To cater to the increasing number of multilingual websites on its platform, Webflow released its native localization solution in the autumn of 2023. With its signature flexibility and user-friendly approach, Webflow users can now adapt their website to multiple locales directly within the Designer interface.

Sticking to its core principle of design-focused web building, Webflow’s native solution allows users to work with translated content in the Designer and see a live preview of their multilingual website.

However, solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all, and you’re here because you’re looking for other alternatives out there that better fit your localization needs.

In this guide, we’ll be breaking down localization solutions that work well with Webflow. Let’s dive in.

Note: Webflow’s native localization solution is quite new, which means more localization features may quickly become available after this comparison has been published. As we provide a competitor solution, we have prepared this guide to be as factual and impartial as possible. If something isn’t up-to-date, don’t hesitate to let us know at [email protected].

One more thing: Though we are a competitor, it’s great news that Webflow released its own localization feature. Only 10% of websites are multilingual—there’s a big need for solutions to make it easier to go international. We welcome any initiative that helps website owners easily manage their projects in multiple languages.

What are the Best Webflow Localization Alternatives?

Here’s a comparison at a glance between Webflow’s native localization solution and 2 alternatives: Weglot, and Transifex. Here’s a summary of all three solutions:

Let’s start the comparison by looking into Webflow’s own localization solution.

Webflow Localization

Webflow’s native solution aims to provide an end-to-end solution for visually building and customizing your website and optimizing it for a multilingual audience. Through its solution, you can directly design, build, and localize your translated sites within the Designer, all without a single line of code.

Integration

Here’s a step-by-step guide to enable Webflow Localization on your website:

1. Head to your Settings panel and click Localization.
2. Choose your primary locale from the respective dropdown—this will be the locale or language you will add to your site.
3. Configure the locale’s display name, subdirectory, and publishing status.
4. Save your changes.
5. If you’d like to add more locales, click Add new locale and repeat steps 2-4.

For more details, check out the integration tutorial.

You’re now ready to start localizing using Webflow’s native solution.

Easy Integration

As this is Webflow’s own localization feature, integration is designed to be as seamless as possible—everything is available from the same interface you use to manage your website content.

Previously, Webflow offered two options to create a multilingual site: manual creation of translated versions of your website by duplicating them in subfolders for each language and automatic translation through a 3rd party tool. With this new third option, you can integrate a localization solution without leaving your dashboard.

Setting Up Your Primary Locale

A ‘locale’ is either the language or both the language and region you want to use to connect with your target audience. The primary locale is, therefore, the default language you want to use to build your site and meet your main audience. For example, if you’re based in South Korea and you’d like to cater to locals, your primary locale would then be “Korean”.

However, if your target audience is comprised of different native speakers, you can add more locales to your website to support their respective languages.

Inherited Design

Once you set up your primary locale—that is, you’ve customized the design and content—your subsequent locales will inherit these parameters. So you won’t have to start from scratch when configuring a second or third locale, as they’ll present the same design and content.

However, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to customize or further localize the assets of these locales. Webflow Localization allows you to make changes so that they apply only to a specific locale or override certain content or styles. Note: style localization is available only for those on the Localization Enterprise plan.

Multilingual SEO Compatibility

Webflow Localization follows multilingual SEO best practices by adding HTML lang tags, HTML page-level tags, and sitemap hreflang tags to your locales. These all indicate to search engines like Google that your website is available in multiple languages or locales and that they aren’t duplicates of your original website.

For instance, Webflow automatically configures your website’s language code according to the locale you’ve set up by adding HTML lang attributes. This tag tells search engines, browsers, and screen readers the language of the specific page content.

Additionally, you can translate your title and meta descriptions to maximize multilingual SEO, though you’ll have to configure this manually.

Routing Visitors to a Specific Locale

Webflow Localization enables you to toggle locale routing, where you can choose to steer your website visitors towards a specific locale version of your website. For instance, if your user’s browser preference is set to “French”, then Webflow will attempt to send them to the appropriate version of your site. However, if your site does not have their preferred locale or the user hasn’t set any preference on their browser, Webflow will direct them to your primary locale instead.

Note that site- or domain-level routing is only possible for Enterprise and Advanced Localization plans.

