You have asked two or three web designers in Dubai to quote for the same site, and the numbers are so far apart they barely look like the same job. Nobody has told you what the site will cost you every year after it goes live, or whether VAT is on top.
This guide puts the published 2026 Dubai price ranges side by side, each with its date and source, then adds what most of those guides leave out: the domain, hosting, maintenance, VAT and payment fees you keep paying.
Every figure links to the page it came from. Every page was checked on 24 October 2026, and the Shopify payment details again on 28 October. The guides are written for Dubai, but the running costs (domain, hosting, VAT and card fees) work the same way in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
What do Dubai agencies say a website costs in 2026?
No two agency price guides in Dubai use the same bands: across them, a small business website runs from AED 6,000 to AED 30,000 and a basic site from AED 1,500 to AED 15,000. Every guide below is written by an agency that sells websites, so read each range as one seller's view of the market, not a survey.
All figures are in AED, exactly as each page published them. None of the pages says whether VAT is included.
| Guide (date) | Basic or landing site | Small business site | Corporate or larger site | E-commerce site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Element8, design cost guide (25 March 2026) | 1,500-6,000 (basic business site) | 4,000-10,000 (CMS or business site) | 6,000-25,000+ (corporate or custom) | 10,000-50,000+ |
| Element8, development cost guide (10 April 2026) | 3,500-8,000 | 12,000-55,000 (corporate or SME) | 12,000-55,000 (corporate or SME) | 15,000-110,000+ |
| Cubix (15 April 2026) | 3,000-15,000 (table) | 10,000-30,000 (FAQ) | 15,000-40,000 (moderate); 40,000-120,000 (complex) | 30,000-120,000+ (FAQ) |
| Digital Gravity (17 June 2026) | 3,500-8,000 (landing page) | 6,000-15,000 | 15,000-40,000 | 20,000-90,000+ |
| Dubai Monsters (18 August 2026) | 2,000-4,500 (landing); 3,500-8,000 (brochure) | 8,000-18,000 | 15,000-55,000 | 15,000-110,000+ |
| Red Berries (undated) | 3,000-7,000 | 8,000-15,000 | 15,000-45,000 | 20,000-80,000+ |
| Tenet (22 April 2025) | 3,500-18,000 | 7,000-55,000 | 18,000-145,000 (custom) | 8,000-110,000 |
Where the guides disagree with themselves
Several guides contradict their own figures or carry a date that does not match their title. Worth knowing before you quote any of them back to a supplier:
- Cubix puts a basic website at AED 3,000 to 15,000 in its table, but its FAQ says a small business site usually costs AED 10,000 to 30,000. Its phase table describes a bigger job again: the lowest figures for its five build phases add up to AED 27,000.
- Element8 published two Dubai guides about two weeks apart. The 25 March page puts a basic business site at AED 1,500 to 6,000 and calls its figures "planning estimates, not fixed rates". The 10 April page puts the same tier at AED 3,500 to 8,000.
- Tenet's guide has a 2026 title but is dated 22 April 2025, so treat it as a 2025 page. One row prints the top of its basic range as AED 18,000,000 next to a dollar figure of USD 5,000, and the same tier reads AED 18,000 elsewhere on the page, so it is a simple typing slip.
- Red Berries titles its page as a 2026 guide but shows no publication date.
What the guides agree on
Three of the guides (Digital Gravity, Dubai Monsters and Red Berries) place a small business website between AED 6,000 and AED 18,000. Cubix's FAQ is higher, at AED 10,000 to 30,000.
Element8's two guides fall either side: AED 4,000 to 10,000 for a CMS business site in March, and AED 12,000 to 55,000 for a combined corporate or SME tier in April. In the 2026 guides, e-commerce starts at AED 10,000 to 30,000 depending on the guide, and the top of the range runs from AED 50,000 to 120,000 or more.
Digital Gravity also gives budgets by type of business, which is useful if you run a clinic, cafe or agency:
| Business type | Digital Gravity's recommended budget (AED) |
|---|---|
| Startup or SME | 6,000-15,000 |
| Restaurant or cafe | 8,000-20,000 |
| Medical clinic | 15,000-35,000 |
| Real estate agency | 20,000-60,000 |
| E-commerce store | 20,000-90,000+ |
What will you keep paying every year after launch?
