If your company has ever received three website proposals it could not compare, the problem was the brief, not the agencies. Each bidder priced different assumptions about Arabic content, mada payments, ZATCA e-invoicing, data protection and hosting, so the cheapest quote won by leaving things out. This article is the Saudi-specific fix: a copy-ready brief template plus a weighted scoring sheet. For the generic foundations of any website RFP, start with our web development RFP template; this page adds only what that template cannot — the Saudi scope lines and the scoring method.
The short answer: the template and the scoring sheet, ready to copy
Your RFP needs nine parts: background and goals; scope, split into included and excluded; the Saudi scope lines below, priced separately by every bidder; content responsibilities, including who writes and approves the Arabic; technical and hosting requirements; ownership and exit clauses; a budget range and timeline; submission rules; and the scoring sheet you will judge by, published inside the RFP itself. Score each proposal 1 to 5 per criterion, multiply by the weight, and total — the sheet gives Saudi delivery real weight, so a low price cannot win on missing Arabic, payments or invoicing work.
Why Saudi website quotes cannot be compared (and what an RFP fixes)
A conversation is not a specification. When the brief lives in meetings and email threads, one agency assumes Arabic pages are included and another prices translation as an extra; one includes mada and ZATCA integration and another treats both as phase two. The totals look comparable and are not. An RFP fixes this by making every bidder answer the same document — same scope lines, same exclusions, same format — so the differences that remain are real: approach, team and price. Our wider guide to web development in Saudi Arabia gives the market context.
Before you write: decisions to settle internally first
Agree four things before drafting. First, the decision-maker: one named person who can approve scope and sign. Second, a budget range you are willing to state — hiding it produces proposals priced for different projects, and our guide to how much a website costs helps calibrate it. Third, your non-negotiables: launch deadline, platform constraints, and whether Arabic launches with the site or follows it. Fourth, who inside the company supplies content, product data and approvals, and how fast. Agencies price risk they can see far more fairly than risk they must guess.
The brief template, section by section (with the Saudi sections generic templates miss)
One, background and goals: what the company does, who the site serves, what success looks like in measurable terms. Two, current state: existing site, platform, analytics access, what is kept. Three, scope: every page type and feature, tagged must-have or later, exclusions stated plainly. Four, the Saudi scope lines — the next section, and the part generic templates never contain. Five, content: who writes, translates and approves, in which language first. Six, technical requirements: platform, integrations, performance and accessibility expectations. Seven, ownership and exit clauses. Eight, timeline, budget range and submission rules. Nine, the scoring sheet and selection dates.
The Saudi scope lines every bidder must price: Arabic, mada, ZATCA, PDPL, hosting
Require each as a separately priced line, never buried in a total. Arabic and RTL: which pages are Arabic at launch, whether Arabic is written natively or translated, who approves it, and full right-to-left layout — not mirrored English pages. Payments: mada acceptance alongside cards, named as a deliverable with live-environment testing. ZATCA e-invoicing: if the site sells or takes orders, state that invoicing must integrate with the ZATCA Fatoora system as ZATCA specifies, and ask how the bidder has handled it before. PDPL: what personal data the site collects, where consent is captured, and how data-subject requests will be handled, aligned with the Personal Data Protection Law published by SDAIA. Hosting: where the site will be hosted — and if your contracts or sector require in-Kingdom hosting, state it as a requirement, not a preference. Use our checklist of what a Saudi website quote should include as the completeness test for every reply: a proposal missing one of these lines has not priced your project.
Ownership and exit: the clauses to state before anyone quotes
State in the RFP that the domain, hosting account, code, design files, content and analytics properties are registered in your company's name and transfer in full on final payment — and ask each bidder to confirm it in writing inside its proposal. Add that admin access is handed over at launch, that no core element is licensed back to you, and that a documented exit handover is provided if you later move providers. Our website handover ownership checklist shows what a complete handover contains; the RFP needs only the requirement line, stated early enough that no bidder can price lock-in into the deal.
Submission rules that keep proposals comparable (format, deadline, questions window)
Comparability is a format decision. Require the same structure from everyone: scope priced line by line against your sections, exclusions listed explicitly, a named team, calendar dates rather than week numbers, and references. Set one deadline, one channel, and a questions window closing several days before it — with all answers shared to every bidder, so nobody gains an advantage from a private clarification. State a page limit, that late or non-conforming proposals may be excluded, and the selection dates. Bidders who know the timetable staff their proposals properly; bidders kept guessing send placeholders.
