White-Label HighLevel in Saudi Arabia: A Guide for Agencies

A dental group in Riyadh logs in to the platform you sold them. Your logo is on the login page, but the menu is in English, the sidebar sits on the left, amounts show in dollars, and the appointment reminders you set up went out on a Friday morning when the clinic was closed. Nothing is broken, yet the software feels like something built for another country and rented to them.

This guide is for agencies that sell HighLevel (also called GoHighLevel) to businesses in Saudi Arabia, whether you are based in Riyadh, Jeddah or Dammam or serve the Kingdom from abroad. It covers what is specific to this market: Arabic-first teams and right-to-left layout, Arabic-Indic digits and the Hijri calendar, riyal pricing with 15 percent VAT and e-invoicing, the Sunday-to-Thursday week and Ramadan hours, the Personal Data Protection Law, and SMS sender rules. It ends with a step-by-step setup and a list of what can go wrong. GHL Dashboard Builder is an independent design service and is not affiliated with HighLevel; where our product helps, we say how, and where it does not, we say that too.

What is different about white-labeling HighLevel in Saudi Arabia?

The technical route is the same everywhere: HighLevel’s built-in white-label settings for your identity, then custom code for the look and the language. What changes in Saudi Arabia is what a client’s team expects to see after logging in. Most expect Arabic first, a right-to-left layout, riyal amounts, a week that starts on Sunday, and messages that respect local hours and law.

If you have not set up the identity layer yet, start with our guide on how to white-label HighLevel. It covers the logo, custom domain, API domain and legal links under Settings, Company, Whitelabel, and explains why those settings do not change colors, menu wording or language. Everything below assumes that layer is done.

The table shows how a default English HighLevel compares with what a typical Saudi client expects.

None of this is unusual for a Saudi business. It is how their bank app, government portals and accounting software already behave. A CRM that ignores it looks imported, and imported tools are the first ones a client questions when budgets are reviewed.

How is a Saudi setup different from a UAE one?

Many agencies serve the whole Gulf from one office and are tempted to copy a UAE setup to Saudi clients. That works for the theme, but at least six settings differ, and each one shows up as a small irritation for the Saudi team. Treat Saudi Arabia as its own market.

We covered the Emirates in our guide to white-labeling HighLevel in the UAE. The differences that matter most for Saudi clients are these.

The digit difference is the one that surprises agencies most. If you build a dashboard for a Dubai client in ar-AE and then switch the locale to ar-SA for a client in Riyadh, every number the browser formats can change from 1,281.70 to ١٬٢٨١٫٧٠. That may be exactly what the Saudi client wants, or it may confuse a team that types phone numbers in Western digits all day. Decide on purpose.

The week matters just as much. A workflow copied from a UAE client that waits until Monday morning to send a follow-up loses a full working day in Saudi Arabia, where Sunday is the first day of business. Saudi Arabia moved its weekend from Thursday and Friday to Friday and Saturday in June 2013, as Bloomberg reported at the time, and it has kept the Sunday-to-Thursday week since.

Why do Saudi teams expect an Arabic-first dashboard?

Because Arabic is the language most Saudi front-desk, sales and operations staff work in all day, and the software they already use is in Arabic. English is common among managers and in some sectors, but an English-only CRM puts the burden of translation on the people who use it most. Our own market notes put it plainly: business teams in Saudi Arabia expect Arabic-first software.

Arabic-first does not mean Arabic-only. In most Saudi client teams someone, often the owner or a manager trained abroad, will want English, and your own support staff may not read Arabic. The practical goal is an Arabic menu by default with English available for the people who need it.

What HighLevel offers natively

HighLevel has started translating its interface. HighLevel’s help center article on internationalization explains that a sub-account’s default language is set under Settings, Business Profile, Platform Language, and each user can override it under Settings, My Profile, Platform Language. The languages listed at the time of writing are mostly European.

Arabic is not on that list at the time of writing. On HighLevel’s public ideas board, the request for Arabic language support is marked as under review. HighLevel ships changes often, so check both pages before you tell a Saudi client what will or will not be in Arabic.

