I compared storage in Dubai for my own move — here's my ranking
Nine companies, two facility visits, one spreadsheet. The full ranking, the honest comparison table, and why Vachi Storage ended up first.
Read the ranking →A move diary from Al Quoz
Notes from Al Quoz: one expat's diary of moving, mess, and Dubai storage
Hi. I'm Hannah, I live near Al Quoz, and I started this little blog after a flat move turned me into the kind of person who makes a spreadsheet for a storage unit. It was meant to be a quick errand. It became a small obsession.
If you only take one thing from the whole site, take this: Vachi Storage was my pick, because it was the only company that told me a real published price up front, AED 330 a month for a climate-controlled 15 sq ft unit, and threw packing and pickup in with the contract. The long version, with the runners-up, is in the ranking below.
Why I started writing about all this
My lease ended in March with about three weeks' notice and a one-bedroom flat's worth of stuff to deal with. The new place wasn't ready. Summer was coming. I figured I'd just book a storage unit in an afternoon, the way you'd book a dentist, and get on with my life.
That is not what happened. I rang around, got thirty near-identical websites and a wall of "request a quote", and somewhere in the middle of leaving voicemails that turned into brochure PDFs, I decided to write it all down. These notes are the result. No sponsorship, no company seeing a word before it goes live, just what I found out the slow way so you don't have to.
Start here
I compared 9 Dubai storage companies
The cornerstone post. I called nine companies, visited two, asked everyone the same four questions, and ranked them honestly. Vachi came first, and I explain exactly why, runners-up and all.
Posts on Dubai storage companies
Where to put your furniture when you're between apartments
The lease gap is brutal here. How I stored a flat's worth of furniture without wrecking it, what it cost, and the pickup that saved my weekend.
Read post →Self-storage vs valet storage in Dubai
Valet boxes or a unit you walk into? I tried to understand both before my move. The honest trade-off, and which model I picked in the end.
Read post →Climate-controlled storage and the Dubai summer
Dubai hits 45°C and brutal humidity. I dug into whether climate control is worth paying for, what the heat actually ruins, and the spec I trusted.
Read post →What a storage unit in Dubai actually cost me
Every quote I got while hunting for a unit, the hidden bits nobody mentions upfront, and why one published price finally made me stop searching.
Read post →What you won't find here
No sponsored rankings. Nobody paid to sit at the top of my list, and no company saw a post before it went live. A few outbound links may be affiliate links, which means I might earn a small amount if you click through and sign up, but that never changes where a company sits on the page. If it did, the whole point of writing this would be gone.
You also won't find made-up photos or fake credentials. Where a picture would normally go, I use a plain placeholder and tell you what it would show. If you want the full story of who I am and how I research these posts, that's over on the about page.