How to make a multilingual website: builders vs WordPress plugins, prices and SEO (2026)

The quick answer

There are three ways to make a multilingual website. Use your builder’s own tool (Wix Multilingual, Shopify’s Translate & Adapt, or Weglot built into Squarespace). Add a WordPress plugin such as Polylang, TranslatePress or WPML. Or use a hosted service like Weglot, which works on almost any platform.

For a small site adding one language, the cheapest paths are free: Polylang or TranslatePress on WordPress, Wix Multilingual, Shopify’s Translate & Adapt, or Weglot’s free plan on sites under 2,000 words. The costs start when you want machine translation for many words, more languages or translated URLs.

Before you pick a tool: how translation gets done

Every tool below handles two jobs. The first is storing a second version of each page, menu and form. The second is the translation itself, which can come from three places:

• You or a translator type it in. Free with every tool, and the most accurate.
• Machine translation. Fast, sold in word credits or through your own Google or DeepL account.
• A mix. Machine translation first, then a fluent speaker edits it.

Google’s spam policies list “automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques” among the signs of scaled, low-value content, per its Search spam policies. That policy targets scraped pages, not a business translating its own site, but the lesson holds: have a person read machine output before it goes live.

Built-in options on website builders

Wix Multilingual

The Wix Multilingual app is free to install and comes with 3,000 free word credits for auto-translation. Wix’s help center says more credits come in 3K, 10K or 50K packs (no prices listed there), never expire and are non-refundable. New pages aren’t translated automatically, and edits to the original don’t carry over, so you re-run translation after changes. On SEO, Wix says it adds hreflang and x-default tags by default, and you can translate page slugs.

Right for: Wix sites that want everything in one editor.

Squarespace with Weglot

Squarespace’s own help article says the Weglot integration works only on version 7.1, from the Site Languages panel. It is free for one extra language and up to 2,000 words, with a 10-day trial for sites up to 10,000 words; bigger sites need a paid Weglot plan. Language subdomains such as es.yoursite.com add hreflang tags automatically, but they need a custom domain. Email Campaigns, Acuity Scheduling, third-party blocks like maps and member login screens aren’t translated.

Right for: Squarespace 7.1 sites with modest word counts.

Shopify Translate & Adapt

Shopify’s free Translate & Adapt app auto-translates up to two languages for free, and you can add more by hand. Shopify’s language requirements page says you can sell in up to 20 languages on the Basic, Grow, Shopify and Advanced plans, and 30 on Shopify Plus. Each language gets its own subfolder (example.com/de) or subdomain, and URL slugs can be translated. Product tags can’t be, and checkout comes pre-translated in 33 languages.

Right for: Shopify stores selling into one or two more languages.

WordPress plugins compared

WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress publish their prices in euros only, so we show euros for them. Weglot bills in euros and shows US dollar estimates.

We build on WordPress every week, and translation is one of the few jobs where the plugin choice shapes the whole site, because each one stores translations its own way. Switching later means redoing the work.

Polylang

The free Polylang plugin has more than 900,000 active installs. It translates posts, pages, media, categories, menus and widgets, and lets you use a language code in the URL, a subdomain or a separate domain per language. Polylang Pro starts at EUR 99 a year, and renewal is “currently 50% of the new license price,” per its pricing page. Pro adds translated slugs, content duplication and DeepL with your own API key. WooCommerce needs a separate add-on from EUR 99 a year.

Right for: small sites where you or a translator will write the second language.

TranslatePress

TranslatePress lets you translate by clicking text on the live page. The free version handles one translation language and 2,000 AI-translated words, or unlimited Google translation with your own API key. Paid plans, per its pricing page: Personal EUR 99 a year (1 site, 50K AI words), Business EUR 199 (3 sites, 200K) and Developer EUR 349 (unlimited sites, 500K). Translated slugs and SEO titles need the paid SEO Pack.

