A company in Dubai can have a valid trade License , renewed on time and printed on every invoice, but still have no licence to service your air conditioner.
The register explains how. A mainland license lists the activities a company is allowed to perform, and they are separate lines. So, “Air-Condition Trading” (activity code 4759008) is basically a company that sells split and window units. The one that covers servicing units and cleaning air ducts is “Air-Conditioning, Ventilations & Air Filtration Systems Installation & Maintenance” (4322005). Both licenses are valid again. Only one of them is right for the job.
Everlook, a young Dubai home services marketplace, built its product around that problem. On Everlook, you can’t submit a single offer until your trade licence has been verified. This is the story of that gate: who built it, how the check works step by step, and why the startup put it before the first offer instead of after the first complaint.
The startup behind the gate
Everlook Portal LLC is based in an office in Al Khubaisi, Deira, according to its Google Play developer listing. It’s a marketplace for the city’s new towers, run from one of its oldest commercial districts.
The model is pretty straightforward on the customer side. You describe the job, the technicians give you a quote, you have a chat with them on the app, hire one and pay the technician directly. Customers never pay Everlook. So, technicians and companies can create a free profile, and as the company says, they only pay for the leads they get.
The product moves fast. The iOS version history shows an AI job chat added in July 2026, phone sign-in by WhatsApp or SMS in September, and in version 2.18, released in October, a shortlist of up to three pros per job with a review once the work is done. Even when they’ve released a bunch of new stuff, there’s one rule that stays the same. Everlook’s FAQ sums it up nicely: “We make sure they’ve got the right permits before they can make offers.”
How Everlook verifies a technician’s license, step by step
The check runs on the technician’s side, before they ever see a customer.
- The technician joins. A company or independent pro creates a free profile and picks the categories and areas it works in.
- The license goes in. The technician submits the company’s trade license details.
- Everlook reads the register. The lookup runs against the public register of the Department of Economic Development (DED), now part of Dubai Economy and Tourism, which records every company licensed to trade on the Dubai mainland.
- The register answers. It returns the registered legal name in English and Arabic, the current status, the expiry date and the full list of activities the company is licensed to perform.
- Offers unlock. Only a verified technician can quote on jobs. Until the license is verified, they cannot send offers.
For the customer, this means that every offer in their inbox comes from a company that has already passed a registry check. You don’t run the check. It’s been used for you.
Everlook also puts out the same lookup as a free public tool. You don’t need an account or to post a job ad. It’s pretty unusual for a marketplace to give away this kind of tool, which allows users to check a contractor they found on Instagram.
Why the activity list matters more than the status
Most people just look at the status line. It’s valid, green, and good to go.
The activity list is where you’ll find the real answer, and it works like a chain. The licence permits activities. The activities define which jobs the company can legally take on. A customer’s job is in one category. If the category and the activity don’t match, a valid licence won’t tell you much.
AC work shows how fine the lines get. One business set-up consultancy in Dubai says that AC duct cleaning needs its own Dubai Municipality approval and isn’t automatically covered by an AC installation and maintenance licence.
There are two things Everlook’s public pages don’t tell us. We’re not sure if the platform checks that each technician’s licensed activities match the categories they mention, or just confirms that they’ve got a valid licence. And free zone companies (like DMCC, IFZA, DAFZA and others) are licensed by their own authorities, so they never show up in the DED register. I don’t know how Everlook verifies them, as the site doesn’t say. Both points are important because they decide whether “verified” means “licensed” or “licensed for this job”.
Why the check comes before the offer
Dubai’s home services marketplaces are nothing new. ServiceMarket was set up in 2013 as MoveSouq by two former McKinsey consultants, Bana Shomali and Wim Torfs. When it raised USD 4 million in 2018, Shomali told MENAbytes that the platform makes pricing and quality transparent “through our quote comparison and user-rating engine”.
Ratings show you how a company has done in the past. A license check answers an earlier question: is this company allowed to do the job at all? The first generation of platforms was all about ratings. Everlook puts the license right in front of them.
Financial regulators in Dubai have been doing the same thing for years, and it’s the customer who’s stuck with the bill. Patrick Meaney, the head of enforcement at the Dubai Financial Services Authority, told the Khaleej Times in late 2024:
“Check the name of the company on our website.”
His advice assumes the customer will remember to look. Everlook’s design moves the lookup from the customer’s to-do list to the technician’s sign-up, where it’s impossible to forget it.
The gate doesn’t seem to be the issue. The platform says that about half of the jobs get a first offer within 60 minutes, and most within the day.
What it changes for the person hiring
A verified offer narrows the risk. It doesn’t remove your part of the job. Before you hire for anything that touches wiring, gas or the AC, open the technician’s license record and read the activity list against the work you posted. It takes under a minute.
You can start at Everlook, where posting a job is free and every offer arrives from a license-checked technician.
Any platform that checks licenses is going to need to think about time. A licence that’s valid in March can actually lapse in November, and when you check at sign-up, it doesn’t tell you the day of the job. Just so you know, Everlook’s public pages don’t say how often it re-runs the lookup. That’s the line we’d want to read next.
It’s valid, renewed and printed on the invoice. The line that decides whether a technician should open your AC is the one under the expiry date.
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