An online store is not one price. It is a stack of decisions: the platform, the catalogue, the payment and delivery integrations, the photography, and how much of it exists in both Arabic and English. This guide explains what moves the number, how to choose between a Salla store, a Zid store and a custom build, and what a written quote should contain before you pay anything.
Each decision behind a store has its own cost line. The main ones are the platform you build on, how many products you sell and how they vary, the payment and delivery integrations you need, who produces the photography and the product text, and how much of the catalogue must exist in two languages.
Write those five lines down before you ask anyone for a number. A store with 30 products, one option each and a single courier is a different job from a store with 800 products, sizes and colours, two couriers and a same-day option in Jeddah. Both are reasonable projects. They are not the same quote. The services page shows where store work sits next to website and custom system work.
Most Saudi SMEs should start on a local platform. Salla and Zid are hosted commerce platforms built for this market, with Arabic interfaces, local payment options and courier integrations already in place. You rent the software and configure it. A custom build is developed for you, hosted by you, and changed only when you pay for the change.
The practical rule: choose a platform when your products and your checkout look like normal retail. Choose a custom build when what you sell does not fit inside a product page — recurring subscriptions, layered pricing rules, or a store that must read stock and orders from a system you already run. Read the comparison of Salla and Zid before you commit.
Setup is what you pay once to go live: account configuration, theme customisation, catalogue loading, payment and shipping setup, testing and training. Subscription is what you pay the platform every month or year to keep running, and it usually rises as you add features, staff accounts or higher order volumes.
We do not quote platform subscriptions, because they change and depend on the plan you pick. Check the current pricing page of the platform yourself, and confirm what the plan includes, what counts as a paid add-on, and whether a transaction fee applies. Then add the recurring costs outside the platform: your domain, professional email, photography refreshes, and paid apps from the platform marketplace.
Our own store setup starts from 2,500 SAR over one to three weeks, covering store setup, theme customisation, payments and shipping, and training. The packages page lists it in full.
This is where store projects lose time. Decide first which payment methods you actually need: mada, credit cards, Apple Pay, and whether you will offer cash on delivery. Each has its own approval path, fees and settlement timing. A gateway account normally needs your commercial registration and bank details, and approval is not instant.
Delivery is the same. Confirm which couriers cover your customers, how shipping is priced — flat, by weight or by city — and who prints the labels. A store that quotes the wrong shipping cost at checkout loses orders quietly.
Ask about invoicing early. Check ZATCA current guidance on whether and when e-invoicing applies to your activity, and confirm how the store will issue compliant invoices. Our e-invoicing guide sets out the questions to ask.
The catalogue is the store. Weak images and thin descriptions hold back a well-built store more than any theme choice. Decide who shoots the products, how many images each one gets, whether you need a consistent background, and who writes the description, the specifications and the sizing.
If you hand over finished images and text, the build is faster and cheaper. If the supplier must produce them, that is a separate line with its own schedule — and it is usually what delays launch. Fictional example, not a client result: a Jeddah retailer budgets for the store but not for photographing 200 products, then launches two months late with supplier images of uneven quality. Plan the catalogue before the theme.
Your Saudi customer shops in Arabic. Build the Arabic catalogue first and treat English as a second, deliberate version rather than a machine translation. Product names, categories, filters, size charts, shipping terms and the return policy all need Arabic a buyer recognises.
Decide how much of the catalogue is genuinely bilingual. Some stores translate everything; many translate categories, policies and the best sellers, then extend over time. Whichever you choose, both versions must agree on price, availability and returns. Check the right-to-left layout on a phone: prices, discounts, quantity controls and the currency symbol all need to sit correctly. Our note on bilingual websites covers the same discipline.
Most orders arrive from a phone, so checkout deserves the hardest testing. Place a real order on your own store before launch, with your own card, on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi.
Every extra field costs you orders. Remove anything you do not need to fulfil one.
Settle ownership in writing before work starts. The domain should be registered to your establishment, not to your supplier. The platform account, the payment gateway account and the courier accounts belong in the name of the business, with the supplier given delegated access rather than your password.
Ask how you export your catalogue, your orders and your customer list if you ever leave the platform, and in what format. Customer names, phone numbers and addresses are personal data: agree who may access them, how long they are kept and how a deletion request is handled. Review the PDPL guide and check current official guidance rather than assuming a platform setting covers your obligations.
Tech Corners is based in Jeddah and was founded by Zeyad AlQahtani, a software engineer and University of Jeddah graduate. Whoever you hire, insist on a one-page written scope before you pay. It should state:
Store setup starts from 2,500 SAR; a custom system or app MVP starts from 15,000 SAR over 6–12 weeks; Care plans from 300 SAR/month keep a live store backed up and updated. A custom build is justified when the platform genuinely cannot model your product or your operations — not because a theme looks ordinary. If you are unsure, read website or custom system and what a website costs in Jeddah, then send us your product list.