Right for: owners who want to see the page while they translate.

WPML

WPML has no free version. Its purchase page lists Multilingual Blog at EUR 39 a year for 1 site, Multilingual CMS at EUR 99 for 3 sites with 22,500 AI words, and Multilingual Agency at EUR 199 for unlimited sites with 45,000 words. The Blog plan can’t translate menus, strings or page-builder pages, and has no ecommerce support, so most business sites need CMS. Renewal prices aren’t listed. If you stop renewing, WPML keeps working and translations stay up, but you lose updates.

Right for: larger sites, WooCommerce stores and sites built with page builders.

Weglot

Weglot runs outside WordPress and also works on Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and Webflow. Its pricing page bills in euros, with US dollar figures only an estimate: Starter EUR 150 a year (about $170) for 10,000 words and 1 language, Business EUR 290 (about $320) for 50,000 words and 3 languages, Pro EUR 790 (about $870) for 200,000 words and 5 languages. Monthly billing is EUR 15, 29 and 79 (about $17, $32 and $87). The word limit counts unique translated words across all your languages and “does not renew.” Weglot’s own quoting guide says to multiply the words on the site by the number of languages added.

That last part is the one to plan around. A 20-page site with 500 words a page is 10,000 words in one language, which fills Starter. Add a second language and you are at 20,000 words, which needs Business.

Right for: any platform, and owners who don’t want to manage translations inside WordPress.

SEO basics for a multilingual site

Google publishes clear rules here, so follow them rather than guessing.

1. Give each language its own URL. “Google recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page,” and not switching language with cookies or browser settings, per Google’s multi-regional sites guide. Subdirectories (example.com/es/) are the easiest to run; subdomains and country domains also work. Google doesn’t recommend URL parameters like ?lang=es.
2. Don’t auto-redirect by language. Google says “don’t redirect based on what you think the user’s language may be.” Add a visible language switcher instead.
3. Add hreflang tags. These tell Google which page is the Spanish version of which English page. Google’s hreflang guide says each version must list itself and every other version, and “If two pages don’t both point to each other, the tags will be ignored.” Use ISO language codes such as es or es-MX, and x-default for a fallback page.
4. Translate the whole page. Google warns that translating only the menus and buttons while the main text stays in one language makes for a poor experience.
5. Translate titles and descriptions too, not just the body text.

The good news: Wix, WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress all say they add hreflang tags automatically, Squarespace does it with Weglot language subdomains, and Weglot lists hreflang among its features. Check by viewing the page source after setup. Our SEO guide covers the rest of the SEO settings each builder lets you control.

What it costs over 3 years

Same small business site as the rest of this site, adding one language. The site column is in US dollars. The translation column stays in euros where the vendor bills in euros, so we don’t guess the exchange rate.

The site totals use the baseline from our other guides: Bluehost Starter at $3.99 a month on a 36-month term ($143.64), a domain ($36.96 when year one is included, otherwise $48.24) and one Google Workspace inbox ($252). Squarespace Core is $29 a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly), Wix Core is $29 a month billed yearly, and Shopify Basic is $29 a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly). Paid translation by a person is extra on every row.

How to launch a second language

1. Pick the pages that matter. Home, services, contact and your top sellers. You don’t have to translate an old blog.
2. Choose your URL style (subdirectory is the simple default) before you publish anything.
3. Translate, then have a fluent speaker review anything a machine produced.
4. Translate forms, emails and the checkout, not just pages.
5. Check hreflang in the page source, and submit your sitemap in Search Console.
6. Update your cookie banner and privacy policy for the new language. Our cookie consent guide notes which tools translate banners.

What to do next

• Running several regional sites on WordPress? Read about WordPress Multisite. WordPress.org’s handbook gives the example of regional sites that share a theme and plugins but publish different content.
• Compare the builders themselves in our Squarespace vs Wix comparison.
• See all your SEO settings in websites and SEO.