The traditional translation management system (TMS) is dead.
It doesn’t support the many moving parts of the multilingual content lifecycle, such as managing linguistic assets and syncing with design systems to integrating with codebases, automating QA, and coordinating stakeholders across functions.
Modern TMS solutions go far beyond translation. They bring together translators, developers, marketers, and designers under one roof.
But with dozens of translation management tools in the market, choosing the right fit for your business needs and budget can feel like a herculean task.
You might need days (or weeks) to test features and compare all options before picking the best TMS.
After testing numerous TMS tools, we identified our top five recommendations, each tailored to a specific use case.
💡 A translation management system brings all your multilingual content in one place to effortlessly adapt software, design, marketing materials, and more, while managing and collaborating with multiple contributors. It includes project management tools along with workflow automation capabilities to build an airtight setup for translation projects.
Our criteria for choosing the best translation management systems
Feeling overwhelmed about choosing your ideal translation management software?
To make life (and this decision) easier for you, we vetted many platforms against these five critical criteria and shortlisted the best options.
Let’s go through my evaluation factors first:
- Ease of use: Localization shouldn’t feel like rocket science. The first thing to evaluate is how quickly you and your team can get started with a translation management tool. Check whether the interface is intuitive enough to start translating quickly or requires a lengthy learning curve and setup time.
- Collaborate and communicate: Your TMS should bring your entire team together and maximize collaboration. Instead of juggling five different tools, allow people to do everything on one platform and communicate easily with each other.
- Translation quality: When evaluating options, check the quality of output and how each tool lets you improve this output. See whether you can add context in your translation workflows and test features like translation memories for maintaining consistency.
- Project management: Check for essential features that let you manage the many moving parts of a translation project. Think roles and permissions, project overview, performance analytics, and more.
- Automation: A translation project works a lot like a relay race, with many stakeholders passing the baton. Automated workflows can make every handoff seamless and improve coordination within your team, ultimately, fast-tracking your entire project.
- Robustness of integrations: Your translation management platform can’t work in a vacuum. See the kind of integrations available for every tool, and whether it’s possible to connect the tools in your current setup.
- Customer support: What if you get stuck while building your localization setup? Quick and actionable support is a non-negotiable factor for any TMS solution. Look for the type of customer support channels available and how existing users rate this support.
Using this checklist of parameters, we shortlisted five translation management tools worth checking out.
🔖 Further reading: How to evaluate your Translation Management System (TMS) options + a free 5-step template
5 best translation management software to explore
Let’s break down all our recommended TMS platforms with their key features and pricing.
If you’re pressed for time, here’s a TL;DR of our analysis:
| Tool Name | Best For | Pros | Cons |
| Lokalise | All-in-one platform for software, website, mobile apps, gaming, and design-led localization | Most intuitive platform in the market, context-aware translation engine, highly automated workflows, robust API and integrations, unmatched customer support | Might not be ideal for some marketing localization needs |
| Phrase | Automated, code-integrated localization for enterprise teams | Design automated workflows, create term bases and train AI models, translate audio-visual content with Studio, integrate with 30+ apps | Focused on enterprise teams; not affordable and too complex for small teams |
| Smartling | Enterprise-grade translation management | Extensive translation memory, advanced automation features, high-level QA and security standards, robust customer support | No free trial, less flexible in workflow customization, complicated UI not ideal for teams without dedicated localization expertise |
| Crowdin | Crowdsourced translations and developer-friendly localization | Supports 100+ file formats, community-based translations, a wide range of integrations, cost-effective pricing for small teams | Limited customer support options, increased costs as you scale, complex user interface |
| Transifex by XTM | Localization across distributed teams | Visual/context-based translation, detailed user activity logs, priority-based tasking, and wide integration options | Can be expensive for smaller teams; may require setup time to align with existing workflows |
1. Lokalise: Best for software, website, mobile apps, gaming, and design-led localization
Lokalise is one of the most intuitive translation management software, supporting over 400 languages and a range of use cases.
Whether you want to localize your mobile app for a single region or roll out updates to your website in multiple languages simultaneously, Lokalise simplifies localization projects.
With Lokalise’s pre-built workflows, the platform automatically creates new translation and review tasks as soon as you add content to a project.
You can create your own no-code automated workflows or customize these existing options based on your needs.
In the next steps, choose your target language(s) and set the translation steps. This involves adding a title, choosing a translation engine, and sharing specific instructions.
The best part? As your localization needs grow, you can batch tasks to avoid minimum translation fees from your language service providers. Or, use AI translations for bulk content to stay under budget.
Here’s what adding AI and automation to your workflow looks like in Lokalise:
You can give ample context to AI, so translations make sense from the first draft and don’t need a ton of edits.
But more than efficiency, Lokalise is designed for teamwork. Your entire team can effortlessly work on the same project with live comments, built-in chat, task chains, and branching (translate multiple versions of the same text without clashes).
Whether you’re a localization manager or a project manager, go to the Lokalise dashboard to get a bird’s eye view of all your translation projects. It displays your team’s progress and the QA issues remaining to be addressed.