Translation and Localization Management

Semi-Automatic Translation

You can choose which element to automatically translate by manually selecting each item of your CMS or Static pages. This allows you to translate certain elements manually and leave the others to automatic translation.

Translating the whole page at once is also possible with Webflow’s native solution; to do this, navigate to the Body element in the Designer and choose “Translate to [language]”, which will then translate all the content in this element. You can repeat the process on any element to translate the rest of the sections on your website.

Local View

The Local view gives you a preview of your Webflow site to your international visitors. Here, you can customize each language version by selecting and displaying it in the Designer.

Once you do this, your site will instantly display all elements in that specific language, including images (Advanced plan only) and buttons. You can modify each of these without impacting your other locales.

Media Translation

With Webflow’s native solution, you can swap your original images for the translated versions and update the alt text accordingly across all your locales to provide a fully localized experience. However, you’ll have to be on the Advanced plan to benefit from this feature.

Choose What Elements to Display

Not all elements of your primary locale are applicable or appropriate to your other locales. Webflow’s solution gives you the option to show or hide specific elements in each of your locales so that your localized website is cohesive and relevant. Note that this is available only for Enterprise plan users.

Style Localization

Webflow’s native solution allows you to customize the typography and styles for each of your locales. You can then adjust your fonts and headline lengths to accommodate the text expansion and contraction that naturally come with translating content. Note that this is available only for Enterprise plan users.

Pricing and Plans

Webflow Localization is free to preview. But to actually implement it to your site, paid plans start at $9 per locale per month, allowing you to add up to 3 locales. The next tier is at $29 per locale per month, allowing you to localize up to 5 locales and access additional important features like localized URLs and asset localization. If you need more than that, along with advanced localization capabilities, you’ll have to contact them for a quote.

Drawbacks

The biggest drawback of Webflow Localization is the pricing. Costs will also add up very quickly here since it’s charged per locale, which might make it more difficult to test market entries into different countries.

Many essential features, such as asset localization and automatic visitor routing, are also locked behind higher plans.

Since Webflow Localization is available only on the Designer workspace, it then takes longer to translate your website. Additionally, there is no full automatic translation, as you’ll manually have to select which pages and elements you want to have machine-translated. On top of that, your automatic translations are limited to 10,000 words per locale per month on the Essential plan and 50,000 words per locale per month on the Advanced plan.

Some multilingual SEO aspects are also toggled manually here; the solution does not automatically translate your metadata for you. The same goes for updating translated content; the solution doesn’t automatically detect the changes, translate them, and push them live. You’ll have to manually request the solution to translate each field for each language.

Designing your language switcher currently isn’t possible beyond adding custom images (like country flags or custom-made icons) to each locale. So you’ll have to use Webflow’s own for all your locales.

Once you’ve made your locale live, all pages within your website’s original language will also be pushed live. Unless you’re on a Localization Enterprise plan, you won’t be able to exclude parts of your websites from being translated. So you’ll have to move fast when launching a locale.

Lastly, Webflow’s localization solution is still very new. So, it still lacks more precise and comprehensive features (such as those mentioned above) that users who are well-versed in translating and localizing their site will eventually need.

Weglot

Weglot is a comprehensive no-code website translation and localization tool where you can manage your translations all from one dashboard. It provides a first layer of automatic translation from the top 3 machine translation providers: Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and DeepL.

Integration

Here’s a quick video explaining how to set up Weglot on your Webflow website.

And here’s the step-by-step guide to adding multiple languages to your Webflow website through Weglot without code:

1. Create a Weglot account. This is where you’ll view and manage all of your translations.

2. Create your project by giving it a name and choosing Webflow as your website technology.
3. Add your domain name and the languages you want your Webflow website to be available in. Then, set up your DNS records to create your chosen language URL structure of subdirectories or subdomains (Weglot allows you to choose between either).
4. To finish off, copy-paste the JavaScript snippet provided by Weglot on your Webflow Custom Code settings page.

For more detailed instructions, check out our Webflow integration guide.

Ta-da! Your Webflow website is now multilingual and ready for your international audience.

Easy Integration

Weglot is compatible with all technologies. That means your translation and localization project stays with you even when you switch to a different CMS or technology. And if you use other third-party solutions like MemberStack or HubSpot, Weglot will be able to detect and translate these, too.