What a theme adds

Until native support exists, agencies add Arabic to HighLevel’s menu and navigation with custom code. A theme can translate the menu labels, switch the page direction to right-to-left, move the sidebar to the right, align inputs to the right and use an Arabic-capable font. It cannot translate text inside HighLevel’s own pages and builders, which follow HighLevel’s language settings.

Our guide to giving clients an Arabic HighLevel dashboard goes deeper into what mirrors well, what to test and which Arabic to use in the menu. For Saudi clients, the short version is: use Modern Standard Arabic for menu labels, ask the client which words they use for their own customers and deals, and have a native speaker on their team read every label before launch.

Which digits, dates and calendar should a Saudi dashboard use?

Use the digits your client asks for, write dates day before month, and show Hijri dates where the client’s own documents use them. Browsers pick defaults from the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), and the Saudi defaults differ from both the UAE ones and from English.

What browsers do by default

We formatted the same amount and date in Node.js 22 with ICU 77.1, which ships CLDR version 47. Browsers use the same data, though versions vary.

Three practical points follow from this table.

1. Arabic-Indic digits are the Arabic default. If your theme or a report formats numbers with ar-SA, the client sees Arabic-Indic digits. Some clients are happy with that in Arabic text. Others prefer Western digits everywhere because phone numbers, IDs and invoice numbers are typed that way. Ask, then set the numbering explicitly instead of relying on the default.
2. English for Saudi Arabia writes the month first. In this data, en-SA formats the short date as 10/6/26, the American order. A Saudi manager reading an English interface may take that as 10 June. If a client uses English, prefer a day-first English format such as 06/10/2026, or write the month as a word.
3. The Gregorian calendar is the default, Hijri is an option. In the CLDR 47 data we tested, ar-SA formats dates in the Gregorian calendar unless you ask for the Islamic Umm al-Qura calendar. Check on the browsers your client’s team actually uses.

The Hijri calendar in business software

Saudi Arabia officially uses the Umm al-Qura version of the Hijri (Islamic lunar) calendar alongside the Gregorian one. In October 2016 the government moved civil-service pay to the Gregorian calendar, as Qantara reported, and most private businesses schedule appointments and issue invoices by Gregorian dates. Hijri dates still appear on official documents, in religious holidays and in some clients’ letters.

For HighLevel, that usually means Gregorian dates in calendars and workflows, which HighLevel handles, plus Hijri dates where your client wants them in content: a Ramadan offer email, a holiday notice or a contract reminder. Write those dates in the content yourself rather than expecting HighLevel to convert them.

The new riyal sign

In February 2025 Saudi Arabia approved a new symbol for the riyal, and the Unicode Consortium announced that it would be encoded as U+20C1 SAUDI RIYAL SIGN, which arrived in Unicode 17.0. Browser locale data in our test still writes the currency as ر.س. or SAR. If a client wants the new sign in banners or menu labels, check that the chosen font contains it; a font without the glyph shows an empty box. Until your fonts support it, SAR or ر.س. is the safe choice.

How should you price in riyals, and what about VAT and e-invoicing?

Price in riyals if your clients think in riyals, show VAT clearly, and confirm with each client’s accountant how tax invoices are issued. The riyal’s fixed rate to the dollar makes your US-dollar costs predictable, but the tax side is stricter than in many markets.

The riyal peg

The Saudi riyal has been pegged to the US dollar at 3.75 riyals per dollar since 1986, as a Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) working paper on exchange rate policy describes. For an agency, this removes currency risk on the costs you pay in dollars, including your HighLevel subscription, most add-ons and software tools.

The chart converts HighLevel’s listed monthly plan prices into riyals at the peg. HighLevel bills in US dollars; the riyal figures are for planning, and the prices change from time to time, so confirm them on HighLevel’s pricing page.