Every year you pay for the domain and hosting, plus a monthly care plan if someone else looks after the site. Online shops add platform and card fees, and VAT-registered suppliers add 5% to all of it. At the published prices below, a care plan costs more per year than the domain and hosting put together.
Prices were checked on 24 October 2026. USD amounts are converted at the dirham's fixed peg of AED 3.6725 to USD 1, which Gulf News reports has held since November 1997.
| Running cost | Published price | Roughly per year |
|---|---|---|
| .ae domain | First year from USD 30.00 to USD 567.15 across 52 registrars, average USD 81.27; cheapest renewal USD 32.68 (DomainOffer) | About AED 120 (cheapest renewal) to AED 298 (average first year) |
| Hosting | AEserver shared hosting from AED 19 to AED 79 a month on 36-month billing, excluding VAT (AEserver); Tenet's 2025 guide says AED 40 to 500 a month (Tenet) | AED 228 to 948 at AEserver's prices |
| Care plan | AED 600 to 1,800 a month before VAT at Codingclave, which also lists Si3 Digital from AED 350 a month | AED 4,200 to 21,600 |
| Online shop platform | Shopify Basic USD 24 a month billed yearly, or USD 32 billed monthly (Shopify) | About AED 1,058 to 1,410 |
| Card payments | 2.9% + AED 1.00 per domestic card payment at Stripe; Telr's UAE plans run from AED 0 to 249 a month plus up to 2.45% + AED 1 (Telr) | Depends on your sales |
| VAT | 5%, charged by suppliers that are VAT registered (u.ae) | 5% on top of each line |
SSL certificates are left out of this table because many hosts include them. AEserver, for example, lists free SSL for every site on all of its shared plans.
Your domain: .ae or co.ae
Anyone can register a plain .ae name with no documents, while a co.ae name needs a UAE trade licence (free zone licences count) or a UAE trademark application or registration, according to the accredited registrar AEserver. Prices differ between registrars, and TDRA's .ae FAQ says registrars must explain the cost to you.
Look at the renewal price, not only the first year. On DomainOffer's .ae table, IONOS has the lowest first-year .ae price (USD 30.00) but renews at USD 60.00, while AEserver charges USD 34.00 and renews at USD 39.50 (about AED 145).
Note: Make sure the domain is registered to you or your company, not to the agency. TDRA says your registrar can change your domain's details only with your approval, and you can move it to another accredited registrar at any time during the registration using the authorisation code.
Hosting
Shared hosting can cost tens of dirhams a month. At AEserver, a UAE host, the Dubai-hosted shared plans run from AED 19 to AED 79 a month, but the advertised monthly price assumes 36-month billing and excludes VAT, and the page gives no 12-month or renewal price, so ask for both.
Some agencies fold hosting into a package (Red Berries, for example, lists hosting management under what you pay for in a professional package), so check you are not paying for it twice.
Maintenance and care plans
At the prices published here, maintenance is the biggest running cost, and the figures vary widely. Element8's July 2026 maintenance guide puts basic care in the "low hundreds" of AED a month, business sites from the high hundreds to about AED 2,000, professional or e-commerce sites at about AED 2,000 to 6,000, and enterprise or SLA contracts at a custom price, typically AED 6,000 and up.
It calls these "directional framing for budgeting conversations, not quotes", and says redesigns, new features and SEO campaigns are project work, not maintenance, so get that boundary in writing.
Codingclave, an India-based agency that sells care plans in the UAE, prices its own plans at AED 600 to 1,800 a month before VAT and notes that no agency page it checked says whether its figure includes VAT. Tenet's 2025 page is the outlier, at AED 2,000 to 40,000 a month.
What does a business website cost over three years?
Using the published figures above, a small business website works out at roughly AED 20,700 to AED 103,000 over three years including 5% VAT, and at both ends the running costs are bigger than the build. Skip the care plan and update the site yourself, and the low end drops to about AED 7,500.
