Web development companies in Dubai: what you are actually choosing between
Dubai web development companies mostly fall into three commercial models: one-off project builds, retained agencies, and built-and-maintained monthly plans. The real differences that matter are what happens to your domain when you leave, what a change costs after launch, and whether the price you're quoted is the price you actually pay. Zerak's own published rate for a website is USD 34.95 a month, all in, with a 12-month minimum and no setup fee.
Open five web development companies in Dubai in five browser tabs and you will read the same page five times. "Leading." A grid of services — UI/UX, custom development, e-commerce, CMS. A wall of logos. A five-step process with icons. A contact form. Not one of them tells you what the work costs, what happens to your website the day you stop paying, or whose name is on the domain.
That is why buyers give up on agency sites and end up on Clutch, Semrush and Techreviewer listings instead. They are not looking for another brochure. They are looking for something to compare.
Here is the comparison, starting with the thing nobody publishes.
Zerak works remotely with businesses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, the wider UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. We do not have a Dubai office. We are saying that in the third paragraph rather than burying it, because a good number of the "Dubai agencies" on page one list an address and deliver the work from somewhere else entirely. If a local office matters to you, that is a legitimate filter — apply it now and save yourself the call.
What are the three models you are choosing between?
Underneath the marketing, a UAE business shortlisting agencies is choosing between three commercial structures.
The one-off project build. A large upfront fee, usually staged. You get the files at the end. Changes after launch are billed separately, or quietly not done at all. Hosting, updates and security are yours to arrange. This works if you have someone internal who can look after a website.
The retained agency. A monthly retainer covering a broad and often loosely defined scope — design, development, marketing, whatever comes up. Normally the most expensive of the three, and the hardest to compare between vendors, because no two retainers contain the same things.
The built-and-maintained plan. A lower monthly figure. The agency builds the site and keeps it running — hosting, patches, backups, small changes — and ownership transfers to you on a defined schedule. The risk is that "defined schedule" is often not defined at all.
Zerak is the third model, with the schedule written down. The rest of this page is the detail.
| Model | How you pay | Who owns the site | Ongoing changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-off project build | Large upfront fee, usually staged | You, after final payment — but hosting/updates are on you | Billed separately, or not done |
| Retained agency | Monthly retainer, broad scope | Varies by contract | Included, but scope is loosely defined |
| Built-and-maintained plan (Zerak's model) | Lower monthly fee | Transfers to you on a defined schedule | Small monthly changes included |
What drives the cost of a website in Dubai
Quotes in the UAE vary enormously, and we are not going to invent a market range to make ourselves look cheap. What we can do is explain what moves a quote up and down, so that when you put three proposals side by side you can see why they differ.
- Number of unique page templates, not page count. A 40-page site built from six templates costs less than a 12-page site where every page is a bespoke layout. Ask any agency how many distinct designs their number covers.
- Bilingual Arabic and English. A proper right-to-left build is a different piece of work from a translation plugin. It affects layout, typography, forms, navigation and the URL structure. It should be priced as such.
- Who writes the copy. If you supply finished text, the build is cheaper. If the agency writes it, that is real hours. Many quotes assume you will supply it and nobody says so out loud until launch week.
- E-commerce versus brochure. Products, stock, checkout, refunds, packing slips and payment setup are a different project from a site that generates enquiries.
- Integrations. Booking engines, CRMs, accounting systems, WhatsApp flows. Each one is scope.
- Carrying over an existing site. If you already rank, the content and URLs have to move across with 301 redirects so those rankings survive. Skipping that step is how a rebuild loses a business its traffic.
- Who pays for hosting, SSL, backups and security patching after launch. This is the line most quotes are silent on.
That last point is the one that costs people money. A build with a low headline price and paid change requests is frequently more expensive across three years than a monthly plan, because every small edit — new phone number, updated menu, a price change — becomes an invoice and a two-week wait. And a site nobody patches does not stay still. It degrades.
What Zerak charges, in full
No form required to see this.
Websites — USD 34.95 a month, all in, 12-month minimum. No setup fee. That covers design, copywriting and structure — it is not a template with your logo dropped in — plus a dashboard so you can edit the site yourself, hosting, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring, small monthly changes, and search and social setup.
Ownership. The site is yours outright after two years. If you want it sooner, you can take it after the first year for a one-off USD 150. Your domain and your data are in your name from day one, not at the end.
Online shops — USD 32 a month (Shop) or USD 59 a month (Shop Plus). Both are all in, 12-month minimum, no setup fee. Shop covers products and photos set up for you, Arabic and English, phone-first checkout, orders, stock, refunds, packing slips, discount codes, reviews, abandoned-cart reminders, and Instagram and Google product feeds. Shop Plus adds an in-store till with receipts, branches with their own stock and pickup, gift cards and loyalty points, and digital products.
