Web Design for Riyadh and Jeddah Businesses — What It Costs, What You Own, and How We Work Remotely

By Ed Kamel, founder of Zerak and Wieldy. Ed publishes Zerak's original research, including the State of Gulf Business Websites 2026, a study of 2,399 Gulf businesses.

Web design for Riyadh and Jeddah businesses, on a monthly plan

Zerak builds a professionally designed website for a Saudi business for USD 34.95 a month, all in, on a 12-month minimum with no setup fee, in Arabic and English. That figure covers the design, the writing, the hosting, the security patches and small monthly changes — there is no separate five-figure build invoice.

Zerak works remotely with businesses in Riyadh, Jeddah and across Saudi Arabia. We do not have a Saudi office and we do not claim one. That matters to you in two ways: there is no premises overhead priced into your build, and you get a fixed monthly figure instead of a project quote you have to email for. If a local-presence requirement is non-negotiable for your business, that is worth raising on the call so we can tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.

This suits small and mid-size Saudi businesses — clinics, restaurants, service companies, retailers, fashion and abaya brands, travel operators. It does not suit enterprise procurement or government tenders with local-presence requirements. If that is your situation, a locally registered agency is the right call, and we will say so on the phone rather than waste your half hour.

Two ways to start: book a free half-hour call, or run a free website audit at seo.zerak.io first and see what it says.

What does a website cost for a Riyadh or Jeddah business?

Here are the actual numbers. All prices are in USD only — we do not quote in SAR, so budget for the exchange rate.

Prices confirmed September 2026. Full breakdown at zerak.io/compare/pricing.

The website plan includes: design, copywriting and page structure built for your business (not a template you fill in), a dashboard so you can edit the site yourself, hosting, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring, small monthly changes on request, and search and social setup.

Ownership, spelled out. 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 registered in your name from day one — not ours, not a reseller's. This is the part most monthly-website offers are vague about, so we put it in writing before you sign.

On what other Saudi agencies charge: prices in the Saudi market vary widely and we will not invent a range for anyone else. What actually drives the cost is page count, whether the content is written twice (Arabic and English) or translated once, how much custom functionality sits behind the pages — bookings, stock, patient forms, quoting — and whether you are buying an asset you own or renting a platform you leave behind. Ask any agency you speak to which of those four you are paying for. The answers separate them fast.

Do I need an Arabic version of my website in Saudi Arabia?

Yes — and in Riyadh more than almost anywhere else in the Gulf, because Arabic is closer to the baseline expectation there. In the State of Gulf Business Websites 2026 study, 51% of working business websites across six Gulf cities had no Arabic version at all. Riyadh was the best-performing city in the sample at 26% missing; Dubai was the worst at 70%. So an English-only site in Riyadh is more conspicuous, not less — your competitors have already done the Arabic.

An Arabic version is not a translate plugin dropped into the footer. It means a genuine right-to-left (RTL) layout where the navigation, forms and icons mirror properly, Arabic typography that is set rather than defaulted, copy written in Arabic by a person rather than machine-translated from the English, and `hreflang` tags so Google serves the Arabic page to Arabic searchers and the English page to everyone else. Get the hreflang wrong and Google treats the two versions as duplicates.

Zerak does SEO in Arabic and English. Arabic search competition in most local service niches is thinner than English — fewer businesses are publishing properly optimised Arabic pages, which is an opening if your customers search in Arabic. Our own Arabic site is at zerak.io/ar/contact if you would rather send a colleague there.

What standard are Saudi business websites actually at?

Lower than most owners assume, and you can check your own site against it in about two minutes. The figures below come from the State of Gulf Business Websites 2026 study, published by Zerak in September 2026: 2,399 businesses pulled from Google Maps across ten everyday sectors — restaurants, dental clinics, real estate agencies, car rental, beauty salons, furniture stores, law firms, travel agencies, interior design companies and abaya shops — in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha and Kuwait City. Every listed website was checked: 1,232 unique sites.

• 38% show no website at all on their Google Maps listing.
• 1 in 9 listed website links is broken — about half are domains that no longer exist.
• 58% have no WhatsApp link on the homepage.
• 46% have no tap-to-call number.
• 62% have no schema.org business markup.
• 31% have no meta description.
• 16% still show a copyright year of 2024 or older.
• WordPress runs 42% of the sites checked.

On mobile speed, measured with Google PageSpeed Insights on a random sample of 384 working sites: the median performance score was 60/100, 22% scored under 50 and only 8% reached 90+. Median Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — the time to show the main content — was 6.1 seconds. 68% took over four seconds. Only 13% came in under Google's 2.5-second "good" threshold.

These are Gulf-wide figures. City and sector breakdowns for Riyadh and Jeddah specifically are available on request — email hello@zerak.io and we will send them.

Can a web design company build my site if it has no office in Riyadh?

Yes, provided the process gives you control at every stage instead of asking you to trust a meeting room. Here is exactly how a Zerak build runs:

1. A free half-hour call. What you need, what you already have, whether we are the right fit.
2. A written fixed scope. What gets built, what it costs, when it lands. Nothing starts until you agree it.
3. A live preview link from the first week. You watch it being built. You are not waiting on a reveal.
4. Domain and data in your name from day one, plus training on the dashboard so you can edit the site yourself.

