Website development you can hand to anyone.

Two things: what the site has to reach, and who maintains it after we leave. A marketing site with one payment gateway and two people to run it is a different answer from a site that has to stay in step with an ERP. The recommendation is written down with what it costs to run and what it would take to reverse. Where a catalogue already lives in a system you own, we would read from that system rather than rebuild it inside the website.

The approvals decide it, not the code. A brochure site with content ready and no regulated integration is limited only by how fast copy, photography and sign-off arrive. A build waiting on a merchant account, a UAE PASS onboarding or a residency decision goes live when those land, and none of the three runs on our timetable. So the plan is dated against the approvals rather than the sprints: what has to be applied for, who applies for it, and what the site can launch without. A Business Bay brokerage on a DET mainland licence that applies for its merchant account in week one is live long before one that applies after the design is signed off. The design weeks that come first are set out on website design.

Yes, and the part that takes time is not the code. Network International, PayTabs, Telr and Checkout.com each issue a merchant account against a trade licence, and the licensed activity has to cover selling online. Tabby and Tamara add an instalment option on top of that, each with its own onboarding. What we need from you in week one is the licence and a named signatory; the integration itself is usually the shorter half.

Yes, once your entity is onboarded as a service provider. UAE PASS is a federal programme rather than a key you generate, so the application is made by the licence holder and comes back on its own schedule. We build the sign-in flow against a test integration in the meantime and switch it over when the approval lands. Where the launch date cannot carry the wait, we ship with email sign-in and add UAE PASS as a second release.

It changes the architecture, not the hosting invoice. Which region the database and the CMS sit in stops being a default and becomes a constraint, and some managed platforms stop being eligible at all. There is an in-country region to sit in, so the requirement is workable rather than a blocker. Delivery speed is a separate question and the edge already answers it, with CloudFront serving the country from Dubai.

Usually not, and it is worth finding out before you pay for one. Most of the time the block is the content model rather than the code: the pages were built as one-off layouts, so every edit is a developer’s job by construction. Rebuilding the editing layer over the same content is a much smaller job than a new site. We would call it a rebuild when the theme carries business logic nobody can read, or when the plugins holding it together are no longer maintained.

Usually yes, and the route depends on what they actually hold. A domain moves with an authorisation code from the registrar, and hosting can be migrated without their help once the domain is yours. A merchant account and a UAE PASS integration are different again: both are issued to your entity, so what the agency holds is a login that can be reissued to you. We do this read before quoting anything, because the answer sometimes makes a rebuild unnecessary.

Yes, and where that team exists it is the arrangement we ask for. Your developer holds repository access from the first commit and reviews the pull requests, so nothing arrives as a finished box with no history behind it. Where your policy requires self-hosted Git or a named hosting region, we work inside it rather than asking for an exception. What we ask in return is one named technical contact who can answer a question in the same week it is asked.