Modern, fast, secure builds for UAE SMEs and e-commerce. Next.js or Astro on the frontend, headless CMS your team can actually use, edge-hosted in the UAE, with every integration the local market needs — Tabby, Tamara, WhatsApp, UAE PASS, TDRA.
WordPress powers ~43% of the web — and ~80% of Dubai SME websites. It's familiar, cheap to start, and easy to find a developer for. It's also slow, security-prone, plugin-dependent, and ranks worse on Core Web Vitals than modern stacks. We migrate clients off WordPress regularly. The replacement (Next.js + headless CMS) costs roughly the same to build and a fraction to maintain after year one.
Next.js or Astro for the frontend (fast, SEO-friendly, easy for new developers to pick up). Sanity or Payload as headless CMS (your team edits content without breaking the site). Cloudflare or Vercel for hosting (DXB edge nodes, automatic SSL, DDoS protection, $0 to $50/month at SME scale). Stripe + Tabby + Tamara for payments. Supabase for auth and database when needed. This stack ranks well in UAE SERPs, loads in under 2 seconds on 4G, and survives traffic spikes from Ramadan and Black Friday without falling over.
If your business is a 5-page brochure, you don't need custom development — a well-built template stack is fine. Custom pays off when: (1) you have a booking or quoting flow that templates can't model; (2) you're integrating with multiple UAE-specific APIs (Tabby, Tamara, Postpay, Aramex, Talabat, Careem); (3) you have a content team that needs a CMS shaped to their workflow; (4) you're spending AED 10k+ a month on ads and a 0.5% conversion lift pays for the build in a quarter.
Payments: Stripe, Tabby, Tamara, Postpay, Network International, Telr. Logistics: Aramex, DHL, Fetchr. Comms: WhatsApp Business API, Twilio, SendGrid, Mailchimp. CRM: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho. Analytics: GA4, Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar. Government: TDRA domain registration, UAE PASS auth, VAT-compliant invoicing flows. We've shipped most of these multiple times — your build isn't our learning curve.
We build to UAE PDPL standards: cookie consent, data export, right-to-delete flows, encryption at rest and in transit, and audit logs on sensitive operations. For DIFC-licensed clients we follow DIFC Data Protection Law (closer to GDPR). For payment-handling clients we use providers that hold the PCI compliance scope — your code never touches a card number. We don't oversell — most SMEs don't need an enterprise security audit, but we'll tell you when you do.
Yes. If you have a Figma file from another agency or in-house team, we'll build it. We do ask for a 30-minute review to flag accessibility, performance, or UAE-localisation issues before we quote.
Usually yes, if it's on a mainstream stack (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Next.js, Laravel). We'll do a code review first and quote based on what's actually there — not what the previous developer claimed they built.
We build progressive web apps (PWAs) that work like apps on iOS and Android — installable, push notifications, offline support. For true native apps we partner with a specialist iOS/Android studio.
Cloudflare Pages or Vercel, both of which route UAE traffic through the Dubai (DXB) edge. Sub-30ms latency, automatic SSL, DDoS included. We don't recommend on-prem UAE hosting except for specific government or regulated workloads.
Development retainers start at AED 4,500/month for ~15 hours of dev + ops work. Most clients use this for feature additions, A/B test implementation, integration work, and security patching.
Related: Web design Dubai · Web design agency Dubai · Web design company Dubai
Free 20-minute architecture call. We'll tell you what stack actually fits your business — even if it isn't ours.
No lock-in. No hidden fees. Scoped to what you actually need.
1. Book a free 20-min discovery → 2. We show you exactly where you're losing money → 3. You decide if you want us to fix it
Dubai · Abu Dhabi · UAE-wide.
