Website management service in Dubai

Website management in Dubai costs roughly AED 700-2,000 a month from a remote managed provider, or AED 3,500-12,000 a month on a Dubai agency retainer. That local range is unusually wide because Dubai’s agency market runs from excellent to opportunistic with little in between, so scope matters more here than in most cities.

Our plan prices below are in pounds, since that is how we bill. The dirham figures are the local market for comparison.

Two things that are genuinely different here

Most city guides are interchangeable. Dubai has two real local factors worth getting right.

Arabic. Whether you need it depends entirely on who buys from you. A business serving government entities, Emirati customers or the wider GCC generally benefits from a proper Arabic version. A business serving the expat professional market frequently runs English only and does fine.

If you do it, do it properly: real translation and right-to-left layout, not a browser translate widget. A badly machine-translated Arabic page reads worse to an Arabic speaker than no Arabic page at all.

Trade licence details. UAE businesses are generally expected to display licence information, and the specifics vary by emirate and by free zone. Check what your own licence and issuing authority require rather than copying whatever a competitor has done, since their rules may differ from yours.

The two routes

That last row is the one honest advantage a local agency has, if Arabic matters to you. A remote provider may or may not have that capability, so ask rather than discovering it later.

Time zone works well

Dubai is four hours ahead of the UK, which is among the best overlaps you can get for remote work.

A UK provider’s working day of 9am to 5:30pm is 1pm to 9:30pm in Dubai. That gives a substantial shared window in your afternoon for calls, and anything raised in your morning gets picked up early in their day.

Compare that with Sydney, where the overlap is close to zero. Dubai and the UK is one of the easier pairings, which is part of why UK providers are common here.

Dubai is many markets

The city is spread out and search results shift across it. Someone in Dubai Marina gets different results from someone in Deira.

Name the areas you serve: Downtown, Dubai Marina, JLT, Business Bay, Al Barsha, Jumeirah, Deira, Dubai Silicon Oasis, whichever apply. Give the two or three you most want work from a real page rather than a template with the district swapped in.

Sharjah and Abu Dhabi are separate markets again, not extensions of Dubai. If you want work there they need their own attention.

The transience factor

Something specific to Dubai worth planning around: the population turns over faster than most cities. A significant share of your customer base will leave within a few years and be replaced by people who have never heard of you.

That has a practical consequence. Word of mouth and reputation compound more slowly here, because the people who would recommend you keep leaving. Search visibility matters proportionally more, since a steady stream of newly arrived people are looking things up for the first time.

It also means reviews need constant topping up. A profile with excellent reviews from 2022 carries less weight in a market where half the people who wrote them have gone.

Maintenance is not management

Same trap everywhere, and Dubai’s wide price range makes it more important to check.

Maintenance is hosting, updates, backups and security. It keeps the site alive and does nothing for how many people find you.

Management adds local SEO, content, Google Business Profile upkeep, reviews and checking your forms deliver. That is the part that affects enquiries.

At AED 3,500 a month you should expect the second. Read the scope carefully, because at that price some providers are delivering the first with a nicer report. What is included in a website care plan is the checklist.

Before you sign

• Which Dubai areas will you target, named?
• Do I need Arabic, and if so who writes and lays it out?
• What gets published or changed each month?
• Do I own the domain and site, in writing?
• What is your response time during Dubai business hours?
• What can you not promise?

Our plans are £49, £99 and £199 a month, billed in pounds, rolling monthly, and you own your domain and content. For a Dubai business the £99 tier covers most single-location needs, £199 with ads and email marketing.

The pricing page sets out each. If you would rather describe the business, send us the details and mention whether Arabic matters, since that changes the answer. The wider regional picture is in done-for-you online presence in the UAE.