Dubai · one of two hubs
A Shopify agency in Dubaiwith the prices already on the page.
Half of this studio is here, in this timezone, invoicing in dirhams. The other half is in Geneva. What follows is what actually changes about building a Shopify store for this market — and then every price, so you can decide without speaking to anyone.
What changes in this market
Six things a Gulf store needsthat a European theme never planned for.
This is the section a page like this usually skips. Most agency city pages are one template with the city name swapped in — so here is the part that does not transfer, and that we would have to explain to any studio you hired from outside the region.
Cash on delivery is still a real payment method
Not a legacy edge case to hide behind a feature flag. It changes your checkout, your fraud exposure, your fulfilment cost per order and your refund flow — and a theme built for a card-only European market handles all four badly.
Tabby and Tamara are expected, not optional
Regional buy-now-pay-later is a default assumption for a large share of Gulf shoppers. Missing from the product page, it reads as a store that does not operate here. Present but badly placed, it costs you margin without buying the conversion.
5% VAT, and the display rule that goes with it
UAE VAT has been 5% since 2018. The part that catches imported themes is the display convention — Gulf shoppers expect the inclusive price, and a store that adds tax at the final step converts worse than one that never showed a smaller number.
White Friday, then Ramadan, then Eid
The regional retail calendar is not the European one. White Friday is the November peak, Ramadan shifts buying into the late evening, and Eid concentrates gifting into a short window. A store tuned for a Black Friday to Christmas run is tuned for the wrong three months.
Arabic, if you are selling past the UAE
The Emirates transacts in English. Saudi does not, and Saudi is where the volume is. Arabic means right-to-left, which is a theme-architecture decision rather than a translation task — retrofitting it into a theme that never expected it is most of a rebuild.
Same-day is the delivery baseline here
Dubai buyers are used to next-day as standard and same-day as ordinary. Shipping terms that read as generous in Europe read as slow on a product page in this market, and that expectation belongs on the page before the add to cart, not in a policy link.
How we work with brands here
Local where it matters.Published everywhere else.
Being in the timezone is worth something. Being the only studio in the market that publishes its price list is worth more.
Invoiced in AED
The Gulf price list is published in dirhams and it is the price you are invoiced in. We do not quote one currency and bill another, and we do not convert at checkout.
Gulf Standard Time, not a follow-the-sun rota
Half of this studio is in this timezone. You are not waiting overnight for an answer from a European morning, and there is no offshore delivery team behind the account.
No call to get a price
Every number is on the pricing page. Nothing on this site requires a discovery call, a form, or a conversation to find out what something costs.
Two senior people, no subcontractors
The people who scope the work do it. That is the constraint the whole studio is built around, and it is why the capacity is limited and said so.
What we do for Gulf brands
Five levers, one team,every price in dirhams.
Design, build, conversion, paid media and AI visibility. The full menu with dirham prices and what each scope excludes is two clicks from here — neither of them a form.
Two pieces worth reading before you brief anyone: how answer engines pick which stores to name and what a Shopify agency actually costs.
Asked by brands here
The local questions,answered directly.
Including the one about whether there is an office, which most studios answer with a stock photo of a building they do not lease.
- Do you have an office in Dubai?
- There is a person here, which is the part that matters for your project — same timezone, same working week, same market. We do not publish a walk-in address, and we would rather say that plainly than imply a showroom that is not there.
- Can you invoice a UAE company in AED?
- Yes, and that is the default. The Gulf price list is in dirhams: the Store Teardown is AED 3,350, and every other service has a published dirham price. Market decides currency, not preference.
- Do you work with brands outside the UAE?
- Yes — across the GCC and in francophone Europe, where the studio's other half is based in Geneva. The two hubs run one shared playbook rather than two separate agencies.
- What is the fastest way to find out if you are any good?
- Buy a Store Teardown for AED 3,350. It is a written audit of your store's conversion path and AI visibility, five fixes ranked by revenue impact, delivered in five days with no call in the process. If you then start an engagement within thirty days, the fee comes off it in full.