WordPress Translation Alternatives to Loco Translate

If you’ve ever tried to translate content – say a blog post or WooCommerce blurb – using Loco Translate, you’ll already know that it’s impossible. That’s because Loco Translate targets interface and content strings defined in plugins, themes, or core WordPress components. Posts, pages, and products live in the WordPress database, completely out of Loco’s reach.

This isn’t a bug, nor a failing – it’s simply down to the way Loco has been coded, and the intentions behind the plugin. Translation plugins work in three different ways – files, database, and cloud – with benefits to each approach, so it’s not always clear which type or brand you need.

This guide will break down the differences, with an in-depth comparison of leading translation plugins, from performance to pricing, and picking the right solution.

Key Takeaways

• What’s the difference between Loco Translate and full translation plugins?  
  
  • Loco Translate edits PO/MO files containing theme and plugin text strings.
  • Full translation plugins like WPML and Weglot translate database content including posts, pages, and products.
• Database-heavy translation plugins add multiple queries per page load, explaining why users report slower backends after installation.
• The best translation plugin for you depends on where you want translations stored, combined with your timescales and budget.
• Shared hosting physically limits database translation solutions, making cloud-based options a logical solution.
• Weglot’s cloud architecture means zero impact on your WordPress performance –  translations are served from our CDN, not your server.

Three Translation Storage Models That Change Everything

WordPress translation plugins use three distinct storage architectures: file-based, database-based, and cloud-based. Get to know these intimately and you’ll be able to find the platform that best meets your needs.‍

1. File-Based Translation

As we’ve seen, file-based tools like Loco Translate store everything in PO/MO files on your server. You get complete control, zero performance impact, and Git-friendly workflows. But files can’t store dynamic content, hence your product or landing pages go untranslated.

This, however, is Loco Translate’s world – perfect for theme strings, impossible for blogs. The plugin remains the gold standard for PO/MO editing, as it’s free, reliable, and exactly what developers need for theme distribution, even though all strings require manual translations.

2. Database-Based Translation

Database tools like WPML, TranslatePress, or Polylang create duplicate content or custom tables in WordPress. Your posts and products can finally be translated, but every page load now triggers extra database queries. The more languages you add, the heavier your database becomes.

WPML is an established WordPress multilingual plugin, offering advanced features for professional translation management. Priced from €99/year for full website translation, WPML offers extensive compatibility and professional translation management, though Reddit threads have warned about dashboard slowdowns.

TranslatePress is known for its user-friendly, visual translation interface and compatibility with various themes and plugins, including WooCommerce. Priced at €99/year, it provides a visual frontend editor, combining AI translation with manual refinement.

Polylang (free manual version or pay €99/year for machine translations) handles 70+ languages with solid technical SEO.

3. Cloud-Based Translation

Non-database tools remove complications. Weglot is a cloud-based website translation plugin that stores translations externally and serves them via CDN. Content gets detected, translated, and displayed in minutes.

Setup takes less than 5 minutes, including full site translation, including everything Loco Translate picks up. Future native language content is automatically translated, and manual refinement can be made through a frontend Visual Editor.

Given everything is cloud-based, translations live outside WordPress, however, Weglot complies with GDPR and EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF).

Translation Storage Models Comparison Table

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How Each Translation Method Affects Your Site Speed

File-based translation adds exactly zero database queries. Loco Translate reads PO files once during page generation, then WordPress continues normally. Your Time to First Byte stays exactly the same.

Database-based plugins tell a different story. Database plugins add queries proportional to content volume and number of languages. As we’ve seen, numerous user reports claim that WPML can make sites run slowly. TranslatePress and Polylang may be lighter than WPML but translations still add database overhead.

On typical shared hosting, these queries can have a marked impact on backend load times, especially with WooCommerce where product variations multiply the query count.

Core Web Vitals also take a hit. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores jump when WordPress needs extra seconds to assemble translated content. Time to Interactive (TTI) suffers as the server struggles with query overhead. Cache plugins help the frontend, but dashboards often remain sluggish.

Cloud-based solutions sidestep WordPress entirely, so don’t affect performance one iota. Translation tools like Weglot send your rendered HTML to external servers, receive translated content, and serve it from a CDN. Your WordPress installation never has to process translations.

Before installing any database-based translation plugin, run a backup and benchmark your current load times. If you’re already pushing hosting limits, cloud solutions are your only viable option.

Translation Plugin Comparison Table

Translation Quality and Control

One of the biggest concerns with AI translation is accuracy, especially for branded terms or nuanced content.

However, Weglot’s AI Language Model, powered by OpenAI and Gemini, provides hands-off translation quality. Train your custom translation model with your brand identity and past translation edits, to generate automatic translations that match your exact tone and style.

Weglot’s AI Language Model learns from your brand guidelines, tone of voice, target audience, glossary terms, manual edits, and any custom instructions you define.

With Weglot, you can also choose to rely only on the instant AI translations from DeepL, Google Translate, or Microsoft Translator (the default option available in free plans, too).

Whether using AI translation or the AI Language Model, Weglot’s Visual Editor lets you refine translations on the frontend, checking if your foreign language content fits your designs.

Plus, the glossary feature allows you to specify translations in situations where more than one word/phrase is accurate, or when you don’t want words translated. This is a quick way to ensure your website is consistently translated site-wide. (There’s also an option to order professional translation directly through the dashboard if you want.)

