E-learning was mandated for all the higher education institutions (HEI) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to encounter the pandemic and practice social distancing in year 2020. This led education institutions to shift from face-to-face traditional classroom settings to online education channels for delivering education to their students despite being less familiar with the real-time remote learning. The current study attempts to measure the success of e-learning systems adopted by the HEIs in UAE. An e-learning system success measuring the framework based on DeLone and McLean (J Manage Inf Syst 19(4):9–30, 2003) was developed including the measures of quality, system use, perceptual benefits and future outcomes from students’ perspective. A survey was conducted from more than 1200 students studying at different higher education institutions of the UAE region. The findings have implications for educators and policy-makers recommending the success factors of e-learning delivery channels in this region.