How to evaluate real estate software vendors in Dubai, and avoid lock-in and unused licences

Why most brokerages pay for software they barely use

The usual story is not a bad product. It is a good demo, a purchase decision made by the owner, and a rollout that agents ignore because it adds work and does not remove any. Six months later the owner pays per user for people who log in once a month, and the "real" data lives in WhatsApp and personal spreadsheets. Two habits prevent this: choosing against your own written needs, and measuring use after you buy. Everything below serves those two habits.

A note on sources. The comparison pages I read were all vendor-authored: a CRM (customer relationship management system, the database of leads, clients and deals) vendor, a US brokerage-software vendor, agencies and a custom-build firm. Some were open about it. None is neutral, including this one, which is written by someone who builds software. Treat every number from a seller as that seller's number.

Decide what the software must do before you see a demo

Write a one-page list with three columns: must have, nice to have, and not needed. Ask the owner, one team leader and two agents to fill it in separately, then merge. Owners usually care about reports, control and exit; agents care about speed on a phone and how little typing is needed. A typical must-have list for a Dubai brokerage:

• Leads from Property Finder, Bayut and Dubizzle (the UAE property portals) arrive automatically, and listings can be published back to them.
• WhatsApp (the messaging app) conversations linked to the lead record.
• Arabic and English, in screens, documents and messages.
• Commission tracking, including splits.
• Tenancy and sales paperwork support.
• An owner dashboard.
• Full data export, any time.

Weight each item from 1 to 5 before the demos. The weights stop a charming salesperson from deciding for you. My guide on what to check before buying a CRM goes further on the first list.

The demo checklist: portals, WhatsApp, Arabic, forms, reports

Ask every vendor to show, not tell, using your tasks, in the same order:

1. A portal enquiry arrives. Show it appearing in the system, assigned to an agent, and what the agent sees on a phone. Ask how the connection is made, whether it is an official integration, and who maintains it when a portal changes something.
2. WhatsApp. Show a two-way conversation stored against the lead, and ask whether it uses the WhatsApp Business API (the official route for business messaging) or something else. Ask what Meta's message fees (Meta owns WhatsApp and charges for business messages) cost you on top; see the WhatsApp Business API guide.
3. Agent forwarded the lead to a colleague or left the company. Show the reassignment and where the history goes.
4. Paperwork. Show how a sales or leasing form is produced. Vendors often say "RERA compliant" (RERA is Dubai's Real Estate Regulatory Agency), which is vague. Ask which official documents it produces and who updates them when rules change.
5. A report. Ask for leads by source, uncontacted leads and agent activity from your sample data, live.
6. The Arabic test below.

Give the same tasks to every vendor. A demo of what the vendor wants to show is a presentation, not an evaluation.

A vendor-neutral 10-minute Arabic and bilingual test script

Brokerages often assume Arabic support means "there is an Arabic button". Real Arabic use is mixed: an Arabic name in an English screen, an English property name in an Arabic message, phone numbers inside Arabic text. This script works in any vendor's demo or trial. Do it yourself on the screen, not by watching. Prepare the text below in a note on your phone so you can paste it.

Minute	What to do	Pass if
0 to 2	Create a new contact with the name محمد عبدالله الفلاسي and a phone number +971 50 123 4567. Save and reopen it.	The name displays right to left, in the correct letter order, and the phone number keeps its digits in the right order.
2 to 3	Create a second contact with a mixed name such as Ahmed أحمد Al Mansoori.	The mixed text keeps a sensible order, nothing is cut off or reversed.
3 to 4	Search for the first contact using only the Arabic text, then using just the first name.	Both searches find the contact. (Ask whether searching "محمد" also finds names spelled with slight variants; note the answer.)
4 to 5	Add a note on the contact in Arabic: العميل يبحث عن شقة غرفتين في دبي مارينا, then an English sentence under it.	Both lines display correctly, with the right alignment for each line.
5 to 6	Switch the interface language to Arabic.	Menus, buttons and dates flip to right to left, nothing overlaps, and the system does not lose the data you entered.
6 to 8	Generate a document or email template for this contact, in Arabic, and send or preview it. Do the same for a WhatsApp template if the system supports it.	Arabic text prints and previews correctly, fonts are not broken, and the name is merged into the sentence in the right place.
8 to 9	Export the contacts to a spreadsheet and open the file on your own computer.	Arabic characters are readable, not question marks or strange symbols.
9 to 10	Ask the vendor three questions: which fields are bilingual (a name in two languages), do reports and invoices support Arabic, and does the support team answer in Arabic.	You get specific answers, not "yes of course".

Score each row as pass, partly, or fail, and write the date and vendor on the page. If you plan to use AI to read or write Arabic inside the system, test it separately; my notes on handling Arabic, English and Hindi may help. This is a usability test, not a certification. It shows quickly which vendor treats Arabic as a first-class language and which treats it as an afterthought.

