Introduction
If you run a UAE business and a Dubai quote did not fit the budget, an Indian web team is the obvious next call. Some of those projects go well and some go badly, and the difference is rarely the country.
We are one of those Indian teams, with offices in Lucknow and Mumbai and no office in the UAE. So this is written from the supplier's side, including the parts that do not flatter us.
The short version
Hiring in India gets you a lower price and a working day that overlaps the whole UAE week. You give up meetings across a table, and you take on the job of checking the team properly before you pay a deposit. Everything below is detail on those three points.
What it costs, in dirhams
These are the bands from our own published rate card, converted to dirhams. Other Indian teams will differ; the point of showing ours is that you can check it against the quote you are given.
| What you are building | AED (approx.) | INR | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business site on WordPress | AED 150–270 | ₹4,000–₹7,000 | 1–3 weeks |
| Custom-coded online store | AED 1,910–4,400 | ₹50,000–₹1,15,000 | 2–5 weeks |
| Platform, portal or marketplace | AED 1,910–6,980 | ₹50,000–₹1,82,400 | 4–14 weeks |
AED figures are approximate, at ₹96 to US$1 and the fixed rate of AED 3.6725 to US$1. Quotes are issued in INR. The full breakdown by page count and store package is on our Dubai cost guide.
Time zones: the overlap is the whole working week
The UAE is an hour and a half behind India all year, and neither country changes its clocks. Our team works 10:00–19:00 India time, Monday to Saturday, which is 08:30–17:30 in the UAE.
Most UAE offices now work Monday to Friday, so every hour of your working week falls inside ours, and Saturday morning is a bonus. In practice a question sent at 9am Dubai time can be answered the same morning, not the next day.
What you give up
- Meetings in person. Everything runs on video and WhatsApp. If a face-to-face meeting before you commit matters to you, a team without UAE staff cannot offer it, and you should weigh that honestly.
- The Google Maps pack. Showing up in "near me" results needs a Google Business Profile at a real UAE address. An Indian agency can help you set up yours, but it cannot put you there with its own address, and any agency that promises otherwise is inventing a location.
- Native Arabic copy. We build Arabic layouts properly, right-to-left, but the Arabic words should come from a native writer. Budget for that separately, whoever you hire.
Contracts, currency and VAT
We quote and invoice in rupees, and the dirham figures above are approximate. Our payment terms are the same on every project: 50% advance to start · 50% at payment-gateway integration.
UAE VAT is 5%, and how it applies when you buy services from a supplier outside the UAE depends on your company's registration. Ask your accountant before you compare an Indian quote with a local one, because the comparison is only fair once both are on the same footing.
Whatever the currency, insist on one thing: the domain, hosting, payment gateway and analytics accounts are opened in your company's name from day one. The gateway especially is tied to your trade licence and bank account and should never sit with a developer in any country.
How to check an Indian agency before you pay a deposit
- Ask for live sites, not a portfolio PDF. Open them on your phone on mobile data. A slow site in their portfolio will be a slow site for you.
- Ask who writes the code. Many agencies sell the project and pass it to a freelancer. That is not always bad, but you should know who you will be talking to in month six.
- Ask what happens after launch. Get the support plan and its price in writing. Most of the businesses that come to us do so because a previous developer stopped replying after the final payment.
- Send a WhatsApp message at 10am Dubai time. How long the reply takes before you have paid is the best predictor of how long it takes after.
- Ask whose name the accounts are in. If the answer is anything other than yours, walk away.
What we have built for UAE businesses
Cleanship is a marine cleaning company registered in Ajman Free Zone, with bases in Fujairah and Khor Fakkan. Ship operators search by port, so its site has a landing page for every service at every port it covers, 310 in all, including Jebel Ali, Port Rashid, Khalifa Port, Sharjah, Hamriyah and Khor Fakkan.
We also built MariBiz.ai, a marine procurement marketplace with more than 3,226 verified vendors and port-based search that covers UAE ports among others. If your business is in shipping or logistics, those two are the closest thing to your brief we have.
For everything else, see website development for Dubai businesses or the UAE page, which covers every emirate.
Conclusion
An Indian team is a good choice for a UAE business when the scope is written down, the accounts are in your name and someone answers WhatsApp on a Tuesday morning. If you want to see whether we fit, message us with what the site has to do and we will reply with a written scope and a price from the rate card within one working day.