Website translation

Making the Switch: Alternatives to Smartling for Global Businesses

Written by

Elizabeth Pokorny

Reviewed by

Updated on

March 4, 2026

Smartling is a preferred option for businesses seeking a great solution in language translation and localization. The tool caters primarily to mid-market and large organizations, particularly those with complex translation requirements like multiple content types, or translations into many different languages.

However, even if Smartling is the right option for many businesses, the same might not be true for yours. The top Smartling alternatives are Weglot, Lokalise, Crowdin, Phrase, and Transifex – each having their own pros and cons. Your choice depends on three criteria:

What you need to translate (websites vs apps vs enterprise content).
Who’ll be doing the work (marketers vs developers).
Your budget model (usage-based vs seat-based).

Let’s compare Smartling with its top alternatives to find the perfect fit for your translation and localization needs.

Understanding Smartling: A Comprehensive Overview

‍Smartling is trusted in the Translation Management Systems (TMS) realm. Its goal is to manage the translation and localization process, helping businesses reach global audiences.

Here are some of the key features you can expect from Smartling:

Cloud-based platform: Smartling uses a central system in the cloud that can automatically manage translations. It can assign tasks smartly, use machine learning to make translations better over time, and check quality.
Visual translation editor: Smartling’s Visual Context feature allows translators to see how the translated content looks in real-time. This helps prevent mistakes and ensures the translated text fits well with the design, creating a good experience for people worldwide.
Human translators: Smartling makes it easier for teams and translators to communicate with each other, with tools for conversations and immediate alerts. This helps produce consistent, high-quality translations that match your brand’s tone of voice.
Integrated analytics tools: Smartling includes tools that track everything about your translation projects, such as how much has been translated, the status of translations, and how much you’re spending. This gives you a clear view of how your project is going.
Budgeting tools for translation projects: These tools help you understand your translation costs, warn you if you’re going to spend more than planned, and offer ways to spend less without losing quality.
Integration with useful tools: Smartling integrates with popular platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, Adobe Experience Manager, and HubSpot, making it a compatible choice for most businesses.

The Smartling platform is great for medium to large teams that need advanced translation features, such as those needed for software and mobile apps. It offers a wide range of features that can grow with your business.

On the pricing front, Smartling offers three distinct plans: Core, Growth, and Enterprise. All prices are custom, so you’ll need to speak to Smartling for a quote and demo.

A free demo is available to test out Smartling’s core features, and you’ll need to complete this in order to access pricing information.

Exploring Top Smartling Alternatives for Global Businesses

Let’s explore how Weglot, Lokalise, Crowdin, Transifex, and Phrase can serve as alternatives to Smartling, taking into account their standout features, ease of use, ideal use cases, and investment needed.

Weglot

Weglot is an AI-powered website translation tool built for fast, tech-free multilingual deployment. Setup takes 5 minutes on WordPress, and less than 10 on Shopify, Webflow, and other popular CMS platforms.

Our AI translation tool automatically detects and instantly translates all website content using DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator. Our AI Language Model uses OpenAI and Gemini for brand accuracy.

Weglot supports 110+ languages and serves non-technical users, Small-to-Medium Businesses (SMBs) – with customized packages available for enterprises – and ecommerce stores.

Best For:

SMBs (11-200 employees) needing website translation without developer support.
Ecommerce stores on WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce seeking multilingual SEO.
Marketing teams and business owners managing translations independently.
Companies prioritizing speed and ease of use over complex multi-channel workflows.

Key Features

Automatic AI translations: Weglot’s automatic translation uses DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator to deliver instant, high-quality translations into 110+ languages. Weglot comes integrated with top AI translation providers so all your pages, products, and metadata are translated from day one.
AI Language Model for brand-aligned translations: Weglot’s custom AI Language Model learns from your brand guidelines, tone of voice, glossary terms, and past manual edits. It generates automatic translations that match your brand tone and style, reducing the need for manual intervention. Your translation quality runs on autopilot, improving continuously as the model learns. This feature is powered by OpenAI and Gemini.
Manual editing and control: Users have full control over their translations with the option to manually edit and refine them. This is vital for ensuring the accuracy and context-appropriate translations, particularly for nuanced or industry-specific content.

For example, in the food industry, some meals and ingredients wouldn’t be directly translated word-for-word – “filet mignon” in French shouldn't be translated to “cute fillet” in British English. Which is a shame, but c’est la vie.

Multilingual SEO: Weglot automatically adds hreflang tags to your website, ensuring that translated pages are indexed by search engines and pages are served to searchers in the correct language. Other important SEO features include metadata translation and dedicated language URLs for all the translated content.
Browser language redirection: Visitors can be automatically redirected to a version of the website in their native language based on their browser settings, improving user experience and engagement.‍
Glossary: You can customize Weglot’s built-in translation glossary to automate the translation of specific phrases or omit the translation of brand names. This feature helps websites perfect their localization strategies and capture the translation nuances of each language pair.

Weglot's glossary feature — *Weglot glossary feature*

Unified dashboard: With Weglot, you can control all translation projects from a single dashboard. Access important features such as the Visual Editor, glossary, URL slugs, and more.

Professional human translators: If any of the translated strings aren’t up to your requirements and you don’t have a dedicated translation team in-house, you can easily add translations to your cart and order a professional translation from within the Weglot dashboard.

*Adding a translation string to an order with Weglot*

Ease of Use

Weglot takes 5 minutes to set up on WordPress and under 10 minutes on Shopify, Webflow, and other popular CMS platforms. No coding or technical expertise is required, making it accessible to non-technical users and marketers. A unified dashboard centralizes all translation management in one user-friendly interface.

Suitable For

Weglot is suitable for any business looking to expand its global presence, such as:

Ecommerce platforms seeking to reach a wider international market.
Educational websites needing to provide content in multiple languages.
SMBs (11-200 employees) aiming for global expansion without dedicated technical resources or translation departments.

“In the age of globalization, the ability to communicate with a diverse audience in their native language is fundamental. The choice of your translation and localization tool can directly impact your business growth. It’s not just about the capability of translating words but also about the user-friendliness, integration simplicity, and the quality of support you receive. Every detail matters when choosing a solution that fits your purpose.”

– Jeanne Fricaudet, Product Manager, Weglot

Pricing

Weglot's pricing structure is based on the number of words and languages, but all plans include automated translation:

Free: $0 for life for 2,000 words, 1 translated language, AI translation, glossary, and more.
Starter: $17 per month for 10,000 words, 1 translated language, auto redirection, glossary, multilingual SEO, and editing control.
Business: $32 per month for 50,000 words, 3 translated languages, and everything in “Starter”.
Pro: $87 per month for 200,000 words, 5 translated languages, all the included features in the lower plans plus team members, translation requests statistics, page views statistics, and translated URLs.
Advanced: $329 for 1,000,000 words, 10 translated languages, all the features in the lower tiers plus tone of voice, custom languages, and export & import.
Extended and Enterprise: The “Extended” plan is $769 per month with 5,000,000 words and 20 languages, adding top-level domain and translation memory. The “Enterprise” plan is custom – just contact our sales team for more information.

A free version is available to test Weglot’s core features, which include media translation, glossary rules, visitor language redirection, and more. You can also see Weglot on your website through a 14-day free trial of any pricing tier, with no credit card required.

Unlike Smartling’s seat-based pricing model, Weglot charges based on word count and languages, making costs more predictable for small teams adding collaborators.

Lokalise

Another notable Smartling alternative is Lokalise. With a powerful set of functionalities and a resilient API, Lokalise offers comprehensive automation for localization management.