Somewhere between 1,500 and 250,000 dirhams. Which is a useless answer, so let's do better.
The reason nobody publishes prices is that the honest answer depends on things the buyer hasn't decided yet. But "it depends" is where most agency conversations start and stall, so here is what it actually depends on, what real ranges look like, and how to tell whether a quote is reasonable before you pay a deposit.
Why the same brief gets quotes 10× apart
You send the same email to five companies and get back 4,000, 12,000, 35,000 and two that ask for a meeting. Nothing is wrong. They're quoting different things.
A template build is an existing theme with your logo, colours and content dropped in. Fast, cheap, and fine for a business that needs to exist online and nothing more.
A custom build is design and development shaped around your content, your audience and what you want the site to do. Slower and more expensive, and worth it only when the site has a commercial job.
A web application looks like a website and behaves like software — portals, bookings, calculators, logins, dashboards. Priced closer to software, because that's what it is.
Most disagreements about price are actually disagreements about which of these three the client is buying.
What actually drives the number
Page count matters less than you'd think. Twelve pages built from three templates cost barely more than six. Twelve genuinely different layouts cost considerably more. Ask how many unique designs are in the quote, not how many pages.
Content is the hidden cost. If you supply copy and images, you pay for design and build. If the agency writes and sources them, add meaningfully to both the price and the timeline. This is also the single most common reason projects run late — not development.
Languages multiply work. A bilingual site isn't twice the price, but Arabic is more than a translation: right-to-left layouts, typography that behaves differently, and every page reviewed twice.
Integrations are where quotes diverge. Contact form to email is trivial. Bookings syncing to a calendar, a CRM receiving leads with their source attached, a store talking to your stock system — each of those is real work, and each is where a cheap quote quietly excluded something.
The CMS decision. A site your team can update costs more than one they can't. It nearly always pays for itself the first time you'd otherwise email someone to change a price.
Ongoing costs exist. Hosting, domain, SSL, maintenance, updates. Anyone quoting a build with no mention of what happens afterwards has left something out.
Realistic ranges in this market
Indicative, for a UAE business buying from an established local supplier:
- AED 7,000 – 15,000 — a credible first presence. Up to six pages, custom design on a solid foundation, mobile-responsive, CMS, analytics configured. Right for a new business or one that needs to look real and be findable.
- AED 15,000 – 40,000 — a site with a commercial job. Eight to fifteen pages, custom design throughout, bilingual if needed, blog or news, forms and integrations, proper SEO foundations. Right for a business where the site produces enquiries.
- AED 40,000+ — a web application. Portals, logins, complex integrations, bespoke functionality. Priced as software and specified like it.
- AED 800 – 3,000 per month — care plans. Hosting management, updates, backups, monitoring, small changes.
Below roughly 5,000 dirhams you're buying a template build with content you supply. That's a legitimate purchase — just know that's what it is, and that you'll likely rebuild within two years.
Buying in India instead? The bands are different: see what a business website actually costs in India.
What the cheap option really costs
The 3,000-dirham website is rarely a scam. It's a template, some stock photography and content copied from a competitor with the names changed. Where it costs you is later.
You can't update it, because nobody set up a CMS or trained you. It's slow, because it loads a theme built to do everything for everyone. It says nothing specific, so a buyer comparing you against two competitors has only price to go on. And when you eventually want to fix it, most of it has to be rebuilt — so you pay twice.
For some businesses that trade-off is correct. If you need a presence while the real business gets going, buy the cheap one deliberately and plan to replace it. The mistake is buying it expecting it to do a job it was never priced to do.
The questions to ask before paying a deposit
These separate a real quote from a number:
- How many unique page designs, not pages?
- Who writes the content, and who sources images?
- Can my team update it without you? Do you train us?
- What happens after launch — and what does month two cost?
- Who owns the files, the domain and the hosting account? The correct answer is you.
- What's explicitly not included?
- What's the timeline, and what's on me to hit it?
A supplier who answers all seven in writing before you pay is telling you something useful about how the project will run.
Where the money is actually well spent
Not on animations. On the two things most buyers underweight.
The thinking before design. Deciding what the site must say, to whom, and what should happen next. A beautiful site that describes a category instead of a company sends every visitor to compare on price. For Bin Abed, a Dubai land-freight operator, that meant stating fleet size, routes and years operating as facts, and structuring every page toward one action: a qualified enquiry.
The part that connects it to your business. Enquiries arriving in your CRM instead of an unwatched inbox. Bookings reaching your calendar. Orders knowing your stock. A website that feeds the business is worth several times one that just sits there looking correct.
How we price it
We write a specification before we quote: what gets built, what stays manual, what it costs, how long it takes. You approve that before design starts. It means the number you're given is the number you pay, and every change after it is quoted as a variation rather than absorbed silently or sprung on you at the end. It is the same way we scope every website we build.
We publish ranges because vagueness serves the supplier, not you. And when a business needs a template site rather than what we build, we'll say so — that conversation costs nothing and saves a great deal.
The short version
- If you need to exist online: 7,000 to 15,000.
- If the site has a job to do: 15,000 to 40,000.
- If it's really software: priced as software, specified like software.
- If a quote seems impossibly cheap, ask question six.