
Regardless of which website building platform you use, building a multilingual website is a strategic necessity for reaching a global audience. Webflow is a fantastic platform that can help marketers, designers, and developers to build successful web experiences. However, the right translation software for Webflow can make the difference between penetrating international markets and missing out on valuable opportunities.
For this post, we'll examine the different translation software for Webflow and summarize which one you should choose.
Creating a multilingual Webflow website presents unique challenges that go beyond simple text translation. When managing content across different languages, you might encounter several hurdles:
While Webflow includes built-in localization functionality, Webflow Localization (more of which shortly), dedicated translation software for Webflow can address these challenges.
Over half of a website's traffic in general is from organic search, according to a BrightEdge report. Because of this, most of your focus should go towards translating with search engines in mind. Website translation software can provide a significant, positive impact for your site's search engine performance in a number of ways:
However, not all plugins can provide everything you need. This makes choosing the right translation software for Webflow a crucial task.
The voice, tone, and presentation of your brand is always vital for success. For a multilingual site, many will want to be reflected within their global presence too.
This isn't simply about a one-to-one translation from your native language either. Each language will need its own specific consistency and quality considerations.
One key way to maintain your brand's voice within the localization process is through a glossary of terms. This is an easy way to keep important terminology consistent across your site without needing to make manual edits each time.
A glossary centralizes this and you create the rules, such as “never translate” your brand names, providing you with the functionality to leave your site machine translated knowing you’ve created key translation rules for added translation quality.
Note, this essential feature is only available on the Webflow Enterprise plan, pricing is available on request.
There may be instances when you don’t want every page of your Webflow website to be translated and therefore require those to be excluded from translation. Dedication website translation software gives you the means to exclude certain website content from translation.
For instance, there might be a product or service you don’t want to sell in your new target market; excluding the service page from translation eliminates any user experience issues.
Or, you might not be running the same ad campaigns in your new markets, therefore, there won’t be the need to translate the corresponding landing pages.
Let's now compare some different translation software for Webflow. While there are several options, most will choose one of three solutions: Weglot, Lokalise, or Webflow Localization.
In addition, several key factors come into play when evaluating any and all apps. Here's a quick breakdown of each solution:
We're going to look at all three of these options in depth next, then tackle using one—Weglot—to connect to Webflow.
Webflow lets you connect to almost any translation software. However, some solutions sit ahead of the rest. Let's start with our own solution, Weglot, then get into the other translation software for Webflow.
Weglot is the go-to website translation software for thousands of global businesses of all sizes. This includes niche brands such as Angell and Polaar alongside huge brands such as Microsoft, Amazon MGM Studios, and Nikon.
Weglot's core is full, automatic content detection that captures all website elements. This includes content synchronization, which detects and translates new content as you add it to your site. That means everything is automated, and translations are not manually activated, unlike with Webflow Localization, which streamlines the translation process of new content and regularly updated pages.
Weglot will use a first layer of neural machine translation from leading providers (such as DeepL, Google, and Microsoft) to deliver premier translations as a foundational element. This includes dynamic content and site metadata, and you can see it within a clean and clear user interface:
Speaking of metadata, you also get full optimization of elements related to search. For instance, Weglot will generate language-specific URLs and work behind the scenes to build hreflang tags. All this without the need for code, or even any input from your side.
There's much more Weglot provides too:
You can also send your translations for professional translation directly through the Weglot Dashboard, and refine your machine translations for high-quality output. You could also take advantage of the translation memory and glossary functionality for greater efficiency.
When it comes to translation software for Webflow, Lokalise is a good option for enterprise needs. It's a robust solution for development teams thanks to its unique strengths:
However, Lokalise won't be for everyone. In comparison to Weglot, there's a much steeper learning curve for non-technical users, which is understandable given the development and design focus. By extension, there's a primary focus on software, games, and mobile app localization rather than just website translation, which is reflected in their enterprise pricing.
