Online Store Development in Saudi Arabia: Arabic and English Stores That Connect to Your Back Office
Stores on Shopify, WooCommerce, Odoo or custom code, with Saudi payment methods, shipping and invoices, and honest advice on when to stay on Salla or Zid.
Devvista builds online stores for Saudi companies in Arabic and English: on Shopify, WooCommerce, Odoo eCommerce or a custom build, with Saudi payment methods, shipping connections and invoices that tie back to your accounting. If you already sell on Salla or Zid we will also tell you honestly when to stay there and when a custom store or a connection to your ERP is worth the cost. You open a staging copy of the store every week, and at the end the code, platform accounts and documentation belong to your company. We price either as a fixed project from $500 to $100,000 or hourly from $10 to $100, depending on complexity and developer level.
This page covers how to choose a platform, how payments work in the Kingdom, what the store needs from your back office and what moves the price. For a quote, contact us or use the Get an Estimate button.
Salla, Zid or your own store: which one fits
The honest first question is not which platform is best but whether you need to leave the one you are on. Salla and Zid are hosted platforms built for Saudi merchants, with app markets and developer tools, and for many small shops they are the right answer. We do not claim to be a partner of either.
| Your situation | What we usually suggest | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A simple catalogue, few staff, no special logic | Stay on Salla or Zid and spend on products, photos and ads | Our view: a hosted platform usually costs less to run than a custom store |
| A hosted store that needs to talk to your ERP, CRM or warehouse | Keep the store and connect it through its developer interfaces | Salla documents RESTful merchant APIs, OAuth 2.0 and webhooks for orders, products, shipments, customers and carts; Zid documents public and private apps and webhook logs |
| Complex pricing, B2B accounts, unusual checkout or a large catalogue with your own data model | A Shopify, WooCommerce, Odoo or custom build | You control the logic instead of working around a template |
| The store is one part of a business already run on Odoo | Odoo eCommerce on the same system | One set of products and customers instead of two |
Sources: Salla developer documentation and Zid developer documentation. One detail to check before you plan an integration: Zid's documentation says a private app needs the store to be on a Professional or Enterprise plan or to have API Access activated, so confirm your plan first.
Choosing the platform for a new store
If you are building a store beyond Salla and Zid, the platform choice depends on who maintains it, how you take payment in Saudi Arabia and what it must connect to.
| Platform | Suits | Saudi points to check |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Owners who want little upkeep and a fast launch | Shopify's list of countries for Shopify Payments does not include Saudi Arabia, so you need a third-party provider (the page says so for unlisted countries), and Shopify states that third-party transaction fees apply to payments through third-party gateways |
| WooCommerce | Owners who already run WordPress and can look after it | Core WooCommerce documentation lists bank transfer and cash on delivery under payments and points to extensions for gateways; it has a REST API (version 3) for connecting other systems |
| Odoo eCommerce | Companies that already run Odoo for stock and accounting | Odoo's payment provider page lists 14 online providers, among them Stripe and Mollie, and does not mention mada, so confirm the gateway before choosing it |
| Custom build | Unusual logic, large catalogues, tight speed targets | Higher build cost and every change goes through a developer |
Sources: Shopify, Shopify Payments supported countries, Shopify, third-party providers, WooCommerce documentation, WooCommerce REST API, Odoo eCommerce and Odoo payment providers. Shopify also states that its REST Admin API is a legacy API and that new public apps must be built on the GraphQL Admin API (Shopify Admin API), which matters if you commission a public app (one published in Shopify's app store). Our global ecommerce development page (English) covers Shopify, WooCommerce and headless builds in more depth.
Payments: mada, Apple Pay and the gateway behind them
The gateway you choose decides which local payment methods you can offer. The documentation of one Saudi gateway, Moyasar, lists card payments with mada, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, plus Apple Pay, STC Pay and Google Pay, and mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native (Moyasar documentation). We name it as an example of what a gateway publishes, not as a recommendation: other Saudi and international gateways exist and the right one depends on your fees, settlement and plan.
In scoping we decide the gateway, which methods are on, how refunds reach your accounts, how failed payments are handled and how the gateway notifies the store. We test the full flow in the gateway's sandbox before launch and with a small live payment after it. Cash on delivery, where you use it, needs its own rules for confirmation and returns.
Arabic in the catalogue, search and checkout
For a store, Arabic is a catalogue problem before it is a layout problem. Each product needs an Arabic title and description written for the shopper, attribute names such as size and colour in the words people use, and filters and category pages that make sense when read right to left. In our view, a machine translation pasted into thousands of products can be a reason an Arabic store converts worse than its English twin.
Odoo's documentation says product name, out-of-stock message and sales description can be translated on the product form and that untranslated content can hurt user experience and SEO (Odoo, products). The same discipline applies on any platform: decide who writes the Arabic product content, and when, before the build starts.
Then the checkout: Arabic address fields, price and currency shown correctly inside Arabic text, order emails and WhatsApp messages in Arabic, and a cart that flows right to left. We test these on real phones with long Arabic product names.
