Dr Smile is a German start-up company founded in 2016, with partner dentists across the world. They were then bought by Straumann Group in 2020, meaning they’re under the same ownership as ClearCorrect.
Dr Smile pricing is clear and transparent. For minor misalignment, it costs £1,390. For moderate misalignment it’s £1,790. A complex misalignment costs £2,090. They allow you to spread the costs over 12 months.
They advise the treatment time differs depending on your teeth’s initial condition, which is right. They give spans ranging from ‘a few months’ to ‘two years’.
Their website states the Dr Smile aligners are free of harmful substances and plasticisers, and made of a thermoplastic material using ‘Clear Quartz’ technology. The aligners are made in the USA and in Germany.
You begin your treatment with an assessment by a dentist, but after that you’ll receive your clear aligners at home. You change your aligners every two weeks at home, check in on an app and send selfies to your dentist to monitor progress.
Dr Smile asks that you use their app and wear your aligners for 22 hours a day. If, after following this, you don’t achieve the result you desire, they’ll cover the price of additional aligners.
None.
Dr Smile doesn’t have Google Reviews, but they are on Trustpilot. There they have an average score of 1.5 out of 5 based on 39 reviews. Many of the complaints seem to be from when Dr Smile acquired the company PlusDent along with their customers, and many people felt their service suffered as a result.
The clear pricing is very competitive, and they use similar aligner materials to ClearCorrect – no surprise as they’re owned by the same company. Our dentists did express concern about the lack of dentist contact during the treatment procedure, saying that relying on the patient for photos and app check-ins may affect the efficacy of the process. The negative reviews on Trustpilot may just be teething problems, so we’d like to see some more recent verified customer reviews.