This worksheet uses the low and high ends of the figures cited in this article. It is arithmetic on published prices, not a quote.
| Line, over three years | Low end of published figures | High end of published figures |
|---|---|---|
| Build, one-off | AED 6,000 (Digital Gravity's small business low) | AED 30,000 (Cubix's small business high) |
| .ae domain, 3 years at about AED 145 (AEserver renewal) | AED 435 | AED 435 |
| Hosting, 36 months | AED 684 (AED 19 a month) | AED 2,844 (AED 79 a month) |
| Care plan, 36 months | AED 12,600 (AED 350 a month) | AED 64,800 (AED 1,800 a month) |
| Subtotal before VAT | AED 19,719 | AED 98,079 |
| 5% VAT, if every supplier is VAT registered | AED 986 | AED 4,904 |
| Three-year total | AED 20,705 | AED 102,983 |
| Of which build, including VAT | AED 6,300 | AED 31,500 |
| Of which running costs, including VAT | AED 14,405 | AED 71,483 |
The worksheet leaves out content writing, translation, photography, paid themes or plugins, booking software, card fees, WhatsApp messaging and advertising. If any of those apply to you, add them as their own lines.
How to fill it in with your own quotes
- Enter the build price, plus any separate design, content or translation fees.
- Add three years of domain and hosting at renewal prices, not the introductory offer.
- Add 36 months of care plan, or a value for your own time.
- Add every subscription the site depends on: platform, theme, plugins, booking or forms.
- Add 5% VAT to each line from a VAT-registered supplier, and card fees if you sell online (example below).
Why do quotes for the same website differ so much?
Quotes differ because suppliers are pricing different jobs under the same name. The number of pages and languages, who writes the content, template or bespoke design, which features are included and how much support follows launch all move the price. The published guides alone show a ten-fold spread for a basic site: AED 1,500 at the bottom of Element8's March range against AED 15,000 at the top of Cubix's.
Cubix's phase table shows where the money goes on a larger project:
| Phase (Cubix) | AED |
|---|---|
| Discovery and planning | 2,000-10,000 |
| Design (UI and UX) | 5,000-25,000 |
| Development (front end and back end) | 15,000-120,000 |
| Testing and QA | 3,000-15,000 |
| Deployment and launch | 2,000-8,000 |
| Post-launch support | 3,000-20,000 |
The main things that move a quote:
- Platform. Cubix's FAQ puts a WordPress site at AED 5,000 to 20,000, and Dubai Monsters cites one UAE price of about AED 2,700 to 6,400 for a basic first-year WordPress setup (domain, hosting, theme, plugins and setup). Cubix puts complex sites at AED 40,000 to 120,000.
- Design. A theme adapted to your brand usually costs less than a design drawn from scratch.
- Languages. Element8 and Red Berries both name Arabic or bilingual support as something that raises the price, and Element8's April guide includes English and Arabic support in its AED 12,000 to 55,000 corporate or SME tier.
- Features. Booking, payments, multi-branch pages, CRM or WhatsApp connections each add work.
- What is bundled. One quote may include a year of hosting and support while another prices the build alone.
What should a website quote include before you compare?
A quote you can compare lists every page and feature, the languages, who supplies the content, the platform, the yearly renewals, what support is included after launch, and whether 5% VAT is included. Element8's March guide lists hosting, the domain and SSL among the costs businesses often miss, so ask for each in writing.
- Scope: the page list, the languages (Arabic, English or both) and every feature.
- Content: who writes, translates and photographs, and whether that is priced.
- Platform and licences: WordPress, Shopify or custom code, and who pays for paid themes and plugins each year.
- Domain: registered in your name, at which registrar, and the renewal price.
- Hosting: the provider, the plan and the price after the first term.
- After launch: how long support is included, the care plan price after that, the hours it covers and the hourly rate for anything outside it.
- VAT: whether each price includes 5% VAT and whether the supplier is VAT registered.
- Handover: admin logins, the hosting account, design files, and what you receive if you move supplier.
- Payment stages: how much is due at signing, at design approval and at launch.
How much do Arabic, online payments and booking add?
Arabic adds roughly 15 to 30% to a build by one agency's 2026 estimate, while the Dubai guides that mention Arabic say it raises the price but do not price it separately. Domestic card payments cost about 2.25% to 2.9% plus up to AED 1 per payment at published rates, apart from Telr's flat-fee starter plan. Booking and WhatsApp features can bring subscriptions or message charges of their own.
Arabic and English
The only percentage published comes from Kolonell, a web agency based in Dakar, Senegal, whose September 2026 guide to bilingual builds in Dubai estimates a right-to-left technical premium of 15 to 30% over an English-only site. It also estimates 4 to 7 weeks of build time against 3 to 4 weeks for English only, and USD 1,000 to 3,300 for professional translation (about AED 3,673 to 12,119). Treat these as one overseas vendor's estimates, not a Dubai market study.
