Every week a business owner in Dubai messages me the same question: “How much for a website?”

Honest answer: anywhere from AED 1,500 to AED 200,000+. That’s a 130× range, and it’s not because developers are pulling numbers from the air. It’s because “a website” is one word that covers a landing page you launch in a weekend and a booking platform that takes six months.

This guide breaks it down properly — what each tier gets you, why prices vary so much, how long each type takes, and how to tell a fair quote from a bad one.

What each tier actually gets you

1. Landing page — AED 1,500 – 6,000 (USD 400 – 1,600)

One long-scroll page. Hero, offer, proof, form. Perfect for a Google/Facebook ad campaign, a coming-soon page, or a single-service business (dental clinic, personal trainer, consultant). Two-week turnaround.

2. Business website — AED 8,000 – 25,000 (USD 2,200 – 6,800)

Home + About + Services + Contact + a handful of internal pages. Fully editable via WordPress. Includes proper SEO setup, GA4, contact form, WhatsApp button. This is what 80% of Dubai SMEs need.

3. E-commerce store — AED 15,000 – 60,000 (USD 4,100 – 16,300)

Shopify or WooCommerce, wired for AED + USD, Telr/PayTabs/Stripe, VAT-ready invoicing, product feeds, abandoned-cart automation. Price scales with number of products, integrations, and how custom the design is.

4. Booking system / portal — AED 40,000 – 150,000 (USD 10,900 – 40,800)

Custom web app with logins, dashboards, calendar/booking flows, payment integration, notifications. Built in Next.js or Laravel. This is where you leave the WordPress-plugin world and start engineering.

5. Enterprise / multi-tenant SaaS — AED 80,000 – 200,000+ (USD 21,800 – 54,400+)

Multi-account, admin panel, roles & permissions, billing engine, API, mobile-friendly, hardened security. 3–6 month build. Ongoing dev retainer after launch.

Care & hosting — AED 400 – 2,000/month

Updates, backups, uptime monitoring, security patches, small content edits. This is where every serious site should live post-launch. Skip it and expect a $3,000 emergency call in 18 months.

The 6 things that swing your price

Two clients ask for “a website for my clinic”. One pays AED 12k, the other pays AED 42k. Same market, same developer. Here’s why:

What “cheap” actually costs you

You’ve probably seen ads for AED 500 websites. They exist. Here’s the honest breakdown of what you get:

• A pre-made template dropped onto a shared-host domain with no customisation
• No SEO setup, no schema, no analytics — Google won’t find it
• No responsive testing — half the layout breaks on iPhone
• No security hardening — hacked within 90 days on average
• No handover documentation — you can’t edit anything yourself
• Developer disappears after payment

The AED 500 project usually becomes an AED 8k rebuild inside a year. If your budget is genuinely under AED 3k right now, my honest advice is:

Skip the custom website entirely. Get a decent one-page Carrd or Framer site for USD 20/month, and put the AED 500 into a Google Ads campaign. Come back to a real build when the ads are producing revenue.

Ongoing costs nobody tells you about

The launch price is only half the story. Every year you’ll also pay for:

• Hosting — AED 200 – 1,200/year for shared, AED 2,000 – 6,000/year for a managed VPS.
• Domain — AED 50 – 200/year, longer for a .ae domain.
• SSL certificate — usually free via Let’s Encrypt (make sure it’s set up).
• Premium plugins / themes — AED 500 – 2,500/year total (page builder, SEO plugin, form plugin).
• Care plan — AED 400 – 2,000/month for updates, backups, monitoring.
• Content updates & small edits — either DIY, or budgeted retainer time.

Rule of thumb: expect ongoing costs of 15–25% of your build cost per year. A AED 25k build = AED 4k – 6k / year to keep running healthy.

So what should you actually budget?

If you’re a UAE small-to-medium business asking me today, this is the honest recommendation:

• New business, testing the market: AED 3k – 8k landing page. Launch fast, learn, upgrade in 6 months.
• Established business with a real service: AED 15k – 30k full business site. Bilingual optional but worth it in the UAE market.
• Retail selling products online: AED 25k – 60k Shopify with proper AED payment gateway and Arabic support.
• You have a booking/scheduling workflow: AED 45k – 90k custom app. Save on plugins for the next 3 years.

Add 20% for content help if you don’t have it ready. Add 15–25% of build cost per year for ongoing care. Set aside a small reserve for the “wait, can we add this?” moment that every project has.

The right question isn’t “how cheap can I get a website” — it’s “how quickly can this website pay itself back”. That number is almost never the cheapest option.