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Original research · October 2026
Hispanic dental practices are already on WhatsApp. Almost none answer after hours.
We reviewed 433 independent dental practices in seven U.S. cities with large Hispanic communities. One in four shows WhatsApp on its website; only one in ten offers a website chat.
By Guillermo Rogel, founder of QuitoWeb · Published October 13, 2026
Key findings
- We reviewed 433 independent dental practices with 60+ Google reviews in Miami, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Los Angeles, Orlando and New York, and read 387 of their websites.
- 24% of those websites mention WhatsApp or show its button (94 of 387).
- Only 10% offer a website chat (39 of 387).
- Miami has the highest WhatsApp share (39%); San Antonio the lowest (16%).
- These are highly rated practices: a median of 355 reviews and a 4.9 rating.
Results by city
Share of websites with WhatsApp and with a chat, out of the websites we could read in each city.
| City | Practices reviewed | Websites read | WhatsApp on website | Website chat | Reviews (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami | 119 | 93 | 36 (39%) | 6 (6%) | 303 |
| Houston | 63 | 62 | 11 (18%) | 5 (8%) | 412 |
| San Antonio | 52 | 50 | 8 (16%) | 4 (8%) | 378 |
| Dallas | 64 | 57 | 13 (23%) | 8 (14%) | 423 |
| Los Angeles | 41 | 40 | 8 (20%) | 6 (15%) | 270 |
| Orlando | 43 | 42 | 10 (24%) | 2 (5%) | 389 |
| New York | 51 | 43 | 8 (19%) | 8 (19%) | 371 |
| Total | 433 | 387 | 94 (24%) | 39 (10%) | 355 |
What it means for a practice
If you show WhatsApp, someone has to answer.
A WhatsApp button invites patients to write at any hour. If the message arrives at 9 p.m. and the reply the next day, the patient has already booked somewhere else.
Website chat is the exception.
Only 39 of 387 websites have a chat. For most practices, WhatsApp is the only written channel, and it rarely has anyone behind it after hours.
It's easy to measure.
Count how many WhatsApp messages arrive after closing and how many get answered the next day. At the first business we measured, in Quito, it was 39%.
Methodology
- Date: October 13, 2026, a single measurement.
- Source: public Google Maps data. Searches for “clínica dental” and “dentista hispano” (in Miami, also “se habla español dentist”) in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods of each city (for example Hialeah and Doral in Miami, Gulfton and Pasadena in Houston, East L.A. and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, Jackson Heights and the Bronx in New York).
- Filters: dental or orthodontic practices with their own website, more than 60 Google reviews and a rating of 4.3+ in Miami and 4.4+ in the other cities. National chains, community health centers, hospitals and universities were excluded. Each practice counts once even with several locations.
- Website reading: each practice's homepage was read automatically. WhatsApp = the page mentions WhatsApp or links to wa.me or api.whatsapp.com. Chat = the page loads a known chat widget (Intercom, Drift, Tidio, Podium, Birdeye, Weave, NexHealth, LiveChat or Tawk.to; outside Miami, also HubSpot Chat, Smile.ai and DentalChat). 46 websites could not be read and are not counted in the percentages.
Limitations
- Only the homepage was read; a WhatsApp button on another page doesn't count.
- Mentioning WhatsApp doesn't guarantee a working button, and a chat loaded later by JavaScript may be missed.
- This is not a random sample: these are popular practices found with Spanish-language searches in Hispanic neighborhoods. Results describe that group, not every dental practice in the U.S.
Data and how to cite
Download the figures by city in data.csv (no data about any individual practice). You may use them with attribution (CC BY 4.0 license):
QuitoWeb (2026). WhatsApp at Hispanic dental practices in the U.S. October 2026 study. https://quitoweb.com/en/research/whatsapp-hispanic-dental-practices-2026/
How does your practice answer after hours?
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