For search engines, Google says each language version of a page must list itself and all other language versions, and that if two pages do not point to each other the tags are ignored (Google Search Central, localized versions). Product and category pages in both languages are linked as pairs. For the wider bilingual approach to a company site, see website development.
Connecting the store to your back office and ZATCA
A store that only takes orders creates work behind it: someone copies the order into the accounts, checks stock, books the courier and issues an invoice. We connect the store to the systems that do those jobs, through the platform's API or webhooks, or inside one system if you run Odoo. The detail is agreed in scoping and usually covers products and stock, orders, customers, shipping labels and tracking numbers and the invoice.
Invoices matter in Saudi Arabia. A store that issues tax invoices may fall under ZATCA e-invoicing, depending on your VAT registration and your wave, and the connection to the Fatoora platform may then become part of the scope. Our ZATCA Wave 25 guide explains the timeline, Odoo e-invoicing covers the Odoo route and accounting and e-invoicing software compares the options. For sync between a store and an ERP, see Odoo ERP implementation, and for order-triggered messages and workflows, AI chatbots and automation. Shipping companies are connected through their own published interfaces, which we check with you before promising a particular carrier.
A store that is quick on a phone and easy to find
Shoppers leave slow product pages and long checkouts. We keep product images compressed and lazy-loaded, limit the scripts that run on category pages, and cut checkout to the fields you really need. Our working target is a Lighthouse performance score above 90 on mobile, the same target we state on our global ecommerce page. It is a target we measure against, not a promise about your sales.
On the search side we set clean product and category addresses, one clear heading per page, product structured data where the platform supports it, and redirects from every old product address when you move from another store, so pages that already rank are not thrown away.
How a store project runs, step by step
A store project moves through the same six stages. The table shows what we decide at each one.
| Stage | What we decide or do | What you hold afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Store brief | Products, customers, current platform, the systems the store must talk to | A one-page brief |
| 2. Platform and scope | Platform, payment gateway, shipping, invoices; features split into launch and later | A feature list, a plan in working days and a price (fixed or hourly) |
| 3. Store design | Home, category, product, cart and checkout screens in Arabic and English | Clickable designs for your team to review |
| 4. Build on staging | Catalogue import, checkout and integrations built on a staging copy, demoed on video every one to two weeks | A staging store you can click through |
| 5. Order tests and launch | Test orders, payment and refund runs, shipping and invoice checks, redirects, DNS cutover | A live store and a written launch checklist |
| 6. Hand-over | Code, platform and gateway accounts, documentation; optional monthly maintenance | Everything registered to your company |
We have no Saudi store clients to show here, and we will not invent any. What you can check is the process, the written scope and price, and case studies from other markets (English) that show how we document projects.
What a store costs, with one worked example
Devvista prices a store either as a fixed price from $500 to $100,000 depending on complexity, or hourly from $10 to $100 per hour depending on the type and level of developer. The biggest drivers are catalogue size and how much Arabic and English product content must be prepared, the number of integrations (gateway, shipping, ERP, invoices), custom features such as B2B pricing, how much data must be migrated from an old store and which platform you choose.
Illustrative estimate, not a quote. Take a bilingual store on WooCommerce or Shopify with a standard catalogue, one payment gateway, one shipping connection and a hand-over to your team. Assume 150 to 250 hours of design, development and testing (an assumption for this example). At an illustrative $40 per hour that is $6,000 to $10,000. Adding ERP and invoice integration raises it, a ready template without integrations lowers it, and we write a plan before you commit.
Platform and gateway fees are separate and go to the providers: hosting or subscription, transaction fees and any paid extensions. We list them in the plan.
Mistakes Saudi merchants make when building a store
- Picking the payment gateway after the build. The gateway decides which local methods you can offer, so choose it during scoping.
- Pasting machine-translated product text. Arabic product pages that read badly sell badly; budget for real Arabic content.
- Leaving invoices until launch week. If the store issues tax invoices that fall under e-invoicing, the ZATCA connection is part of the project.
- Leaving a working Salla or Zid store without a reason. Move only when the logic or integration you need cannot be done there.
- Moving without product redirects. A new store that drops the old product addresses throws away the search pages you already had.
Where Devvista fits
For an online store we start from your catalogue, your checkout and the systems behind them, and only then choose the platform. If a Salla or Zid store already does the job, we will tell you so. Tell us your case and we will say honestly if we are a fit.
Related pages: website development, mobile app development, software development company, software for wholesale and distribution and the Saudi home page. To discuss your store, contact us.
Contact Devvista
Our address, phone and opening hours.
Amna Bint Wahb St, road, Jeddah 23622, Saudi Arabia
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Tell us what you sell, where you sell it today and which systems the store must talk to. We will quote it in writing after a short scoping call.
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- Get a clear planSteps, timeline and a cost range for your setup.
- DecideGo ahead with us, or take the plan with you.