StarterSAR 364

UnlimitedSAR 1,114

Agency Pro (SaaS mode)SAR 1,864

Source: HighLevel's listed USD prices ($97, $297 and $497 a month, at the time of writing; confirm on gohighlevel.com/pricing), converted at the fixed rate of 3.75 SAR per USD described by SAMA.

VAT at 15 percent

Saudi Arabia’s standard VAT rate rose from 5 to 15 percent on 1 July 2020, as PwC’s tax summary for Saudi Arabia records. That is three times the UAE rate, so a price that looks fine before tax in Dubai looks noticeably higher after tax in Riyadh. State on your price list whether amounts include VAT. Whether you charge Saudi VAT on your own services depends on where your business is registered and on the service; ask an accountant.

E-invoicing with ZATCA

The Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) runs a national e-invoicing system called Fatoora. Phase 2, the integration phase, connects businesses’ invoicing systems to ZATCA’s platform in waves by turnover. According to EY’s summary of the 24th wave, that wave covers resident taxpayers with taxable turnover above 375,000 riyals in 2022, 2023 or 2024, with a deadline between 1 April and 30 June 2026.

This matters for HighLevel because HighLevel has invoices, payment links and products. Do not position HighLevel’s invoices as your client’s tax invoicing system unless their accountant has confirmed it meets their obligations. A common pattern is to use HighLevel for quotes, payment links and reminders, and the client’s ZATCA-integrated accounting system for the tax invoice itself. Say this in your onboarding so nobody assumes otherwise.

Set the sub-account to riyals

Inside each client’s sub-account, set the currency to SAR in the payment and invoice settings so products, invoices and payment links show riyals. If you resell HighLevel in SaaS mode, decide whether your public price list is in SAR, USD or both, and print the currency on every line.

How do the Saudi week and Ramadan affect automations and support?

The Saudi business week runs Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday off, and during Ramadan the labor law limits Muslim employees in the private sector to six hours a day. Both change when your clients’ staff are at their desks, which is when reminders, follow-ups and support should happen.

The working week

Under Article 98 of the Saudi labor law, normal working time is at most eight hours a day or 48 hours a week, and in Ramadan it is at most six hours a day or 36 hours a week for Muslim workers, as Etqan Law Firm’s guide to Saudi working hours summarizes. Many companies work five days, Sunday to Thursday, but some retailers, clinics and salons open on Saturday or in the evening. Ask each client for their real hours.

Ramadan

Note the difference from the UAE. In Saudi Arabia the Ramadan reduction in the labor law applies to Muslim employees, so a mixed team may have staff on six-hour days and others on normal hours. Many businesses also move their busiest customer hours to the evening, after iftar, the meal that breaks the fast.

Normal week48 hours

Ramadan week, Muslim employees36 hours

These are legal maximums. Each employer sets its own schedule within them. Source: Saudi labor law, Article 98, as summarized by Etqan Law Firm: 8 hours a day or 48 a week normally; 6 hours a day or 36 a week in Ramadan for Muslim workers.

Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year. In the Umm al-Qura calendar data built into ICU, 1 Ramadan 1448 falls on 8 February 2027 and 1 Shawwal, the first day of Eid al-Fitr, on 9 March 2027. Those are calendar calculations; the official dates depend on moon sighting and are announced shortly before, so treat them as planning dates only.

What to change in HighLevel

1. Time zone. In each sub-account’s business profile, set the time zone to Saudi Arabia (Asia/Riyadh). The Kingdom does not use daylight saving time, so the offset stays the same all year.
2. Business hours in workflows. Where a workflow waits for business hours before sending a message or creating a task, set the window to Sunday to Thursday and the client’s real opening times.
3. Calendar availability. Set booking hours per calendar. Close Friday unless the client opens, and check Saturday with clinics and salons.
4. A Ramadan schedule. Save a second set of hours for Ramadan with shorter days and, for customer-facing businesses, evening slots. Switch it on when the month is announced.
5. Holiday pauses. Block Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha in calendars once dates are announced, and pause promotional campaigns during them unless the campaign is about the holiday.