The scoring sheet: weighted criteria and how to total them (table)
Score independently first, then meet to reconcile. Each scorer rates every criterion 1 (weak or missing) to 5 (specific, evidenced, complete), multiplies by the weight, and totals out of 500.
| Criterion | Weight % | What a 5 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding and approach | 15 | Restates your goals; proposes a method, not a feature list |
| Relevant bilingual work | 15 | Comparable Arabic/English projects you can inspect |
| Arabic and RTL delivery | 10 | Native Arabic process, named reviewers, true RTL build |
| Saudi payments and invoicing scope | 10 | mada and ZATCA lines priced, tested, evidenced |
| Technical, hosting and PDPL plan | 10 | Hosting location answered; data duties addressed |
| Team and continuity | 10 | Named people; a plan if someone leaves |
| Timeline realism | 10 | Dates that account for your approval duties |
| Ownership and exit terms | 10 | Full transfer in your name, unconditionally |
| Verification evidence | 5 | Commercial registration and business credentials supplied |
| Price completeness | 5 | Every line priced; exclusions costed, not hidden |
Price carries only five points directly, because an incomplete cheap proposal is the most expensive outcome. Totals within roughly ten percent are a tie: break them with reference calls and the quality of the questions each bidder asked during the window.
Shortlisting: presentations, reference checks and the exclusions test
Invite the top two or three scorers to present, asking each the same questions: walk us through the Arabic approval process, show us a mada and ZATCA delivery, explain your exclusions. Then run the exclusions test on the leading proposal: list everything it leaves out — content writing, redirects, training, post-launch support — and price those gaps before comparing totals. Call the references and ask above all: what did the final invoice differ on? If two quotes still need a forensic comparison after shortlisting, our guide to comparing Saudi website quotes line by line covers that next step. One boundary: this RFP is a private company document, not a government tender — public procurement runs through the Etimad platform under the Government Tenders and Procurement Law, a separate process with its own rules, so never present a private template as a compliant tender document.
When you do not need an RFP at all — and what to send instead
An RFP earns its effort on multi-agency, multi-stakeholder or integration-heavy projects. For a small, well-understood site, it is overhead: send a one-page brief instead — goals, pages, the Saudi scope lines that apply, deadline, budget range — and request an itemised quote against it. Judge any agency partly by its reply: a detailed, itemised proposal returned promptly against your structure is itself evidence of how the project will be run. Buyers exploring the market can start from our Saudi Arabia services overview.
Common mistakes in website RFPs
The recurring errors: no budget range, so proposals price different projects; Saudi scope lines left as assumptions, so the cheapest bid is simply the emptiest; scoring weights decided after proposals arrive, which lets the preferred bidder set the rules; no questions window, so clarifications happen privately and unevenly; and ownership left to the contract stage, when leverage has gone. A further mistake is copying a government-style legal template and calling it a website RFP — procurement law, no website.
FAQ
Is a private company RFP the same as a government tender in Saudi Arabia?
No. A private RFP is your own commercial document, governed by the terms you set. Government procurement follows the Government Tenders and Procurement Law and runs through the Etimad platform, with formal procedures a private template does not satisfy and should never claim to.
Should we include a budget range in the RFP?
Yes. A range filters out agencies that cannot work within it and forces every proposal onto the same scope. Without one, bidders guess — and the guesses, not the agencies, are what differ. You can still negotiate once comparable proposals are in.
How many agencies should receive the RFP?
Invite four to six agencies whose work you have already inspected, and expect three to five serious replies. Fewer gives you no real comparison; more means the strongest agencies, who can choose their work, often decline to invest in a crowded process.
What makes the Arabic scope line so important?
Because it is the line most often assumed rather than priced. One bidder includes natively written, fully right-to-left Arabic pages; another adds machine translation later as an extra. Unless the RFP defines the Arabic deliverable, the cheaper-looking quote is usually the one without it.
Can we score price separately from quality?
Yes, and on larger projects you should. Have the committee score the technical criteria first, without prices, then open and score the commercial proposals. It stops a low number anchoring the quality judgement — and the weighted sheet above works either way.
Send us the brief — get an itemised proposal back (CTA)
Already have a brief, or want the project scoped for you instead of running a full RFP? Send WebStackRank your document and we will answer it in your structure, line by line. See how we approach web development in Saudi Arabia, and judge the reply by the same scoring sheet: as an example of the response standard you can demand, our proposals are itemised and returned within 24 business hours.