Plus, Weglot only takes a few minutes to set up. Once you install it, your translated website will be ready for your international audience—no additional steps are required.

Automated Workflow

With Weglot, you get to translate your entire site automatically in 1 click. Once you add Weglot to your website, it automatically detects, translates, and then displays your content in your chosen language.

Thanks to this automatic workflow, any time you make changes to your content—including new additions—are immediately synced and translated, ensuring no page is left untranslated (unless you meant to exclude them). That includes dynamic content and content from 3rd party apps or plugin content—everything will be translated.

Multilingual SEO Compatibility

Lastly, Weglot follows multilingual SEO best practices, ensuring that Google properly indexes your translated websites and doesn’t mark them as duplicate content. It does this by automatically adding hreflang tags to each language version of your website and allowing you to choose between language-specific subdirectories or subdomains. Plus, you have the option to automatically redirect visitors based on their browser language.

Customizable Language Switchers

You’re also able to customize your language switcher designs with Weglot. If you’re out of ideas, try the language switchers we made with Finsweet. We also recently worked with Digidop to release a new set of language switcher designs for Webflow (but can be recreated on other CMS).

Translation and Localization Management

Complete Editing Control

Weglot offers you complete control over your translations. Through the dashboard, you can choose to hide static pages in specific languages, use the Glossary to set translation rules, filter by translation quality, and edit your content in two ways: the Translations List, and the Visual Editor. The Translations List is where your translations are listed per string under a selected language, and the Visual Editor is where you can edit your content within a live preview of your site.

Not only that, but you can also opt to exclude portions of your website from being translated and hide them. You get to decide what gets translated and what your international audience sees.

Choose Your Translation Quality

You can localize your entire website through the Weglot Dashboard. Start off with the first layer of high-quality machine translation, or post-edit them to achieve the quality you desire.  Benefit from Weglot’s extensive collaboration features by adding on team members, assigning them roles, marking translations as pending for a team member to review, or assigning them the translation. Alternatively, you can also order professional translations from the dashboard as well and edit them as you see fit—something Webflow currently doesn’t provide.

Easy Media Translation

Localizing your images for each language version has also never been easier. You can copy-paste the URL of the translated image onto the Visual Editor or through the Translations List by clicking on Actions > Add media translation.

Plus, this feature is available across all Weglot plans, even the free one!

Account Management

You can localize multiple projects with one Weglot account - just follow the integration guide in the section before this.

No need to juggle between different software when localizing your website. You can find all your localization projects with Weglot within the Dashboard, which is especially handy for agencies.

Excellent Support

Plus, if you run into any issues or have a few questions about how to carry out a more complicated function, our support team is highly responsive and will assist you immediately. And if you’re curious about features in the pipeline or you’d like to make a suggestion, our roadmap is publicly available.

Weglot is a localization solution meant to scale with you; after all, we’ve been focused on website localization for more than 8 years now. Whether you’re a small business or a large business ready to enter several international markets, its features will make it easy to explore new target countries or optimize your content to more precisely target new locales.

Pricing and Plans

Weglot offers a free 10-day trial to explore its features. If your website is under 2,000 words, you’ll automatically remain under the free plan once the trial ends. Paid plans start at 15€ per month.

All Weglot plans factor in all languages; you don’t have to pay separately to add a language or locale.

Drawbacks

As Weglot is compatible with all technologies, it isn’t a native solution, which means it will be an addition to your existing stack.

However, that also means you can keep things separated; you won’t need to add your localization team or translator to your Webflow project since you can invite them onto separate Weglot projects. If something goes wrong when they localize your content, you can easily isolate the incident and fix it—and the rest of your Webflow site, especially in its original language, will remain untouched.

Additionally, if you’re keen on localizing your design, you’ll have to be familiar with CSS or regular expressions (regex) to tweak it to your liking. You also cannot adjust your font style without this. However, this isn’t necessary for most use cases.

Lastly, Weglot’s plans are confined by word limits, regardless of the translation quality you use.

How Does It Compare With Webflow’s Localization Solution?

Overall, Weglot and Webflow’s native solution are comparable. However, Weglot is more flexible as it offers more seats and languages in each plan, and different translation qualities. Plus, you can connect your Weglot account to different multilingual sites through your API key; Webflow’s solution applies to only one project.