Price: what to ask beyond per user

Ask each vendor for the total cost in dirhams, in writing, for your headcount at today's size and in 12 months. Separate:

• The per-user price, and any minimum monthly invoice.
• Any per-property or per-unit fee for property management.
• Setup, migration and training fees.
• Message costs. Meta charges for WhatsApp template messages, and a vendor may add a markup.
• Portal integration fees.
• Currency and VAT: is the quote in AED or USD, and does it include 5 percent VAT (value added tax)?
• The term: monthly, or 12 months, and what happens at renewal.

As an example of one vendor's published figures, PropSpace, a CRM built for UAE brokers, states on its own page (checked 2 November 2026) AED 220 per user per month before VAT, an AED 500 monthly minimum and a 12-month term, and its own blog says AED 11 per unit per month for property management and a free 7-day trial. Those are the vendor's figures, not a market average. Another seller's blog quotes a range for other tools, but those are not vendor prices, so ask the vendors. A price that is "available on request" is a negotiation, so get at least two quotes. For a flat-priced alternative, see Bitrix24 pricing explained (Bitrix24 is a CRM priced per company, not per user).

Data ownership and the export test

Lock-in has several forms. The ones I would check are: data formats you cannot open elsewhere, integrations that break if you leave, retraining your people, contract terms that make leaving expensive, and losing your history. The most useful test costs nothing: on the first day of the trial, export your data. Ask for the full export: contacts, leads, deals, notes, files and activity history. Open it. Is the lead source there? Do the notes come with dates? Can the deal history be understood without the vendor? If the export is thin on day one, it will not be better when you want to leave.

Also ask: who owns the leads if an agent leaves? The honest answer is your contract with the agent plus how your system is configured; make sure the system supports reassigning every record, history included. And check that agents' individual portal accounts and licence numbers map correctly, since a migration problem there is common; my guide to switching CRM without losing leads covers that.

Contract terms to read: renewal, notice, exit, retrieval window

• Auto-renewal: does it renew by itself, for how long, and at what price?
• Notice period: how many days before the end date must you cancel, in writing?
• Termination fees: what is owed if you leave early?
• Retrieval window: after you cancel, how long can you download your data, and in what formats?
• Price changes: can they raise the price mid-term?
• Minimums: a monthly minimum invoice means you pay for seats you do not use.
• Data location and deletion: where is data stored, and is it deleted on request?

Put the renewal and notice dates in your calendar on the day you sign. Have a lawyer read the contract; this is a checklist, not legal advice.

A 30-day pilot with three agents

Pick three agents: an enthusiast, a sceptic and one in the middle. Give them the real work for 30 days, not a sandbox. Before the pilot, define the success measures: the percent of their leads that have a logged next action, the time to first reply, and whether they would choose to keep using it. On day one, run the export test. On day 15, hold a short review. On day 30, decide against the scorecard, not on impressions. Vendors sometimes say migration or setup takes around two weeks; their own import step alone can run longer than that, so ask for the plan in working days and who does what.

After you buy: adoption and return tracking

Track these monthly:

1. Logins per agent.
2. Percent of active leads with a next action set.
3. Percent of closed deals recorded in the system.
4. Cost per active user, which is the monthly bill divided by agents who really used it.

I cannot give you a Dubai benchmark for any of these because I could not find independent ones. Measure your own baseline in month one and compare with month six. At renewal, cancel or downgrade seats that nobody used, and keep the evidence for the negotiation.

Using software and AI to run the evaluation itself

The evaluation is itself a document-heavy job that AI helps with, if you stay in charge:

• Compare vendor documents. Paste each vendor's price page and terms into Claude, an AI assistant, and ask: "List the price per user, any minimum, the term length, the renewal and notice terms, and anything unclear, quoting the sentence for each." Check each quote. See how to compare vendors from their own documents.
• Read the contract for traps. Ask for the clauses on renewal, termination, data return and price changes. It saves time, but it does not replace a lawyer.
• Track adoption. Export logins and lead activity monthly and have the assistant summarise who has gone quiet. A person has the conversation with the agent.

How should AI features inside the products be judged? The same way as any other feature: ask the vendor to run it on your own real data, with Arabic included, watch for confident wrong answers, and ask what it costs when it is used a lot. Do not buy on an AI feature list alone. If no product fits and you are considering building, my guide build or buy for a brokerage covers that decision, with my own interest stated.

How would I approach it?

I would write the needs list, take two or three demos with the same script, run the Arabic test and the export test in each, and pilot the front runner with three agents for a month on a short contract. Then I would set a monthly adoption check and a renewal reminder. The choice matters less than the habit of checking.