Translated pages can bring a large share of a site’s search traffic: on this site, the French and Spanish versions alone have accounted for a big part of our clicks. The plugin choice comes down to two questions: do you want translation done for you or by hand, and do you want the translations stored in a cloud service or in your own database.
How we chose
- Translation quality and how easily a human can correct it.
- Multilingual SEO: translated URLs, hreflang tags and sitemaps.
- Where translations live, and what happens if you stop paying.
- Cost as word counts and languages grow.
- Compatibility with WooCommerce, page builders and SEO plugins.
Verdict
Weglot is the quickest way to a complete, SEO-ready multilingual site. Linguise does the same job at a lower cost for large sites, and Universally is a promising newer option that keeps your database clean. Choose WPML when you need translations stored in WordPress with full editorial control, TranslatePress to translate visually, and Polylang when you will write translations yourself. GTranslate is fine for a quick switcher, but pay for indexable URLs if search traffic matters. WP Services can set up and maintain whichever you choose.