What a website costs in the UAE.

Website pricing in the UAE ranges from a few hundred dirhams for a focused portfolio to five figures for a custom platform. The gap is rarely about the number of pages. It is about what the site has to do, who has to update it, and how much of the work is already decided.

These are Design Slices' starting prices in AED — the numbers on our pricing page, not a market average. Use them as a reference point when you compare quotes.

Most standard builds launch in 5–10 days once content and feedback are ready. Custom work is scheduled after scoping. If a quote promises a custom platform in a week, ask what is actually being built.

Every build includes the work that makes a website usable after launch, not just a set of pages that look finished:

• Design and a responsive build across mobile, tablet and desktop.
• Google Analytics integration, so you can see where visitors come from and what they do.
• On-page SEO: clean structure, metadata and a sitemap.
• Core Web Vitals work: fast loading, stable layout and responsive interaction.
• Google Search Console setup, so indexing issues are visible early.
• Deployment with SSL and DNS handled end to end.
• Seven days of post-launch support for fixes and small adjustments.

That list is deliberately boring. It is also the difference between a site that can be found and maintained and one that needs another project to fix it three months later.

The portfolio is the smallest useful website. It gives a freelancer, creative or consultant a credible place to send people: who you are, what you do, selected work and a way to get in touch.

It fits when the site has one job — to make your work easy to see and easy to share. A photographer, an illustrator, a copywriter or a developer between roles does not need a product catalogue or a content machine. They need a fast, well-art-directed page that makes a strong first impression.

It does not fit when you need to publish weekly, sell products, gate downloads, take bookings or manage a growing library of pages. Those are different jobs, and stretching a portfolio to do them is how a AED 250 site becomes a AED 2,500 rebuild.

See the portfolio website service for the scope.

Two very different builds share the AED 500 starting point. The right one depends on what happens after launch.

Choose WordPress when you or your team want to log in and change the site without a developer. It suits brochure sites, blogs, resource libraries and businesses that publish often. WordPress also has the widest plugin ecosystem, which is useful for forms, SEO, bookings and small shops — and a liability if you install everything you find.

Choose a marketing site when the site exists to sell one offer. The work is messaging hierarchy, a clear path to enquiry or purchase, fast pages and campaign-ready landing pages. It is usually built on a modern stack rather than a CMS, so structural edits go through a developer — a fair trade if the site changes rarely and converts well.

A simple test: if the site needs a new article this week, WordPress is the safer default. If the site needs one page that makes paid traffic convert this month, a marketing site is the sharper tool.

WooCommerce is the step between a brochure site and a custom store. It adds products, cart, checkout, payments, shipping and order management to WordPress, so you can run a smaller catalogue without a bespoke platform.

It fits businesses with a manageable number of products, straightforward variants and standard shipping. You get the familiarity of the WordPress admin, a wide choice of payment gateways and the ability to add content around the products.

It stops fitting when the catalogue is large, the variants are complex, the checkout needs unusual rules, or performance becomes the constraint. At that point the plugin stack starts fighting itself, and a custom build is usually cheaper than forcing WooCommerce to behave like one.

See WordPress websites and the pricing page for the current starting point.

The custom e-commerce build is for a store that has outgrown a standard template: a larger catalogue, product configurators, bespoke checkout steps, subscriptions, or integrations with inventory and accounting.

It is still a starting point. A store with a few hundred products, multiple languages, custom pricing rules and an ERP integration is a scoped project, not a fixed package. The AED 1,500 figure covers the core storefront and the decisions that make it work; the final quote depends on how much has to be connected to it.

The advantage is control. The storefront can be shaped around how people actually buy, instead of around what a theme allows. The trade-off is that custom work needs a clear brief, a realistic timeline and someone to maintain it after launch.

See e-commerce websites and custom websites.

Two projects can both be “a website” and differ by a factor of ten. These are the variables that matter most:

• Templates, not pages. A five-page site with one layout is simpler than a three-page site where every page is a different composition. Reusable sections keep cost down; one-off layouts add design and build time.
• Content readiness. Copy, images, product data and approvals are usually the longest part of a project. A site that arrives with final content launches faster and costs less than one where the studio has to fill the gaps.
• Integrations. Payments, CRM, email marketing, booking, inventory, accounting and delivery APIs all add work. Each connection needs testing, error handling and a plan for what happens when the third party changes something.
• Languages and direction. Arabic and English sites need more than translated strings: RTL layout, typography, content structure and testing. Budget for both languages, not just the translation.
• Product count and variants. Ten products with one size are not the same as 200 products with colours, sizes, stock rules and tiered pricing.
• Migration. Moving an existing site without losing rankings, URLs, content or orders takes planning. Redirects and a content audit are part of the scope, not an afterthought.
• Custom illustration, photography and motion. These can be the difference between a good site and a memorable one, but they are separate crafts with separate timelines.
• Ongoing SEO and maintenance. Launch is a date; ranking is a process. Content, technical checks and updates need a budget after the invoice is paid.

If a quote is much lower than the others, find out which of these has been left out. If it is much higher, ask which ones are driving the number.

The build is only one line in the first year. These are the usual extras, with broad UAE market ranges to help you plan. They are not Design Slices quotes; confirm current pricing with each provider.

A website that costs AED 500 to build but AED 300 a month to maintain is not a AED 500 website. Add the first two years together before you compare.

Cheap and expensive are not useful labels until the scope is the same. Ask every studio the same questions:

1. What exactly is included — pages, templates, content, images, integrations and training?
2. Who writes the copy, and what happens if it arrives late?
3. Who owns the domain, hosting account, code and design files?
4. What is the payment schedule, and what happens if the project pauses?
5. How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a revision?
6. What does maintenance cost after launch, and is it optional?
7. Are VAT, domain and hosting included in the number?
8. What is the timeline, and what do you need from me to hit it?

A good quote answers most of these without a follow-up email. A quote that only says “website design — AED X” is a conversation starter, not a budget.

The cheapest website is the one that does the current job well and can be extended later. A few practical ways to keep the first version in range:

• Start with the smallest build that can prove the offer. A portfolio or marketing site can validate demand before you invest in a store.
• Write the content before the design starts. It exposes gaps early and stops the project from becoming a copywriting project at the end.
• Use one strong template across similar pages. Save the bespoke layouts for the pages that actually need them.
• Postpone integrations until they are earning money. Connect the CRM when there are leads to manage, not because it sounds impressive.
• Plan the upgrade path. If a catalogue is likely to grow, choose a structure that can move to WooCommerce or a custom store without a full rebuild.

A AED 500 site that launches this month is usually worth more than a AED 5,000 site that slips a quarter. You can improve a live site with real traffic; you cannot learn from a design file.

Design Slices is a web design and development studio based in Sharjah, UAE. We build portfolio, WordPress, marketing, WooCommerce, e-commerce and custom websites, with transparent starting prices and a scope agreed before work begins.

If you are not sure which package fits, send the brief anyway. We will tell you the smallest build that does the job — and the point where it stops being enough. Start a conversation or see the full pricing breakdown.