As the official solution, Webflow Localization is a relatively new product launch from the no-code CMS builder. With it, you’ll have deep integration with Webflow's visual designer, which includes element visibility control across the various new languages you will support and custom styling per locale.
You can also localize the content within your CMS and static pages directly from the interface.
For smaller websites, with only a few pages of content and requiring one additional language, it might be the suitable option for you as you’ll have limited translated content management needs. For bigger websites that want more than one language, there are a few aspects to understand before choosing it:
While all three solutions serve varying website translation needs, Weglot was built to scale with your website. Its automatic content detection and translation management features (including a glossary) help you launch a multilingual site fast without sacrificing quality or multilingual SEO performance.
One aspect we didn't cover in the deeper dive into all of the translation software for Webflow is pricing. This is typically a priority consideration for most, so comparing this directly can help you weigh up the value of each service.
Weglot offers six plans through monthly and annual billing. There's also a free plan on offer that lets you translate up to 2,000 words into a single language. This includes all core functionality, such as control over editing, glossary rules, SEO tools, and more.
Let's look at each plan in brief:
Regardless of the plan you choose, you can take advantage of a 10-day free trial—without the need for credit card details.
Lokalise’s plan also starts with a free tier. It uses 'content strings' as the measure of usage, and the free plan lets you host 500 strings with two users.
There are 3 premium plans available:
Lokalise also offers separate plans for its AI translation service. While we won't go into the details here, it costs around $250–1,750 per month, depending on the number of words you want to translate.
Webflow Localization comes as a premium add-on to your primary subscription. There are 2 plans to choose from (without having to contact the sales team for a quote):
Note, with each plan, the price is based on each translated website. So, if you require 3 languages on a website of 50,000 words, you would require the advance plan at $29 x 3 = $87 a month.
This doesn’t include any translation management features, and it’s worth noting that only one person can work on a project at a time, as you’ll need access to the developer aspect of your site. This means that it can be complicated to work with team members on translations.
By this point, you'll likely want to sign up for a solution and set up your translation software for Webflow. Let's show you how quick this can be with Weglot!
First, you'll need to sign up for an account with Weglot. Once you do this, it takes two minutes to set up a project and choose your target languages. On the Create your project screen, give it a name and choose Webflow as the technology:
Then, select your original language and target dialects from the drop-down lists on the next screen:
Once you click through, there will be a few other pages to complete:
The whole process of going multilingual takes less than 10 minutes, and because Weglot works by automatically detecting and translating your content instantly, you can begin the optimization process practically immediately!
There are areas we don't cover in this guide that might still raise some questions. As such, here are a few quick-fire topics to help fill in some of the blanks!
With solutions such as Weglot, the basic implementation can be within minutes. If you require further website localization, such as editing translation across your site to perfect your brand voice, or swapping out images, it can take anywhere from several hours or days—to carry out full optimization of your content.
Each solution will have a different strategy. For instance, Webflow Localization bases cost around the languages you need, whereas Lokalise counts up the number of strings and phrases you translate. With Weglot, you have a cap based on the number of words and requests you make to the translation API.
As with price, each app will provide a different level of support. Webflow offers documentation, more in-depth lessons and tutorials on functionality, and more, but there’s no dedicated support for your multilingual website. It also provides email, forum, and expert one-to-one assistance. Lokalise provides live chat and a healthy set of docs to browse.
With Weglot, you get a complete knowledge base to pore over, along with the deeper Weglot Academy. What's more, there's a dedicated blog, free resources to download, and reactive email support for all customers.
Businesses needs expert content translation to reach new markets globally. The first place to start is your website and choosing a translation software for Webflow is always going to be on your to-do list, but the options shouldn't be extensive.
Weglot automatically detects and translates all the content on your site, continuously translates your site so any new content is always translated and allows you to exclude pages and blocks from translation. This flexibility, coupled with multilingual SEO and team collaboration, gives you the functionality required for a website translation project.
Try Weglot’s 10-day free trial, then choose a suitable paid plan to meet your needs.