What to Ask a Web Agency in Dubai Before You Sign

Hiring a web agency in Dubai is a market problem before it is a technical one. There are a lot of studios, the work all looks similar in a portfolio and the differences that matter only surface after you have paid a deposit. These are the questions that make those differences visible in a first meeting.

What should you actually ask before signing?

Nine things, and none of them are about technology. They cover ownership, who does the work, whether the build is genuinely custom, what happens when a date moves and who pays when something breaks after launch.

Here is the short version, and the rest of this piece unpacks each one.

Who owns the source code, the hosting and the domain?

Ask when ownership transfers, not whether it does. Almost everyone says you own the site. The question that separates them is whether that is true today or only at handover.

This is the most common way projects go wrong here. If the repository, hosting account and domain sit under the agency's name, you have not bought a website, you have rented one. Every future decision, including hiring somebody else, runs through them. Disputes over a final invoice become disputes over whether your site stays online.

The fix is a contract clause with a date attached. At GoDesign the repository, hosting and domain credentials are in the client's name before we write a line of code, so there is never a point where the work is held as leverage. Whoever you hire, ask them to write the same thing down. An agency that will not put ownership in writing before kickoff has told you something useful.

Who is actually writing the code?

Ask for names, then ask to speak to them. It is a fair question and the reaction tells you more than the answer.

Subcontracting is not automatically a problem. Undisclosed subcontracting is, because it means the people you assessed are not the people building your site, and your feedback travels through a translation layer. It also means nobody in the room can commit to a technical answer without checking with someone you have never met.

Ask three follow-ups. Where is the team based? Will the person on this call still be on the project in week six? If the work is subcontracted, who is contractually responsible when something is wrong? A studio that introduces you to the actual builders early is signalling that it expects you to talk to them throughout, which is exactly what you want when a decision needs making on a Tuesday afternoon.

Am I getting a custom build or a template with a new colour scheme?

Ask what was bought and what was written. Both answers can be legitimate. A template build quoted as a custom one is not.

On WordPress, a custom build means a theme written around your content model rather than a marketplace theme with a page builder stacked on top. On Shopify it means the theme is built rather than purchased and reskinned. The practical difference is not aesthetic. It shows up in load times, in how much unused code ships to every visitor and in how expensive it is to change something in year two.

There is nothing wrong with a template for a five page site on a small budget. There is something wrong with paying custom build prices for one. Ask directly which marketplace theme or page builder is involved, and if the answer is none, ask how the content is structured instead. Vague answers here usually mean a purchase somebody would rather not itemise. Our WordPress and custom development pages set out where that line sits for us.

What happens when a deadline slips?

Assume it will. Ask how you find out. The answer separates a project you can plan around from one you cannot.

The failure is rarely the delay itself. Business owners can absorb two extra weeks. What they cannot absorb is learning about it on the launch date they built a campaign around. Ask what the notification trigger is and what happens to the invoice schedule if a milestone moves.

Then check that dates exist to slip in the first place. A proposal that says "six to eight weeks" is a hope. Milestone dates written into the contract before the project starts are a commitment, and they are what we agree up front on every build, so there is always an answer to what ships next and when. Ask each shortlisted agency for a milestone list with dates attached and see who can produce one before you pay.

What breaks after launch, and who pays for it?

Ask for the defect window in writing: how long it lasts, what counts as a defect and what happens after it ends. "We will look after you" is not a commitment anybody can enforce.

There is a real distinction that gets blurred deliberately. A bug caused by how the site was built is the agency's problem. A new feature you thought of after launch is a new project. Plugin updates, platform version changes and content edits sit somewhere in between, and that middle ground is where surprise invoices come from.

We fix anything that breaks because of how we built it, free, for 90 days after launch. After that a maintenance plan is optional rather than a condition of the site continuing to work, which is only possible because you already own the hosting and the code. Ask any agency both halves of that question: what is covered and what happens if you decline their retainer.

How do you check the company is real?

Ask for the trade licence and check the entity name matches the one that will invoice you. It takes five minutes and it removes most of the risk in this market.

Then check three more things. Is the address on the website a real office or a mailbox? Do the reviews sit on platforms the company does not control, rather than only in a testimonials slider? Does the contract name a UAE entity you can actually pursue if things go badly? GoDesign FZE is licensed in the UAE and based in Dubai Media City, and we expect clients to verify that rather than take it on trust.

Portfolios deserve the same scepticism. Ask which parts of a showcased project the agency did, because "we did the website" sometimes means "we did the homepage design and another firm built it". Asking for a client reference on a project similar in size to yours is normal and nobody credible objects.

What is not included?

Ask for the exclusions list. A scope document that only says what you get is half a document, and the missing half is where change requests are born.

Common omissions worth naming explicitly: content writing, photography, translation, data migration from an old site, redirect mapping, third-party licence fees, training and post-launch changes. None of these are unreasonable to exclude. They are unreasonable to leave undefined, because they then arrive as invoices at the point when you have the least room to push back.

If you have not scoped the project yet, what actually drives the cost of a website in Dubai covers how these lines move the number, and it is easier to have the exclusions conversation once you know which ones apply to you.

Will I be able to run the site myself?

Ask what you can change without calling anyone. If the answer is nothing, you have bought a dependency rather than an asset.

Content that changes often should be exposed as editable fields, and you should be walked through it at handover rather than handed a login and wished well. Swapping a phone number, publishing a post or updating a price should never require a developer. Ask to see the editing interface during the sales process, not after the invoice.

Ask what happens if you want to hire someone else in two years. If you own the repository, the hosting and the domain, the answer is that you hire them and nothing else happens. That is the whole point of settling the ownership question first. You can see how we structure builds on the web development and ecommerce pages, and the case studies show what finished projects actually included.