PRICING · DUBAI · UAE
There is no single price for a website in Dubai, and any figure quoted before someone has read your requirement is a guess wearing the clothes of an answer. What can be known in advance is what moves the number, in which direction, and by roughly how much — and that is what this page is.
I'm Emad Yahya, a web developer and IT systems engineer in Dubai. Every project is quoted in writing after I have read the requirement, and the quote is fixed. This page exists so you can work out where your project sits before you ask anyone for a number — including me.
Because “a website” covers a range as wide as “a vehicle”. A one-page site with a form and a booking platform that takes payments against live availability are both websites, and they are not the same kind of object at all. Anyone who answers the question with a figure before asking what the thing has to do is quoting a different project from yours and hoping it lands close.
The useful question is not “how much does a website cost in Dubai”. It is “what about my project makes it expensive, and can I drop any of it?” That question has a real answer, it is the same for every developer you talk to, and you can work most of it out before you make a single call.
Every quote you receive is built from these, whoever writes it. Read down the middle column to find where your own project sits.
| Factor | Costs less | Costs more | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distinct layouts | A handful of pages sharing one layout | Many pages, each designed and behaving differently | Design time scales with distinct screens, not with word count |
| Design origin | A layout that follows a familiar structure | Bespoke typography, motion and art direction per screen | A screen designed from nothing cannot be reused on the next one |
| Publishes, or does something | A site that presents information | Logins, bookings, payments, dashboards, a real database | The second one is software with a public face, not a website |
| Integrations | None, or a contact form | WhatsApp, CRM, inventory, payment gateways, portal feeds | Each connection is built and tested against a system you do not control |
| Arabic as well as English | One language | Full bilingual with RTL layout and Arabic typography | Done properly it is a decision at the start of the build, not a translation at the end |
| Who supplies the content | You provide the text and the photographs | They have to be written, shot or sourced | The quietest line on most quotes, and often the one that moves most |
Comparing prices is only meaningful once you know what each one is missing. These are the recurring costs that do not exist on my projects at all — not discounted, not bundled, absent.
| The cost | On my projects |
|---|---|
| Per-user or per-employee license fees | None. A system built for you does not charge by the seat |
| A monthly fee after launch | None. Optional maintenance exists; nothing is required and nothing locks you in |
| Commission on bookings or sales | None. The system is yours, so the transactions are yours |
| Paying to get your own code released | None. Source code, database and hosting accounts are registered in your name |
| Being charged for the quote itself | None. Send the requirement, get a fixed written quote within 24 hours |
Most software decisions here are not really about price. They are about the shape of the cost. A subscription is small every month and never stops; a build is larger once and then stops. Where those two lines cross is arithmetic you can do without asking anybody.
Take the per-user monthly fee. Multiply it by the number of seats you will actually need in three years — not the number you need today. Multiply that by 36. Then add the plan upgrades you will be pushed into as you grow, because the features growing teams need usually sit in the higher tiers. That total is what renting costs you over the same period a build is paid for once.
Be honest in the other direction too, or the exercise is worthless. A build is a real up-front cost and it still needs hosting and occasional maintenance afterwards — it is not free after launch. For a team of three running a standard workflow, the subscription usually still wins that comparison, and I will tell you so.
| Subscription | A system you own | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | Per user, per month, indefinitely | Once for the build, plus hosting |
| The 36-month figure | monthly fee × seats × 36, plus tier upgrades | build + 36 months of hosting and upkeep |
| What growth does to it | Every new hire raises it | Nothing — there is no per-seat fee |
| What you hold at the end | Nothing | Source code, database and hosting accounts in your name |
Scope drives the calendar and the number together, so the ranges below are a fair proxy for relative size: if two projects sit in different rows, they sit in different price brackets. These are real ranges from work delivered in Dubai, not best cases.
| What you are building | Typical delivery |
|---|---|
| Landing page — one goal, one page | 1–2 weeks |
| Brand or company website | 2–4 weeks |
| Focused internal tool — one team, one workflow | 2–4 weeks |
| CRM, lead-and-pipeline core | 3–5 weeks |
| Full platform — CRM, HR, POS or booking | 4–8 weeks, depending on features |
| CRM with commissions, approvals and reporting | 6–10 weeks |
A vague brief produces a padded quote, because the person writing it has to price the worst reading of what you said. Six lines remove almost all of that padding.
Send that and you get a fixed written quote within 24 hours. It is one figure with the scope written next to it, so both of us can see later what was agreed. The quote changes only if you change what is being built — not because the work turned out harder than I estimated.
There is no charge for the quote, no charge for the conversation before it, and no obligation after it. If what you actually need is a subscription tool rather than a build, you will hear that instead — it costs me a project and saves you a year.
There is no honest single figure, because the word covers everything from a one-page site with a contact form to a booking platform that takes payments against live availability. What decides your number is on this page: how many genuinely different screens there are, whether the design is bespoke, whether the site merely publishes or actually does something, what it has to connect to, whether it is bilingual, and who supplies the content. Send me those six answers and you get a fixed written quote within 24 hours — one figure, not a range.
Because a published price is only meaningful next to a fixed scope, and no two of these projects have the same scope. A number on a page would be either so wide it tells you nothing, or so narrow it is wrong for most people who read it — and then the conversation starts with me explaining why the real figure is different, which serves nobody. What I publish instead is everything that determines the number, so you can place your own project before you speak to anyone, and the costs I never charge, so you can compare quotes on equal terms.
Fixed, per project, agreed in writing before anything starts. Hourly billing puts us on opposite sides: it rewards the slow version of the work and makes your budget depend on my speed. A fixed quote against a written scope means the estimate is my risk, not yours — if it takes longer than I thought, that is my problem.
On the same scope, usually yes, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of skill: an agency quote carries account managers, project managers, an office and a sales function, and those sit somewhere in the number. What you give up is capacity and cover — an agency has more hands and someone else to call if one person is unavailable. For a project that fits inside one person’s hands, the overhead is the difference; for one that does not, the capacity is worth paying for.
One thing only: the scope changing. New pages, new features, a language that was not in the original brief, an integration nobody mentioned. That gets quoted separately and you approve it before it is built. What never changes the price is the work turning out harder than I estimated — that is the risk I take on when I give you a fixed number instead of an hourly rate.
Up front, usually yes — a well-chosen theme configured properly is normally the fastest route to a working, editable site, and I say that as someone who builds custom for a living. Where the comparison shifts is afterwards: plugins accumulate from a dozen different authors on a dozen release schedules, and the maintenance cost is paid in attention rather than in dirhams. My WordPress-versus-custom guide walks through which side of that line a given project falls on.
Narrow the scope rather than lowering the quality. Three things reliably reduce the number without producing something you will be embarrassed by: launch in one language and add the second when it is earning, supply your own text and photographs, and cut the pages nobody will read — most sites are quoted with several that exist only because the sitemap looked thin. What does not work is asking for the same project at a lower price; that money comes out of the build somewhere you cannot see.
Not to me. There is no per-user fee, no monthly platform fee and no commission on what the site earns. You pay for hosting and your domain, which are registered in your name and which you would pay for whoever built the site. Ongoing maintenance is available if you want updates, backups and monitoring handled, but it is optional and there is no lock-in.
Emad Yahya — portfolio · emaadyahya4@gmail.com · WhatsApp +971 566 392 647