Additionally, with Weglot, you’re able to publish select versions of a page; with Webflow, you’ll have to publish them all.

Though a third-party solution, translation management is still done through one centralized dashboard, where you’re able to fine-tune translations to advanced degrees: hide static pages in specific languages, exclude blocks of content from being translated, importing and exporting translation files, and so on.

Curious about why Weglot is still the best way to localize your website in 2024? Skip to the end of this article.

Transifex

Transifex is a no-code, cloud-based translation and localization management platform that makes it easy to continuously localize your Webflow website. Supporting over 450 language locales, it focuses on AI-powered continuous localization, or the ongoing process of adapting your website to the evolving cultural preferences and colloquialisms of your target audience.

Note: Transifex also supports the translation and localization of software, mobile apps, and other digital content. In this comparison, we will be focusing only on its website localization capabilities, specifically on Webflow technology.

Integration

The integration of Transifex onto your Webflow website uses a technology called Transifex Live.

Here’s the step-by-step guide to integrating Transifex into your Webflow website:

1. Sign up for a Transifex account, which you will need to create a project that you will link to your Webflow website.
2. Then, install the Transifex Live JavaScript Snippet. More details in this guide.
   1. ~Create a Live project, then choose your project in the Dashboard.
   2. ~Click on ‘Add Resources’, located in the upper right corner.
   3. ~Input your website’s URL into the ‘Add a website URL’ field, then click on ‘Create resource’.
   4. ~Go back to the Dashboard and click on the project with the resource you want to retrieve the snippet from.
   5. ~Click on Resources, then click on your desired resource to obtain the corresponding snippet.
   6. ~Navigate to the 3 small vertical dots in the upper right corner and click on ‘Settings’.
   7. ~A popup will appear. Copy the code under ‘Insert the code snippet before the </head> tag in every page you want to translate’. Follow accordingly, and you can now use Transifex Live, which will appear as a sidebar on your website.
3. And that’s it! Now, you can begin localizing.

For more information, check out their guide to creating a Transifex project.

Translation and Localization Management

Localize Within Webflow Website

Transifex allows you to localize content directly within the context of your Webflow website, allowing you to see a live preview of what you’re editing.

Control Over Your Translations

Through Transifex’s powerful CAT Editor, translators can efficiently work on localizing content without having to navigate through files. Multiple people can also work on the same file at the same time.

When localizing your website with Transifex, you can choose to exclude content from translation. This will enable you to localize more efficiently since you can choose to adapt content more strategically instead of localizing all content on your website.

Additionally, its Machine Translation Fill-up feature also lets you translate content instantly, speeding up your website localization process (especially if you have a large website).

You can also use its search functions to easily look for translation strings you want to edit.

Asynchronous Collaborative Features

With Transifex, you can add translators to your team and assign them roles to control their access and permissions to your project. Then, you’re able to work asynchronously, track each other’s progress, and ensure your project is always up-to-date.

You can also invite language service providers directly into your project from the dashboard. Integrated machine translation services like Google Translate are available for you to use for smaller localization tasks.

Moreover, you can group a set of strings under tags so that you can organize them in a way that suits your workflow better. They’re useful for flagging strings as urgent, alerting your team to prioritize these strings first.

Quality Assurance

Transifex’s Translation Checks reviews each translation for you based on a set of rules to ensure your website functions as expected (and that nothing is broken). The things that can possibly break your website are a variable, a link, a missing element, and so on.

If Transifex recognizes that a condition has not been met, it will notify you through a warning or an error message while telling you what you need to do to fix it. It’s still possible to save a translation if it’s a warning, though if the problem is an error, this must be addressed beforehand.

Custom Automated Workflows

Transifex has several integrations like Zapier and Slack that can help you localize your website faster. You can then set up automation to accelerate the localization process, automate manual tasks, eliminate spreadsheets and cumbersome files, and simplify your overall workflow.

Machine Translation

Transifex uses machine translation from top providers like Google Translate, Amazon Translate, DeepL, Microsoft Translator, and KantanMT. You can create a pre-translation workflow so that the tool will use any of these providers to provide machine translation whether you update or upload a file or you want to use machine translation when using the Editor.

