MultiLipi vs Smartling: Which Is Better for Multilingual SEO, A Deep Dive into Smartling Alternatives

🔹 About MultiLipi

MultiLipi is a modern AI-powered website translation platform built for companies that care deeply about SEO and performance. It supports 120+ languages, works across any tech stack—including React, Next.js, Django, or WordPress—and includes advanced features like glossary control, translation memory, manual overrides, AI keyword suggestions, and multilingual SEO. Designed for flexibility and scale, MultiLipi is used by agencies and global teams to turn any website into a high-performing multilingual property.

🔹 About Smartling

Smartling is an enterprise-focused localization platform that combines cloud-based translation management with access to professional translators. It is widely adopted by large organizations for managing complex translation workflows, particularly in content-heavy environments like apps, documentation, and marketing websites. According to their official platform overview, Smartling provides features like translation memory, visual context editing, workflow automation, and integrations with tools like Adobe Experience Manager and Salesforce.

1. 🚀 Ease of Use

MultiLipi is built to be frictionless. Getting started requires just a simple integration—either through a JavaScript snippet or CNAME configuration. Once integrated, users can access a clean, no-code dashboard where they can manage translations, define glossary terms, and apply manual edits—all without touching the source code. MultiLipi is intentionally designed to be usable by non-developers, making it a favorite among marketing and SEO teams.

Smartling, while powerful, introduces more complexity. It’s aimed at enterprise-level teams with localization managers and often requires onboarding and training to use effectively. The learning curve is steep, and much of the workflow assumes familiarity with translation project management. Teams without full-time localization support may find it difficult to operate Smartling at its full potential.

2. 🌐 Translation Capabilities & Features

MultiLipi offers a blend of speed and control. It uses industry-leading neural translation engines (like Google and Azure) and enhances them with a persistent translation memory and glossary control—ensuring brand-consistent translations across all languages. Manual editing is available even on entry-level plans, and dynamic content such as menus, buttons, and forms is handled out of the box. The system supports both automatic and manual corrections, and all translated content is SEO-ready.

Smartling supports both machine and human translation, offering professional translation services through its vendor network. While it also provides translation memory and glossary support, many of these features are most effectively used within complex, team-managed workflows. The platform’s visual context editor is helpful for seeing translation in layout, but the operational overhead may be excessive for smaller teams or sites with less frequent content updates.

3. 🔍 Multilingual SEO Features

MultiLipi was built with multilingual SEO in mind. It automatically translates meta tags, headers, image alt text, canonical URLs, and structured data. It also provides the ability to create language-specific subdirectories or subdomains, ensuring each language version of your site is discoverable and indexable by search engines. On higher-tier plans, MultiLipi goes a step further by offering AI-driven keyword suggestions for each language, helping users optimize local search performance based on actual user queries.

Smartling can support multilingual SEO, but it’s not its primary focus. Users must configure SEO rules and tags manually or rely on external tools. There is no AI keyword suggestion feature, and while the platform allows translation of SEO content, this requires deliberate configuration and often depends on how the underlying CMS or site is structured. It’s more of a workflow-based system than a plug-and-play SEO translation tool.

4. 💰 Pricing & Affordability

MultiLipi starts at $0/month, making it accessible to startups and developers testing multilingual functionality. Even on the free plan, it includes 10,000 words and supports 2 languages. Paid plans start at $59/month, which includes translation memory, glossary, editing control, and multilingual SEO. Higher plans (like the $599/month Business tier) support millions of words, more languages, and advanced controls. Pricing is transparent and feature-rich from the start.

Smartling’s pricing is not publicly listed. According to third-party reviews and Smartling’s own site, its cost depends on project volume, word count, and additional services like vendor management or workflow automation. For many companies, even getting a quote requires contact with a sales representative. This lack of transparency can make it difficult to predict costs or compare plans fairly, especially for businesses scaling quickly or handling fluctuating content volumes.

5. 🔧 Compatibility & Flexibility

MultiLipi is framework-agnostic and can be integrated into nearly any website—whether it’s built on React, Next.js, Vue, Django, Laravel, static HTML, or WordPress. It doesn’t rely on plugins and works seamlessly with server-side or client-side rendered content. This makes it ideal for agencies managing a variety of client tech stacks or SaaS teams building with modern tools.

Smartling focuses more on integration with enterprise systems like Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, and custom APIs. While it does offer CMS connectors, it isn’t suitable for every kind of website out of the box. If your site isn’t built on a major enterprise CMS, integration might require custom development or IT support. In short, Smartling is flexible at scale—but it assumes scale from day one.

🏁 Final Comparison Summary

✅ Final Verdict

If you’re an organization looking for fast, SEO-focused, and scalable website translation with full control, MultiLipi is the ideal choice. Its no-code simplicity, SEO enhancements, and cost transparency make it perfect for modern web teams and growth-minded companies.

Smartling remains a good option for large enterprises managing extensive localization operations, but its complexity and opaque pricing may not be suitable for agile teams or diverse tech stacks.