What does Saudi Arabia’s data protection law mean for your HighLevel setup?

Saudi Arabia’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) covers the contacts, conversations, notes and deal values in your clients’ HighLevel accounts. It took effect on 14 September 2023 and became fully enforceable on 14 September 2024, after a one-year grace period, as Clyde & Co explains. The regulator is the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA). This section is an overview, not legal advice.

Unlike the UAE, where financial free zones have their own regimes, Saudi Arabia has one national data protection law for your clients. That makes the starting point simpler, but the law is detailed, and SDAIA has issued implementing regulations and a separate regulation on transfers outside the Kingdom.

The rules that touch a CRM most

• Marketing needs consent and an easy way out. The implementing regulations allow personal data to be used for direct marketing when it was collected from the person and they gave prior consent, and they require a simple way to stop receiving marketing at any time, according to Clyde & Co’s summary of the implementing regulations.
• Transfers outside the Kingdom have conditions. SDAIA updated its regulation on transferring personal data outside Saudi Arabia in September 2024. HighLevel is a cloud platform, so ask where data is processed and whether your client needs safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.
• People have rights. Contacts can ask to see, correct or delete their data. Your team must know how to do that in HighLevel.

Screen-shares are a data protection issue

Agencies show HighLevel all the time: sales demos to new Saudi prospects, support calls, recorded training for a client’s new receptionist. Each one can show real names, phone numbers and deal values to people who should not see them. Under a consent-first law, a recorded walkthrough full of a clinic’s patient names is the kind of exposure you want to avoid. Blur client data before you share, every time.

What should SMS and WhatsApp look like for Saudi clients?

SMS works in Saudi Arabia, but carriers require registered sender names and restrict promotional traffic, and Arabic texts fit fewer characters per message. WhatsApp templates must be approved in Arabic. Sort both out before you promise a Saudi client automated campaigns.

SMS sender IDs and sending hours

According to Twilio’s Saudi Arabia SMS guidelines, alphanumeric sender IDs must be registered in advance with supporting documents such as a no-objection letter on company letterhead, numeric sender IDs are blocked, messages with links may be filtered, and promotional messages should be sent only between 9am and 8pm local time. The same page says Twilio cannot register sender IDs for domestic brands based in Saudi Arabia because of a rule against reselling domestic traffic. If your client is a Saudi company, check early which provider can register their sender name and how it connects to HighLevel.

In practice, this means three changes to how you build workflows for Saudi clients:

1. Keep promotional SMS inside the allowed daytime window, and set workflow send windows accordingly.
2. Avoid links in SMS where you can; send the link by WhatsApp or email instead, or test delivery carefully.
3. Separate transactional messages, such as appointment confirmations, from promotional ones, because carriers treat them differently.

Arabic SMS is shorter per segment

An SMS that contains any Arabic letter is encoded as UCS-2, which allows 70 characters in a single message, compared with 160 for plain English text in the GSM-7 alphabet, as Twilio explains in its guide to SMS length. Longer messages are split into segments and each segment is billed.

English (GSM-7)160 characters

Arabic (UCS-2)70 characters

Source: Twilio: How long can an SMS message be? (GSM-7 160 characters; UCS-2, used for Arabic, 70 characters per single message).

Keep Arabic reminders short: the date, the time, the place and one instruction. A Riyadh clinic’s reminder can fit in one segment if you cut greetings to a word and leave out the clinic’s full legal name.

WhatsApp templates

If your Saudi clients talk to their customers on WhatsApp, plan the templates early. WhatsApp templates are approved per language, and Arabic uses the language code ar in Meta’s list of supported template languages. Create Arabic and English versions of each template your workflows send, and get both approved before launch.

Which Saudi industries fit which template?

Corporate and professional services, healthcare and real estate are three client types a Saudi agency is likely to meet, and each expects a different look and different words in the menu. The three templates we suggest for this market on our Saudi Arabia page are built for them: Executive, Clinic and Estate.