If you sell online, Arabic is not optional. Under Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023, in force from 14 October 2023, information on websites displayed by e-commerce providers, and all invoices, must be in Arabic as a minimum, with other languages allowed alongside, according to Pinsent Masons.
Note: The Pinsent Masons summary dates from October 2023. Check the current rules with your adviser before you launch an English-only online shop.
Does your website need Arabic? covers the rule for online sellers and the choice for everyone else.
Online payments
Card fees are a running cost that grows with your sales. Here is the published pricing applied to one example month of AED 10,000 in domestic card sales, made up of 100 payments of AED 100:
| Option | Published pricing | Fees for the example month |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 2.9% + AED 1.00 per domestic card; plus 1% for international cards and 1% for currency conversion; no setup or monthly fees | AED 390 |
| Telr Entry plan (AED 10,000 to 24,999 a month) | AED 199 a month plus 2.45% + AED 1; plus 0.50% for international cards; fees subject to 5% VAT | AED 544, or AED 571.20 with VAT |
| Shopify Basic with another payment provider | USD 24 a month billed yearly (about AED 88) plus Shopify's 2% fee for using a provider other than Shopify Payments, plus that provider's own fees | About AED 288 plus the provider's fees |
Telr says a valid trade licence is mandatory, and its Startup plan for sales under AED 10,000 a month charges a flat AED 249 a month with no percentage fee. Shopify's pricing page lists Shopify Payments rates on every plan, but its changelog of 26 August 2026 says UAE merchants on the Advanced plan can now use Shopify Payments, which "was previously available only to merchants on the Plus plan". So a Basic store should budget for another provider and Shopify's 2% fee unless Shopify Payments shows in its own admin. For more gateways side by side, including Network International and Tabby, see UAE payment gateway fees compared.
Booking and WhatsApp
No guide prices a simple booking feature on its own, but several show that it moves the price. Tenet's 2025 page puts custom features such as booking tools, payment gateways and CRM links at AED 2,000 to 40,000 or more, and Element8's March guide puts full booking systems in its AED 25,000 to 100,000+ portal tier.
Digital Gravity lists appointment systems among what a clinic site often needs and suggests AED 15,000 to 35,000 for a medical clinic, and Dubai Monsters notes that a six-page site with a booking engine can cost more than a 30-page informational one. Ask whether booking is built into the site or runs on a third-party service with its own monthly fee.
If the site hands enquiries to WhatsApp, the WhatsApp Business Platform has running costs of its own. See WhatsApp running costs and what a WhatsApp AI assistant costs in the UAE.
How do you compare two quotes fairly?
Put both quotes on the same three-year sheet, line by line, add VAT the same way to both, and compare totals rather than build prices. Where a quote leaves a line blank, ask the supplier to fill it in writing before you decide.
| Line | Quote A | Quote B |
|---|---|---|
| Build, one-off | ||
| Content, translation and photos | ||
| Domain, 3 years at renewal price | ||
| Hosting, 36 months after any offer | ||
| Care plan, 36 months | ||
| Theme, plugin, platform and booking subscriptions | ||
| 5% VAT | ||
| Three-year total | ||
| Domain and hosting in your name? | Yes or no | Yes or no |
| Logins and files handed over? | Yes or no | Yes or no |
Then check three things the totals do not show:
- Same scope. If one quote has fewer pages, one language or no booking, ask for a price for the missing items.
- Same ownership. A cheaper quote that keeps the domain or hosting in the agency's name can cost you time and money if you ever leave. What to ask before hiring a web designer lists the accounts and files to get in your name.
- Same goal. A site exists to bring enquiries. If you plan to run ads to it, budget for that too (ad budgets in Dubai), and ask how the site will be found in search and AI answers (getting recommended by ChatGPT). If your current site gets visitors but few enquiries, run the enquiry self-audit for UAE websites before paying for a rebuild.
Can someone build your website and quote it line by line?
Yes. Hoorax is a web studio in Al Barsha 1, Dubai, that builds websites for UAE businesses, so it sells what this guide prices: weigh its figures like any other quote. Hoorax publishes its prices on the services page, and the website cost calculator prices a build you can copy onto the three-year sheet above. We write the copy, you approve the design before we build, and the domain and accounts are in your name from day one. Whoever you choose, including us, ask for the quote in this shape. For a written quote, message us on WhatsApp with your business and the pages you need.