Transifex also uses AI-generated, context-based translations that you can use at scale to localize your website more efficiently, then edit them accordingly to achieve the desired level of translation quality.

Translation Memory

This feature is also available through Transifex, allowing you to use existing translations to speed up the localization process of your website. The Glossary helps you maintain consistency across the board for your translations.

Pricing and Plans

Transifex offers a 15-day free trial, but you can also contact them for a personalized demo.

Otherwise, their paid plans start at $90 a month, tailored to companies that are just getting started with localization. With this plan, you get access to 50,000 words, the basic version of their Translation Memory, machine translation, collaboration tools, an online editor, and more.

Drawbacks

Transifex caters more to the mid-market. If you’re a small business just beginning to explore localization, its starting plan of $90 a month may be a bit too expensive for what you need.

On the other hand, if you have a growing business, you may find yourself needing to upgrade your subscription earlier than expected due to Transifex’s word limitations. The software also counts each word according to how many languages you have on your website, even when the word remains untranslated in some of these.

Given its limited search functionality and lack of filtering options, users may also have difficulty looking for a specific string on the interface. This may make it difficult and inconvenient to copy-paste your translations across your projects.

Additionally, as its UI is a little complex, users who don’t have a technical background may struggle to navigate through the features and maximize the power of the tool.

However, the main drawback is that Transifex appears to use JavaScript for its integration with Webflow, which would be disadvantageous for SEO. Although it’s possible to have JavaScript content detected by Google bots, it is widely acknowledged (by Google, too) that it’s better to have unique pages for each translated content and have those generated server-side instead of client-side.

How Does It Compare With Webflow’s Localization Solution?

‍Why Weglot is Still the Best Way to Localize Your Webflow Website in 2024

Weglot gives you full website translation and precise translation management, all centralized in one dashboard:

1 Click to Instantly Translate Your Entire Website

• Automatic content detection, translation, and display of translated content - no further clicks necessary
• Translate media, URLs, slugs, and dynamic content like popups, buttons, banners, comments, etc
• Your choice of language subdirectories or subdomains

Top-Quality Machine Translation

• A first layer of machine translation generated by top providers DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator

Easy Translation and Localization Management

• Full website localization
• Choose to display or hide blocks of content, static pages in specific languages
• Exclude blocks or pages from translation
• Edit content through 2 different ways: the Translations List and the Visual Editor
• Easily import and export translation files - your translations will always be yours
• Glossary of terms
• Translation Memory
• Order professional translations from within the dashboard
• Your choice of language switcher designs, which you can modify
• Translate images and videos across all plans

Optimized for Multilingual SEO

• Follows Google’s best practices for multilingual websites
• Automatically adds hreflang tags to each language version of your website
• Instantly translates metadata
• Automatic visitor language redirection

Reliable Technical Customer Support

• Responds with a turnaround time of 2 business days
• Multilingual team: speaks English, French, Spanish
• Highly rated: 4.8 on G2, 4.9 on Google Reviews and Trustpilot
• Seamless Translation Workflow
• Sync with your live site so that all changes you make, including new content, are immediately detected, translated, then displayed on your website, leaving no page untranslated (unless purposely excluded from translation)
• All translations, even from 3rd party app and plugin content, are handled within the Weglot Dashboard
• Benefit from translation memory, where the same translation is used for repetitive phrases across your site

Comprehensive Collaboration Features

• Manage multiple projects on the same account, useful for agencies
• Invite translators to your project - giving them access only to the translated versions of your website and not your Webflow project
• Assign roles to team members
• Review progress of translations
• Assign translations to team members, or mark them as pending

Get Started on Localizing Your Webflow Website with Weglot’s 10-Day Free Trial

Weglot was built to be an easy-to-use, intuitive website translation solution with a simpler interface that works with any technology—making it a perfect match for Webflow.

Whether you want the full suite of collaborative features, complete control over your translations and their quality, an easy way to manage your localized website, or 1-click website translation, Weglot is for you.

Each of our plans is tailored to different needs: the number of sites you want to localize, the languages you want to localize them in, and more. Plus, every feature is available within that plan—no need to purchase additional seats or locales to enjoy a fully localized experience.

Try Weglot for free for 10 days, no commitment, and you’ll see just how easy it is to localize your Webflow website in minutes.