Web apps and business systems. Scoped and quoted before anything starts. One fixed price for the build, no hourly billing. We do not publish a number for these because there is no honest number to publish until we know what you need.
SEO is sold separately at seo.zerak.io: SEO Monitor USD 299/month, SEO Growth USD 599/month, SEO Authority USD 1,499/month, and AI Search Visibility USD 390/month. Zerak website clients get 20% off every SEO plan.
Prices are in USD.
| Plan | Price | Minimum | Setup fee | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | USD 34.95/mo | 12 months | None | Design, copywriting, structure, editing dashboard, hosting, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring, small monthly changes, search and social setup |
| Shop | USD 32/mo | 12 months | None | Products and photos set up, Arabic/English, phone-first checkout, orders/stock/refunds, discount codes, reviews, abandoned-cart reminders, Instagram/Google feeds |
| Shop Plus | USD 59/mo | 12 months | None | Everything in Shop, plus in-store till with receipts, branches with own stock/pickup, gift cards, loyalty points, digital products |
| Web apps / business systems | Scoped and quoted | Fixed price for the build | — | Booking systems, internal tools, client portals — scoped before anything starts |
| SEO Monitor | USD 299/mo | 3 months | USD 290 | 1 article/month |
| SEO Growth | USD 599/mo | — | USD 390 | 4 articles/month, Google Business Profile, 30 keywords |
| SEO Authority | USD 1,499/mo | — | USD 490 | 8 articles/month, 3-5 backlinks/month, Arabic and English, 60 keywords |
| AI Search Visibility | USD 390/mo | — | — | Weekly AI search tracking, sold standalone or with other plans |
Who owns the website when the relationship ends?
Ask this before you sign anything, with any agency, including us.
The complaint you will find over and over in forums from UAE business owners is not about design quality. It is about being locked out. The domain sits in the agency's registrar account. The hosting is theirs. The content cannot be exported. Leaving means starting again from zero, which is precisely why it is structured that way.
Three questions. Copy them into your reply email to every company on your shortlist:
- Is the domain registered in my company's name, in my registrar account, or in yours?
- If I leave, can I export the website and its content, and will you point the domain wherever I ask?
- What do you charge for a change after launch, and is there a minimum charge or a minimum monthly spend?
A company that answers all three in one short email is a company worth talking to. Hesitation on question one tells you everything.
Zerak's answers: the domain and hosting are in your name from day one. Your content and your domain stay yours. The buyout is defined in advance — USD 150 after year one, or free after year two.
What we build
Websites on a monthly plan
Built for service businesses, clinics, tour operators, restaurants, salons and professional firms across the UAE, the Gulf and Egypt. Designed and written for your business, not assembled from a theme. Fast on mobile, with Core Web Vitals treated as part of the build rather than something to fix later.
Online shops
Arabic and English, phone-first checkout, orders, stock, refunds, packing slips, discount codes, reviews, abandoned-cart reminders, and Instagram and Google product feeds. Payment options are agreed per shop. Cash on delivery is built in; for Egypt we support Paymob cards and wallets, Fawry and InstaPay. Gulf shops are set up to suit how you actually take money, agreed before build.
Web apps and business systems
Booking systems, internal tools, client portals, anything that replaces a spreadsheet and a WhatsApp group. Scoped and fixed-priced first. We also build and run Wieldy (wieldyapp.com), our own agency management software — which is the honest evidence that we ship and maintain software over years, not just launch sites and disappear.
SEO once the site is live
Being built well and being found are different jobs. Once the site is live and fast, SEO is the separate service that earns the rankings — content, technical work, Google Business Profile, Arabic and English. It is a cross-sell and we will say so. It is not the front door.
Arabic and English, built properly
Most Dubai agency pages mention Arabic in a bullet point and leave it there. A real bilingual build has five parts:
- A separate Arabic URL tree, so the Arabic site has its own pages and can be linked to and ranked.
- A genuine right-to-left layout — navigation, forms, icons, spacing and typography rebuilt for RTL, not a stylesheet flipped in a mirror.
- Arabic copy written by someone who writes Arabic, not run through machine translation.
- hreflang tags, so the Arabic and English versions do not compete with each other in search results.
- Arabic-language search setup, so the Arabic pages are indexed and tracked on their own terms.
Our own Arabic tree is the proof: هذه الصفحة بالعربية.
Worth knowing: Arabic search competition in most commercial niches is far thinner than English. For a Dubai or Riyadh business, an Arabic version of the site is usually the cheapest visibility available to it.
How does a project run?