We do not publish sector sizes or HighLevel adoption figures for Saudi Arabia, because we have not found a reliable source that measures them. The table below is about fit.

Corporate and professional services

Executive suits firms whose clients judge them on composure: consultancies, B2B service firms, recruitment and finance-adjacent businesses. Navy and gold read as serious and established. The top navigation leaves more width for pipelines and reports, which managers in these firms look at most.

Clinics

Clinics need a calm interface a receptionist can learn in a day. Ask the clinic which Arabic word they use for patients and treatments in their own documents and use it in the menu. Our guide to HighLevel for dental and medical practices covers the clinic setup in detail, including reminders and privacy.

Real estate

Brokerages live in the pipeline and on the phone, and they share their screen with buyers and investors. Renaming Opportunities to Listings in Arabic removes a translation step, and privacy mode keeps buyer names off a shared screen.

Whatever template you start from, change the colors to your brand or your client’s, and check contrast. The W3C’s accessibility guidance sets a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1 for normal text; by our calculation, Executive’s muted gold (#B08D57) reaches about 4.6 to 1 on its navy (#1B2A4A) but only about 3.1 to 1 on white, so keep gold text on dark backgrounds.

How do you set up a white-label HighLevel for a Saudi client, step by step?

Finish the identity layer, agree the language and number choices with the client, prepare the sub-account for Saudi conventions, then install and test the theme on one sub-account before rolling it out. The steps assume you have agency access and HighLevel’s white-label domain and logo are already set.

Step 1: Agree the basics with the client

1. List the people who will log in and the language each one reads best.
2. Choose the default menu language (usually Arabic) and who needs English.
3. Ask whether they want Arabic-Indic or Western digits, and whether any documents need Hijri dates.
4. Ask for the Arabic words they use for customers, deals and appointments.
5. Ask who issues their tax invoices and whether they are already integrated with ZATCA.

Step 2: Prepare the sub-account

1. Open the client’s sub-account and go to Settings, Business Profile.
2. Check the business name, address and phone number in the format the client uses, with the +966 country code.
3. Set the time zone to Saudi Arabia (Asia/Riyadh).
4. Set the currency to SAR in the payment settings.
5. For users who prefer a language HighLevel supports natively, set it under Settings, My Profile, Platform Language.

Step 3: Prepare messages and consent

1. Create Arabic versions of the forms, consent text and key SMS, email and WhatsApp templates, with English versions where needed.
2. Link the client’s Arabic privacy policy from every form.
3. Set calendar hours and workflow windows to Sunday to Thursday, keep promotional SMS inside the daytime window, and save a Ramadan schedule.
4. Confirm the SMS sender ID registration and the WhatsApp template approvals.

Step 4: Install the theme on one sub-account

1. In the agency view, open Settings, Company, Whitelabel and scroll to Custom Code.
2. Copy anything already in the Custom CSS and Custom JavaScript boxes into a text file. That is your rollback.
3. Paste the theme’s CSS into Custom CSS and its JavaScript into Custom JavaScript, then save. HighLevel warns about third-party scripts; confirm only if you trust the code.
4. If the theme targets chosen sub-accounts, confirm the test sub-account is on the list.
5. Open the test sub-account in a new tab and hard-refresh.

If you want to understand what the CSS part can and cannot change before you paste anything, our guide to HighLevel custom CSS explains selectors, updates and safe practices.

Step 5: Test like a Saudi user

1. Ask an Arabic-speaking team member to read every menu label and the sub-account switcher.
2. Walk through the dashboard, conversations, calendars, contacts, opportunities and payments.
3. Create a contact with an Arabic name, an English email and a +966 mobile number, and check alignment and digits.
4. Open a date picker, a filter and a confirmation dialog.
5. Check an amount in riyals and a date in the client’s chosen format.
6. Narrow the window to phone width and open the menu.
7. Turn on privacy mode and record a short test video to confirm names and numbers are blurred.

When the test sub-account looks right, add the next Saudi client or apply the design more widely.

What can go wrong, and what doesn’t a theme solve?