WPML lets you choose between machine and human translation, offering automatic translations powered by their own AI as well as DeepL, Google, or Microsoft. You manage translations via a centralized dashboard where you can assign content to built-in reviewers or your own team of translators. WPML includes an in-dashboard glossary feature to ensure consistency for branded or sensitive terms.

‍TranslatePress emphasizes a blend of AI and manual control, with instant site-wide machine translation and a live, frontend visual editor for hands-on refinement. You can edit any piece of text directly on your site’s interface, although it’s less intuitive than Weglot’s Visual Editor. A glossary is available, although this too requires more configuration than Weglot’s version.

Polylang’s free version is entirely manual, but machine translation through DeepL is available on paid plans. Unlike other tools, there’s no translation memory or glossary feature, but you can manually edit any machine translations.

As mentioned previously, Loco Translate gives you complete control over theme and plugin strings through its PO/MO file editor. It’s a great solution for developers who need precise control over every translation, but it can’t touch your actual content.

SEO Capabilities

SEO is an important consideration for those looking to translate posts and pages, especially those running ecommerce sites. If your international pages fail to rank on search engines overseas, it’s incredibly hard for potential customers to find you. Here’s how our featured Loco Translate alternatives rank for organic search:

Weglot

Weglot is unique for its server-side, fully automated SEO, ensuring all translated elements are embedded for search engines without manual steps. The tool generates dedicated, language-specific URLs (via subdirectories or subdomains), ensuring each translation is independently indexed for maximum search reach. Weglot comes with the following:

• Addition of hreflang tags within page headers for improved regional targeting.
• Server-side translation, embedding all translated text and meta tags directly in source code, making them fully visible to search engines.
• Automatic translation of all SEO-relevant elements: titles, meta descriptions, image alt attributes, slugs, and structured data.
• Full compatibility with all major SEO plugins.

WPML

WPML delivers broad multilingual SEO, enabling language-specific URLs, meta tags, and alt text translation. It automatically handles hreflang tags, works with top SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO), and translates metadata for categories/taxonomies.

WPML checks translated meta titles/descriptions for optimal length per language and preserves SEO placeholders in automatic translation, making technical SEO more reliable. However, optimal results still require more manual setup and ongoing attention compared to Weglot.

TranslatePress

TranslatePress covers all key SEO features with its SEO Pack add on (free with paid plans):

• Translation of URL slugs, meta titles/descriptions, and image alt tags.
• Automatic addition of hreflang tags and support for multilingual XML sitemaps via SEO plugins.
• Enables SEO metadata to be edited visually and stores translations locally, although manual configuration is sometimes needed.

Polylang

Polylang includes SEO features such as language-dependent URLs (subdirectory, subdomain, or domain), built-in hreflang support, metadata translation, and compatibility with leading SEO plugins.

However, it lacks deeper automation found in Weglot and WPML, such as automatic translation of slugs, or automatic length checks for meta fields, leaving more manual work for the user.

How Much Do WordPress Translation Plugins Cost?

Cost varies depending on the provider. Paid plans are normally linked to a word count limit, with a typical monthly or yearly fee. Watch the small print here, and check a provider’s pricing per translation if you exceed your plan limit. To make it easier to budget, solutions like Weglot simply offer higher tiers with higher word limits, so you’ll receive no surprises come subscription time.

Here are details of full available plans for each of our featured plugins.

Migration and Export Options

An often overlooked issue comes in the form of future site migrations or translation plugin changes. What happens to your translated pages in such instances? Here’s where each translation approach leaves you.

• From Loco Translate’s PO files: Your translations already live in portable PO/MO files, so sending them elsewhere is perfectly straightforward. WPML can import these directly for theme strings, although TranslatePress will need to convert the format via WP-CLI. Polylang can also import PO/MO files for theme and plugin strings, maintaining consistency if you’re moving from Loco.

Weglot ignores PO files entirely since it translates the rendered output, but you keep these files as your theme/plugin translations remain intact.

• Database to cloud migration: WPML stores translations in custom tables. You can export these via their built-in XLIFF tool, then import to the likes of Weglot using the TMX upload feature. TranslatePress users export SQL dumps of translation tables, which is a messier and more time-consuming process.

Polylang creates duplicate posts for each language, which means you can use WordPress’ standard export/import tools – simpler than custom tables but you’ll need to maintain the language relationships when migrating.

• Cloud to anywhere: Weglot provides XLIFF/TMX export containing all your translations, including manual overrides and glossary rules. These industry-standard formats work with most translation memory tools.

Making Your WordPress Translation Plugin Decision

Your path forward really depends on your unique situation. Given you’re likely looking for a Loco Translate alternative – a tool that translates beyond code distribution – consider the following:

• Limited budget + time to spare? If you’ve a small site, low budget, and time on your hands, you can translate your content manually, for free, using a database or cloud option, retaining Loco Translate – if needed – for string management. ‍
• Need translations tomorrow + monthly budget? Weglot translates everything instantly, including new content, with the Visual Editor allowing you to refine as needed. Our translation tool takes less than 5 minutes to launch and fully translate a site.
• Distributing themes or plugins? Stick with Loco Translate if this is your number one need for a translation plugin. PO/MO files remain the standard for GPL code, Git workflows, and wordpress.org submissions.
• Shared hosting struggling? Cloud solutions like Weglot are your only option if your server can’t handle more database queries.
• Enterprise content volume? Database solutions with separate subsites spread queries across different URLs, managing the load. Cloud platforms offer the same.

To try a cloud-based website translation plugin that matches requirements from start-ups to enterprises, start a 14-day free Weglot trial today.