In the midst of so many WordPress translation plugins, you may be confused about which plugin to use to bring your site to other languages. In this article we are going to talk about the best WordPress website translation plugins, where I actually had experience testing most of them.
It is worth noting that this article was written in collaboration with our Site Rentável Translation Course. In this course, we teach step by step how to set up translation plugins, also teaching tricks for automatic translation, mass correction, regex, search and replace, everything to elevate your site with translation.
We know that installing a plugin and translating is not enough. If you want to take your site to other languages and reach a global audience, it will take dedication when it comes to translating and breaking your head with possible errors. The aim of our course is to make your life easier in this regard.
The video below will show you the advantages of translating a website:
Subdirectory or Subdomain?
It doesn't matter what people say, nor the risks, I only believe it's worth translating your site if you keep using a subdirectory. Unfortunately, a subdomain doesn't receive the authority of the main domain.
If you want to multiply your visits and earnings in the short term, be aware of using subdirectories for the translation of your sites. Before choosing a translation plugin, make sure it offers all the SEO benefits you need to rank in Google.
There are also ccTLDs that are domains ending with a country code like (.ru | .ja | .br), but I prefer to use the good old [.com] along with subdirectories to take advantage of their authority.
- site.com
- site.com/fr
- fr.site.com
- site.fr
Machine Translation or Manual Translation?
Most of the Plugins mentioned in this article offer some form of automatic translation. Today, machine translation is very accurate, even better than human translation in some cases.
Most machine translation errors today are due to duplicate synonyms, or a problem when translating the strings. I always translate everything automatically and then do a quick review straight from the database.
You can also proofread the corrected version of the site even without knowing the language using grammar correction plugins like Language Tools. Machine translation is much cheaper than paying for manual translation.
1 - ! – Affordable Server Level Translation
If there is a really convenient way to translate your website, it should be through ConveyThis!
Besides this, You can easily integrate ConveyThis into any WordPress site and translate up to 2,500 words at a time into anyone language entirely free. Also, this powerful plugin provides a language switcher that allows you to switch between different languages instantly and uses an automatic machine translation to translate entire site content. So, if you want to translate your website in the best convenient way, then ConveyThis is for you!
Feature Highlights-
- Translate to 100+ languages
- Fast and accurate automatic machine translation
- Translate attributes, alt text, meta text, and page URLs
- 100% compatibility with all themes and plugins (including WooCommerce)
- SEO-optimized (all translated pages will be indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) Active Installations: 2000+
Ratings: 4.6/5
Pricing Plans: Paid plans start at $5 a month for one language and up to 10,000 words.
ConveyThis uses automatic translation to translate your entire website and adds a language toggle button. So, in the first few minutes, you will have a functional and SEO-optimized multilingual website.
It comes with free and paid plan. Free plan that allows you to translate up to 2,500 words in one language, the paid plans use SaaS-style billing, which means you'll have to keep paying as long as you want to use the service.
Paid plans start at $5 per month for one language and up to 10,000 words
2 – Translatepress – String Translation
In my opinion this is the best translation plugin, because it doesn't occupy the wp-post table of WordPress, thus making WordPress loading lighter.
Another advantage of this plugin is that it translates everything via string, and allows front-end editing, which can be a disadvantage for some people. The Plugin has an annual cost of at least 80 euros. But the payback with website translation depending on your project is very fast.
The Translatepress connects with the Google Translate or Deepl API, allowing for quick and massive automatic translation. There will be no need to keep entering articles and things like that. Its database makes it easy to translate things directly from it if you want to avoid spending on the API.
The only disadvantage of this plugin that I have found so far is the absence of the Google News sitemap in other languages and the possibility of excluding entire categories from the translation.
3 – Polylang – The Free Darling
This translation plugin is free and there is absolutely nothing missing. There is a paid version but it doesn't offer as much as it's worth paying for. This plugin is great for small sites that will perform manual translations.
It is possible to use an automatic translation tool that is a little more boring to use. This plugin is good that separates posts by language, but unfortunately it saves everything in the wp-post table which can slow down the site depending on the amount of posts.
Translations are edited directly from wp-admin in the post editor, you can link an article to another article in another language. The plugin offers full support for SEO and slug translation.
4 – GTranslate – Cheap Server Level Translation
There is a free WordPress plugin, but it is useless, it does the same thing as Google Translate. The key point here is the paid version that supports SEO.
In the paid version, any website, whether wordpress or not, can be translated into more than 40 languages automatically without any difficulty.
The main advantage and disadvantage is that all the site's translation stays on the GTranslate server via Proxy, so it won't consume your hosting. The problem is that you will always need to pay the monthly fee to keep the translations active.
One of the disadvantages of this Plugin is that it cannot use Slugs translation together with Ahref Lang, I hope one day its authors solve this problem. The plugin is the cheapest available at the moment when it comes to external server translation.
5 – Weglot and ConveyThis
Just like GTranslate it offers translation directly from their server, there are probably more advantages, but its price is quite high and its monthly fee is much more expensive and with a translation limit.
Even so, for some reason, Weglot is quite famous, used even by big companies like Spotify. I don't recommend this plugin due to the price, but if you have a smaller site it might be worth it.
The other similar plugin is called ConveyThis, it's usually a little cheaper than Weglot, both work the same way as Gtranslate, but with some fixes that Gtranslate doesn't provide like Ahreflang + Slugs translated.
6 – WPML – The Favorite
WPML is one of the most complete and popular translation plugins of all time. It offers so many functions that it is difficult to describe it, but unfortunately it also has its limitations.
I didn't choose WPML probably because its translations are stored in wp-post, even though it offers sort of string translation. For small sites it may be ideal.
As a complete plugin, it can be quite cumbersome. But it is also one of the most supported plugins, a large community, and at a much more affordable price than Translatepress.
7 – Multilingual Press – Multisite Translation
Another option to translate your wordpress site is using Multisites, so you have an independent site for each language. I don't have much experience with this model, but I believe it is more complicated.
There are plugins to perform this type of translation such as Multilingual Press, Zanto and Multisite Language Switcher. Some people clone the site and then translate directly from the database.
I hope these Translation Plugin solutions help you make your choice. Don't forget to check out our Website Translation Course at Rentável Site.