Day to day it runs on WhatsApp and email (hello@zerak.io). Saudi Arabia is GMT+3 and Zerak works the same week — no overnight lag waiting for a reply from another hemisphere.

Will rebuilding my website lose my Google rankings?

Not if the old URLs are redirected to the new ones, which is the single step most rebuilds skip. If you already have a site in Saudi Arabia, there are two routes:

We take it over and look after it. Hosting, domain and all access moved into your name, then maintained — updates, backups, security patches, monitoring. Useful if the site works but nobody is minding it.

We rebuild it and keep the rankings. Existing content carried across, old links redirected to the new pages. We did exactly this for Best Egypt Holidays — though in that particular case, the site had been rebuilt from scratch on a new domain after the old one was hacked, so the old domain and its rankings could not be carried over. Where an existing site is healthy, the redirect route is what keeps the rankings intact.

For shops, we import products from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salla or Zid and redirect the old product links to the new pages, so the catalogue pages you already rank for keep working. If you are on Salla or Zid and considering a move, that redirect map is the part to ask every agency about.

Online shops for Saudi merchants

An online shop is USD 32 a month all in, 12-month minimum, no setup fee, with your products and photos set up for you. Shop Plus is USD 59 a month.

Shop includes: 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. If you run more than one location in Riyadh or Jeddah, that branch stock handling is the reason to take Plus.

On payments, plainly: payment options are agreed per shop. Built in today are cash on delivery, and for Egypt, Paymob cards and wallets, Fawry and InstaPay. We are not going to claim Gulf gateways we have not confirmed — bring the provider you want to use to the scoping call and we will confirm in writing what we can support before you commit.

Demo shops are at zerak.io/shops, including Maison Mirath, a luxury abaya store built for the Gulf — worth a look if you are a Saudi fashion brand and want to see the couture layout before you commit.

Is SEO included, or is it charged separately?

Separately. Zerak does not bundle a vague "SEO included" line into the website plan, because it lets an agency claim the work without defining it. SEO is sold on its own at seo.zerak.io, with published prices:

Zerak website clients get 20% off every SEO plan. Prices confirmed September 2026.

Every plan includes weekly AI search tracking: we check whether your business is named in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews for the questions your customers ask — and, when it is not, which competitor is named instead. Articles are written to be quoted by those assistants as well as ranked by Google.

Google Business Profile work sits inside SEO Growth and above. For a Riyadh clinic or restaurant, a strong local pack position is often worth more traffic than an organic listing, and the study found 38% of Gulf businesses have no website link on their Maps listing at all — that is a free fix most competitors have not made.

Work we have done

Golden Gulf — a tourism and car rental operator. Site built to take booking enquiries, with the fleet and tour products structured as browsable pages rather than a PDF price list.

Best Egypt Holidays — a tour operator whose old site was hacked and rebuilt from scratch on a new domain, since the old domain and its rankings could not be carried over.

Wieldy — Zerak's own agency management software (wieldyapp.com). We build and run it ourselves, which is the honest answer to "can you actually build an application, not just a website".

Fit Oat is also in the portfolio. See more of the range at zerak.io/guides/services.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have an office in Riyadh?

No. Zerak works remotely with businesses in Riyadh, Jeddah and across Saudi Arabia, and has no Saudi office, address or commercial registration. Everything runs through a written fixed scope and a live preview link from the first week, so you can see the work as it happens rather than relying on a site visit.

Do I own my website if I pay monthly instead of upfront?

Yes. The site is yours outright after two years on the USD 34.95 monthly plan, or you can take it after the first year for a one-off USD 150. Your domain and your data are registered in your name from day one, so nothing is held hostage while you decide.

How long does it take to build a website for a Saudi business?

It depends on the scope, and we will not quote you a number of weeks before we know what we are building. What is fixed is the sequence: a free half-hour call, then a written scope stating what gets built, what it costs and when it lands, then a live preview link from the first week so you can watch progress rather than wait for it.

Can you move my store from Salla or Zid without losing my product links?

Yes. Zerak imports products from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salla or Zid and redirects the old product URLs to the matching new pages, so existing links and rankings carry over instead of hitting a 404.

Can you write the Arabic, or do I supply it?

Zerak writes Arabic copy — it is not machine-translated from the English — and builds the Arabic version as a proper right-to-left layout with hreflang tags. If your team already has Arabic content it wants to keep, we use it. This matters in Saudi: the State of Gulf Business Websites 2026 study found 26% of working Riyadh business sites still have no Arabic version.

Do you invoice in SAR, and is there VAT on the monthly plan?

Prices are quoted in USD only. Invoicing currency and VAT treatment depend on your business registration and are confirmed with you directly before you sign — get in touch and we will go through it for your specific case.

Start with a free half-hour call

Half an hour, free, no obligation. After it you get a written fixed scope — what gets built, what it costs, when it lands — and nothing starts until you agree it.

Three ways to reach us: WhatsApp, the form at zerak.io/contact, or email hello@zerak.io. If you would rather not talk to anyone yet, run the free website audit at seo.zerak.io and see how your current site scores against the standards in the research above.

Prefer Arabic? Send your colleague to zerak.io/ar/contact.