Tip: no multi language feature before quite some time, let's fin ourselves a good third party solution. What is your favorite, and does any solution supports localization?

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From the Wishlist yesterday:

Jan 19, 2021 - Admin Response
Hi all - this is not a priority in the immediate term as there are a number of 3rd-party solutions (e.g. Weglot) that allow customers to create multi-language experiences on their sites, but it’s definitely something we plan to build the right way within Webflow in the future.

It was probably one of your favorite upcoming feature, it’s ranked #2 on the wishlist. Multi language is not easy, or quick to develop, maybe that’s a reason why it’s postponed. If the development isn’t starting in 2021, it’s hard to think about a beta release before the very end of 2022. So there’s at least 2 years between now and a native feature. Many of us have to take decisions now to address client’s ml requests.

Webflow recommends Weglot. The good thing is Weglot is praised by its users for simplicity, clarity, efficiency. There are 2 less good things with Weglot:

  1. Weglot is expensive, it’s difficult to sell to clients you already had to make efforts for them to understand why they have to pay 20/mo for Webflow hosting. Now they have to add half of that just for one extra language, with limitations to 10k chars. On most sites the price of Weglot itself matches the price of the CMS hosting. It’s possible that when Webflow comes with a native solution, it will be a paid solution. Will it double the price of CMS hosting? Probably not, just suppositions.
  2. Weglot translates, it doesn’t localize. It’s not offering a way to introduce variations of content in translated pages, like completely new sections for one market for example. And if you have maintained multi language websites, you know that translation is not enough. Localization requires to be able to add local specific details and content to translated pages. It also requires that you can manage local pages, in many ways: compelte sync, partial sync, no local counterpart, partial counterpart… and that’s just for pages translations. All the rest needs to be localized and controlled: URLs, backend, databases (collections), SEO stuff, custom code… the list is long.

There are some good news though: nested symbols, and content override, bring a way to ease the pain on making multilanguage (small) sites.

So, Weglot is one solution, it’s time to list again the other alternatives. What would be cool here is if we can concentrate on reading about your needs in term of localization, what features you don’t find in current third parties solutions, what would be an ideal budget for such a solution, etc… Third party solution people are very often answering and giving help on this forum so that will be a great occasion to hear from them again.

I suppose you’re disappointed, but please express it in the wishlist thread rather than here, that would be great if we could stay positive and talk only about 3rd party solutions. I personally need your inputs a lot as I have to make difficult choices in the next week on that topic.

In advance thanks for staying positive!

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Good find @Veronica

Whenever a client of mine potentially (near term) or actually needs Multi-Language(ML) features now, I don’t use Webflow for the project deployment (design possibly). There are plenty of competent CMS products that do fully support Multi-Language. Since many sites that need ML are also in or have audiences in the EU, that should be considered as well due to new rules and regulations. Products like Statamic (statamic.com) CMS, which is flat file-based, and supports ML as a core feature, are very appealing. Statamic can be hosted almost anywhere and can easily comply with EU regulations. It also has no practical limits on items or pages and a much better content management experience.

It does not make sense to push people into products that don’t meet the project’s requirements. Webflow is an excellent product for some types of sites. For others, it is a poor choice. Learn when and where to use it. Suppose you decide to rely on third-party integrations. In that case, you are at the mercy of changing features, pricing, and service issues when part of the chain has technical problems, outages, or SEO implications. Weglot looks to be a good product, but all products have limitations. Before you recommend it, you should know what those limitations are.

Feel free to contact me to discuss potential projects.