Ecommerce website development Dubai — we build online stores on WooCommerce: product catalogues, checkout, local payment gateways and the mobile app if you need one. Stores from AED 3,500 plus AED 2,500 for payment integration.
Which platform should you use?
We build on WooCommerce, and it’s worth being clear about the trade-off rather than pretending there isn’t one.
- WooCommerce — you own the store outright, there’s no per-transaction platform fee on top of your payment gateway, and you can change anything. In exchange you’re responsible for hosting, updates and backups, which is what our maintenance plan covers from AED 299/month.
- Shopify — genuinely less to maintain, and a reasonable choice if you want to run everything yourself. But you rent the store, you pay monthly forever, and moving off it later means rebuilding.
If you’re selling a handful of products and want zero maintenance, Shopify is a fair answer and we’ll tell you so. If you want to own the asset, keep the margin and integrate it with the rest of your site, WooCommerce is the better long-term call.
What is the difference between ecommerce website design and development?
Design is what the store looks like and how a shopper moves through it — layout, product photography, category structure and the checkout flow. Development is what makes it function — the cart, the payment gateway, stock, shipping rules and tax.
The distinction matters commercially because they fail differently. A well-developed store with poor design gets traffic that does not convert: shoppers cannot find products, do not trust the brand, or abandon at a confusing checkout. A well-designed store with poor development converts until something breaks — a payment that silently fails, stock that oversells, shipping that miscalculates.
Most quotes in Dubai cover both under the word “ecommerce website design” without separating them. When comparing, ask specifically: who writes the product descriptions, who configures shipping zones and tax, and who tests the checkout end to end with a real card. Those three answers explain most of the price differences you will see.
Stores we’ve built
Creabites — a creatine monohydrate supplement brand. Product pages, cart and checkout for a single-SKU performance product, where the whole job is making one product feel credible enough to buy.
ChickenWay — a fried chicken restaurant in Beirut. An e-commerce ordering website plus a mobile app, which is e-commerce with a much harder constraint: the order has to be placed in under a minute and it has to be right.
What does WooCommerce website development involve?
WooCommerce is the e-commerce layer that runs on WordPress, and it is what we build stores on. Development covers installing and configuring it, building the product structure, connecting a payment gateway, setting shipping zones and tax rules, and making the whole thing work properly on a phone.
What makes it different from a hosted platform is that the store is yours outright — no per-transaction platform fee on top of your gateway, no restrictions on customisation, and no rebuild required if you want to move host. In exchange you are responsible for updates, backups and security, which is what a maintenance plan covers from AED 299 a month.
The practical reason most UAE businesses land on WooCommerce is that the store sits inside the same site as their service pages, blog and contact — one site to maintain, one place that accumulates search visibility, rather than a separate shop on a different domain.
What does ecommerce website development Dubai cost?
| Component | Price |
|---|---|
| Business package — up to 6 pages, 14 days | AED 3,500 |
| Premium package — 10+ pages incl. product subpages, catalog systems, 21 days | AED 6,999 |
| Payment integration (Stripe or local gateway) | AED 2,500 |
| Premium hosting, 1 year | AED 2,400 |
| Extra product or page beyond the package | AED 400 each |
| Product description writing | AED 250 per page |
| Arabic (per extra language) | AED 1,000 |
| Maintenance after the support window | from AED 299/month |
A realistic small store — Premium build, payment integration and a year of hosting — is about AED 11,900 in year one and AED 2,400 plus maintenance after that. A minimal store on the Business package with payments comes in around AED 6,000. See the full Dubai website cost breakdown.
Taking payments in the UAE
Payment integration is AED 2,500 and covers connecting and testing your gateway — Stripe, or a local UAE provider such as Telr, Network International or PayTabs. Two things to know before you budget:
- The gateway’s own fees are separate and go to them, not us — typically a percentage per transaction plus a fixed fee.
- You’ll need a UAE trade licence and a corporate bank account to be approved by a local gateway. Start that early; it’s usually the longest lead time in the whole project.
Cash on delivery is still worth enabling in this market. A meaningful share of UAE shoppers prefer it, and it costs nothing to switch on.
What actually makes a store sell?
The build is the easy part. In our experience the things that move revenue are unglamorous:
- Real product photography. The single biggest lever, and the one clients most often skip.
- Product descriptions written for search, not copied from the supplier’s sheet — which is also how you get indexed for the products you sell.
- A checkout with no account requirement. Forcing registration before purchase loses sales.
- Visible delivery cost and time before checkout.
- A phone number and WhatsApp. UAE shoppers message before buying, especially at higher prices.
Do you build the mobile app too?
Yes — iOS and Android from AED 9,999, 6 to 8 weeks. Useful add-ons for retail are user accounts and saved addresses (AED 1,500), push notifications for restocks and offers (AED 1,000) and payment integration (AED 2,500). See mobile app development. As with restaurants, prove the store sells before building the app.
Do you build ecommerce websites outside Dubai?
Yes — we work with businesses across the UAE, including Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the northern emirates, and with GCC clients trading into the UAE market. The build is the same; what changes is the detail around it.
Three things that differ by emirate rather than by technology. Licensing — mainland and free zone companies have different trading permissions, and your payment gateway will ask which you hold. Delivery zones — a store shipping Dubai same-day and Abu Dhabi next-day needs those rates configured separately, and shoppers notice when it is vague. Language mix — the English and Arabic balance is not identical across the country, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than defaulting to English only.
We work remotely with clients throughout the UAE. Nothing about an ecommerce build requires being in the same room, and most of our projects run over email, calls and WhatsApp regardless of where the client sits.
Common questions
Can you migrate our Shopify store to WooCommerce?
Yes — products, customers and orders, with 301 redirects for every old product URL so you keep your rankings.
How many products can you load?
Packages include a set number of pages; beyond that it’s AED 400 each. For large catalogues we’ll import in bulk from a spreadsheet instead and quote it as one job.
Do you set up shipping?
Yes, including zone-based rates and flat-rate local delivery.
Will the store be found on Google?
Product pages are built to be indexable, and Premium includes Analytics and Search Console setup. Actively ranking is SEO, from AED 1,999/month.
Talk to us
Send the details and we come back with a fixed scope and a fixed price — no hourly billing, no “request a quote” runaround. Contact us, message us on WhatsApp, or call +971 58 578 5380.