Switch
Curve runs entirely in the browser, so internet infrastructure replaces your server as the most critical IT dependency. Check each requirement your IT provider has confirmed is in place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ekim IT Solutions works exclusively with dental practices. We serve New England and New York with on-site support and dental practices nationwide with remote support. We handle the IT side of your Open Dental to Curve migration, network readiness, data transition support, and go-live setup so you land on Curve without losing what you built on Open Dental.
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- • February 4, 2026