Most problems in Saudi setups come from copied locale settings, a UAE week left in workflows, unregistered SMS senders and expectations that translating the menu translates everything. Plan for them and tell clients in advance.

There are also limits no theme removes. HighLevel does not officially support custom code, so a platform update can require a theme refresh. A theme changes how HighLevel looks in the browser; it does not translate your content, HighLevel’s builders, its system emails or its mobile app. And it does not make your setup compliant with the PDPL, VAT or SMS rules on its own: consent, opt-outs, access control, sender registration and tax invoicing remain your responsibility and your client’s.

How does GHL Dashboard Builder handle a Saudi setup?

GHL Dashboard Builder designs a branded HighLevel dashboard visually and installs it with two short snippets in Settings, Company, Whitelabel, Custom Code. For Saudi agencies, the relevant parts are the Arabic, right-to-left menu, sub-account targeting, industry templates and privacy mode. Here is what the product does today, taken from our own features page.

• Arabic and right-to-left. Menu and navigation in 15 languages including Arabic, with the layout switched to right-to-left and your own wording for any label. See the list of languages.
• Arabic fonts. Arabic-capable fonts such as Noto Sans Arabic, IBM Plex Sans Arabic, Cairo, Tajawal, Almarai and Readex Pro.
• Menu editor. Rename, reorder and hide any of HighLevel’s 19 menu items, so a clinic sees Patients and a brokerage sees Listings, in Arabic or English.
• One sub-account or a few. Limit a design to chosen sub-accounts, by link or Location ID, while the rest keep their current look.
• Privacy mode. An eye button that blurs contact names, emails, phone numbers, the conversation list and deal values.
• Templates for this market. Executive, Clinic and Estate as starting points, among the 27 templates available on every plan.
• Upkeep. Every plan includes 12 months of updates through HighLevel’s changes; Agency includes them for life.

The free builder lets you try a template, your colors, your business name, Arabic and privacy mode on a live preview without an account. Getting the install code needs a plan. Our prices are in US dollars; the chart converts them at the riyal peg for planning.

Starter (one-time)SAR 675

Pro (one-time)SAR 1,050

Agency (one-time)SAR 3,300

We bill in US dollars. No plan has a monthly fee. Arabic and the other languages are included from the Pro plan. Source: GHL Dashboard Builder pricing (USD $180, $280 and $880, all one-time), October 2026, converted at 3.75 SAR per USD.

Which plan fits depends on the language requirement. All three plans are one-time payments with no monthly fee. Starter ($180) covers one branded design from a template, with colors, fonts, sidebar, header, buttons, the welcome banner, notification pop-ups, privacy mode and sub-account targeting, but not the language settings. Arabic right-to-left, menu renames and a branded login page start at Pro ($280), where we also install it for you, for up to 3 designs. Agency ($880) adds up to 100 designs, a look designed by our team and lifetime updates. Starter and Pro include 12 months of updates, then optional at $99 a year (about SAR 371). Current details are on the pricing page.

The limits are the ones described above. Arabic mirrors the parts our theme restyles, not every inner screen of HighLevel. From Pro, the branded login page installs on your white-label sign-in page, with your agency logo and HighLevel’s Platform Language picker. Our FAQ answers questions about installation, removal and data: the builder never connects to your HighLevel account, and the installed code does not send data anywhere.

What to do next

1. List your Saudi clients and, for each, who logs in, which language they read best, and whether they want Arabic-Indic or Western digits.
2. Fix the basics in every Saudi sub-account: Asia/Riyadh time zone, SAR currency, Sunday-to-Thursday hours and a saved Ramadan schedule.
3. Check SMS sender registration and Arabic WhatsApp templates before you launch any automated campaign, and agree with each client’s accountant how tax invoices are issued.
4. Add Arabic consent text and a privacy policy link to every form, and turn on a way to blur client data before your next demo.
5. Try the Arabic preview in the free builder with your Saudi client’s colors, then install on one sub-account and test it with a native speaker before rolling it out.