- A free half-hour call. What you need, what you have, whether we are the right fit.
- A written fixed scope. What gets built, what it costs, when it lands. Before any payment.
- A live preview link from the first week. You watch it take shape rather than waiting for a reveal.
- Domain and data in your name from day one, plus training on the dashboard so you are not dependent on us for a text change.
Moving from another platform is normal work here. We import products from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salla or Zid and redirect the old product links to the new pages. If you already have a site, we can either take it over and look after it — hosting, domain and access all in your name — or rebuild it while keeping the content and rankings, with old URLs 301 redirected to their replacements.
Longer version: what ecommerce website development in Dubai costs, step by step.
Work we have done
Golden Gulf — tourism and car rental in Cairo. Tours, fleet and enquiries in one site built for a business whose customers arrive on mobile.
Best Egypt Holidays — a tour operator whose site we rebuilt while keeping its existing rankings, with old links redirected to the new pages.
Fit Oat — see the case study for the build and what it does.
If you sell fashion in the Gulf, look at the demo shops at zerak.io/shops, particularly Maison Mirath, our luxury abaya design.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in Dubai?
Quotes vary enormously, and any agency quoting a flat market average is guessing. Cost is driven by the number of unique templates, whether the site is bilingual, who writes the copy, e-commerce versus brochure, integrations, and whether existing rankings must be carried across. Zerak's website plan is USD 34.95 a month, all in, 12-month minimum, no setup fee.
What is the difference between a web design company and a web development company?
Design covers how the site looks and how people move through it. Development is the code that makes it work — templates, forms, checkout, integrations, speed. Most firms in the UAE do both, but the balance differs. Ask which side of the work the quote actually covers before you compare two numbers.
Do I own my website if an agency builds it on a monthly plan?
That depends entirely on the contract, which is why you must ask. With Zerak, the site is yours outright after two years, or you can buy it out after the first year for a one-off USD 150. Your domain and your data are in your name from day one, regardless.
Is the domain registered in my name or the agency's?
With Zerak, yours. Elsewhere, ask directly and get the answer in writing. A domain held in an agency's registrar account is the single most common reason a business cannot leave a supplier it has outgrown.
Do I need a web development company with an office in Dubai?
Only if in-person meetings matter to your process. Plenty of firms listing a Dubai address deliver the work offshore anyway. Zerak is remote and works with businesses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, the wider UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What matters more is who owns the domain and who answers when something breaks.
Can you build a website in Arabic and English?
Yes. That means a separate Arabic URL tree, a genuine right-to-left layout rather than a mirrored stylesheet, Arabic copy written rather than machine-translated, hreflang so the two versions do not compete in search, and Arabic search setup. Our own site runs an Arabic tree at zerak.io/ar.
What happens to my Google rankings if I rebuild my website?
They survive if the rebuild is done properly: content carried across, URL structure mapped, and every old URL 301 redirected to its replacement. They collapse if it is not. We rebuilt Best Egypt Holidays on exactly that basis, keeping its rankings with old links redirected.
Can you move my store from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salla or Zid?
Yes. We import your products and redirect the old product links to the new pages so customers and search engines land in the right place. Your domain moves into your own name in the process if it is not there already.
What is included in the monthly fee, and what costs extra?
The website plan includes design, copywriting and structure, your editing dashboard, hosting, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring, small monthly changes, and search and social setup. There is no setup fee. Larger new work — a new section, a custom system, SEO — is scoped and quoted separately.
How long is the contract and can I leave early?
The website plan has a 12-month minimum. Shop and Shop Plus are the same. After year one you can take the site for a one-off USD 150; after two years it is yours outright at no cost. Your domain is in your name throughout, so leaving never means losing your address.
Who maintains the site after launch?
We do, for as long as you are on the plan: hosting, SSL, security patching, backups, uptime monitoring and small monthly changes. That is the point of the monthly model. An unmaintained site is not a saving — it is a breach waiting to happen.
Do you do SEO as well as build the site?
Yes, sold separately at seo.zerak.io. Plans run from SEO Monitor at USD 299 a month to SEO Authority at USD 1,499 a month, plus AI Search Visibility at USD 390 a month. Zerak website clients get 20% off every plan.
Start with a free half-hour call
No pitch deck. Half an hour on what you need, what it would cost, and whether we are the right fit. Message us on WhatsApp or use the form at zerak.io/contact. Email hello@zerak.io.
Already have a site and not ready to talk about rebuilding it? Take the free website audit at seo.zerak.io and see what it tells you first.
بالعربية: zerak.io/ar/contact
Ed Kamel is the founder of Zerak and Wieldy. He builds and maintains websites, online shops and business systems for companies across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the wider Gulf and Egypt, in Arabic and English.