In our own online store, 57% of the conversations with the AI stylist happened at night or on weekends, when nobody on the team was there to answer. That is the whole case for an AI assistant on a business website. Below: how it works, what it costs in the UAE in 2026, where it goes wrong, and when you don't need one.
Short answer
Short answer. An AI assistant for a business website costs from $199 a month for up to 500 conversations, or $399 a month with WhatsApp Business and up to 2,000 conversations. A version connected to your CRM, booking system or catalog starts from $4,500 as a project. Launch usually takes 1-2 weeks.
- It answers from your own data (website, price list, documents) and hands complex questions to a person with the full chat.
- Arabic, English and Russian are included in every plan.
How an AI assistant differs from a button chatbot
A classic website chatbot is a menu in a chat window: "Prices", "Delivery", "Contact us". The customer clicks, the bot shows a prepared text. It works until someone types a question in their own words, which is most of the time.
An AI assistant reads the question as written and finds the answer in your data. "Do you deliver to Sharjah on Friday?" and "delivery sharjah friday?" get the same answer. When the data doesn't contain the answer, a good assistant says so and calls a person instead of guessing.
What it does and what it doesn't
Does
- Answers routine questions day and night: prices, services, hours, delivery, how to book.
- Takes an enquiry: name, contact, what the customer needs. You get an alert in Telegram or by email.
- Hands complaints, custom orders and negotiation to a manager, who replies from a phone app with the whole chat in view.
- Shows what people ask: a weekly report with the top questions and what it couldn't answer.
Doesn't
- Doesn't replace your team. Complex questions always go to a person.
- Doesn't make things up. No discounts, dates or stock that aren't in your data.
- Doesn't promise a sales uplift in percent. We show how many questions and enquiries came in while you were away.
WhatsApp and Arabic: what matters in the UAE
If your customers already write to you on WhatsApp, the real question is who answers there at 11 pm. In the Business and Custom plans the assistant replies right in WhatsApp Business. Meta charges its own message fees, and we pass them through at cost.
Arabic, English and Russian are included in every plan. When a manager takes over a chat, the assistant goes quiet, so the customer never gets two answers at once.
What an AI chatbot costs in the UAE in 2026
| Plan | What's included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Up to 500 conversations a month, website chat, knowledge from your site and documents, three languages, weekly report. | $199 a month |
| Business | Everything in Starter, up to 2,000 conversations, WhatsApp Business, enquiries straight into your CRM, a monthly chat review with you. | $399 a month |
| Custom | Connection to your CRM, booking system or catalog: live prices, stock and statuses. Custom scenarios, an internal assistant for staff. | from $4,500 |
Setup is free when you pay for three months upfront. AI model usage is included in the plan. A conversation counts toward the limit when the assistant replied in it at least once that month; spam doesn't count.
The price follows the data behind the chat. If answers can come from your website and a price list, a monthly plan is enough. If the customer asks "is this in stock in Dubai Mall today" and the answer lives in your system, that is a Custom project.
Where it goes wrong: a case from our own store
Our AI stylist IRIS works in our fashion store IWANT. It puts together an outfit and finds the size from the store catalog and shows product cards right in the chat. In the first six weeks it had about 200 conversations.
On 30 September a shopper asked it to "put together a casual look for the day". The stylist found sneakers, jeans and T-shirts but ran out of its 35 seconds before assembling the outfit, and the chat handed the question to a manager. For the shopper it looked like "passed to the team" instead of an outfit.
We changed the behavior the same day: if the model runs out of time, the shopper gets an outfit built from what was already found, and a manager is called only if the search found nothing. The same request now comes together in 13 seconds. What we took from it: the demo tells you little. Watch what the assistant does when it can't cope. A good one hands over to a person or answers with what it already found, and never invents.
When you don't need one
- You get a few enquiries a week and answer all of them within minutes anyway.
- Almost every question is individual: a quote only after a site visit, a price only after a call.
And if your website doesn't say what you sell and for how much, start with the website. The assistant can't answer what isn't written down.
How to check it before paying
On our AI assistant page you paste your website link and leave a contact. The assistant reads your pages and in about half a minute starts answering questions on that same page. If you like it, we put it on your website for 14 days free of charge.
- Ask it ten real questions from your inbox, not "hello, who are you".
- Ask something that isn't on your website and see whether it admits it or makes something up.
- Ask for a manager and see what happens next: who gets the alert and whether the chat history comes along.
- Ask the same question in Arabic and in English.
If it passes these on your own pages, put it on your website for the 14 free days and read the first weekly report: it shows which questions came in and which ones it couldn't answer.