And if your workflow lives across a dozen different tools, Lokalise is easy to plug into your system. With 60+ integrations across CMSs, developer tools, design platforms, and support tools, it fits right into how your team already works.
Most importantly, as this G2 reviewer notes, Lokalise offers meaningful support for every question, concern, or challenge. You can reach the team via chat and email or resolve your query through help guides.
💪 We’re committed to delivering best-in-class support
Our support team answers every query in 1 minute, in 108 languages. Curious to know how?
Read insights from our senior customer support manager to see how our support team is always available for you.
Key features
- Context-aware translations: Lokalise AI dynamically chooses the best translation engine from multiple LLMs based on your specific assets and language pair. This delivers high-quality and contextually accurate output.
- Integrations for design-led localization: Pull translations into Figma designs to check for design flexibility and correct potential issues before writing a single line of code.
- Robust API, UI, and integrations: With Lokalise, you can build a strong localization infrastructure with over 60 integrations and a solid API with a rich interface to support your projects and workflows.
- AI translations: Use Lokalise AI to translate content at scale. The tool chooses the best LLM model for your specific needs and uses translation memories to produce 10x faster translations than working with linguists.
- Analytics: Get a complete view of your team’s performance and see which tasks are on track/overdue. These insights also forecast the time required for every task and help in setting realistic timelines.
Pricing
14-day free trial, paid plans start at $120/month
💡Localization made easy
In a translation project, you’re juggling a lot on your plate — deadlines, file formats, feedback loops, and more. Things can quickly go off track. But there’s a smarter way to do it.
Read our guide on translation project management to find our best tips, tools, and a lot more to make translation a breeze.
2. Phrase: Best for automated, code-integrated localization for enterprise teams
Phrase is built for localization at scale, especially for fast-moving enterprise teams working in agile or CI/CD environments. The tool can automate every part of your localization process, from string extraction to translation delivery.
Phrase integrates directly with your codebase. When a developer updates a string in the codebase, the platform can automatically extract it, queue it for translation, and even deliver it back — without versioning errors or manual intervention.
Beyond automation, Phrase Studio combines a range of AI-powered features for audio-visual content like webinars, podcasts, and interviews. You’ll get:
- Live transcripts
- Localized subtitles
- Translated voiceovers
- Integrated QA checks
- Insights via AI chatbot
Enterprise teams can also use Phrase to create and manage their own brand glossaries and term bases. Use these glossaries to train AI models for more accurate machine translation output.
Plus, Phrase’s translation memory prevents duplicate effort on phrases that have already been translated before.
Besides, you can integrate Phrase with 30+ tools, including ticketing apps, collaboration tools, CMSs, and marketing platforms. For example, once a translation is approved, you can fire a webhook to update a Jira task, ping Slack, or even trigger the next deployment step.
Key features
- Git and branching support: Sync with your Git repositories and use branching to translate new features separately without affecting your main code.
- In-context editor: See all the context available for a key, like review references, jobs, descriptions, tags, metadata, and comments for keys on your website, app, or more.
- Customizable workflows: Use Phrase Orchestrator to design automated workflows in a no-code setup. Work with a drag-and-drop editor to create new flows or customize existing templates.
Pricing
Freelancer and LSP plans start at $27/month, Direct plans start at $135/month
3. Smartling: Best for enterprise-grade translation
Smartling’s cloud-based TMS is built for enterprise teams swimming in translation requests. Think ecommerce giants, media streaming platforms, and global travel sites.
The platform displays all ongoing translation jobs and their statuses on a single screen. Use this dashboard to track progress, get updates, and collaborate with your team.
Besides collaboration and project management, the platform also makes life easy for translators with its extensive translation memory. Whenever you translate a new string, the platform adds the source and target text to its memory.
SmartMatch compares every new string to check if it matches any existing ones in the TM database. It automatically translates a perfect-match string based on the memory.
You can also search the TM anytime to find any saved translations.
Not just that, translators get instant access to your brand style guides and term bases. They don’t have to guess whether you call it a ‘cart’ or a ‘bag.’
The result? Fewer rewrites, more consistency, and a brand voice that doesn’t go rogue in Dutch.
The tool also supports various types of visual context files, like HTML, images, PDFs, videos, and Adobe InDesign files. That means you can see exactly how and where text appears in the final product.
Here’s a look at the context dashboard:
Reviewers on G2 also highlight features like “Open Issue.” It allows users to raise questions about specific strings directly within the interface. As a result, nobody has to guess the next steps in your translation workflow.
Key features
- Smartling Global Delivery Network (GDN): Add a smart layer between your website and the user, which automatically shows the translated version based on the visitor’s language.
- Language Quality Assistance (LQA) Suite: Evaluate translation quality within a dedicated environment through bundled samples, round-trip editing, and more.
- Enterprise-grade security: Smartling meets the highest standards of security for enterprise teams with PCI, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO certifications.
Pricing
Smartling offers three custom plans. However, its pricing isn’t available on the website, and you can’t get a free trial.
🤔Want to translate faster and smarter?
Translation memory stores previously translated content so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel (or retranslate the same button text 47 times). Discover how translation memory works and the best practices to create one.
4. Crowdin: Best for crowdsourced translation and developer-friendly localization
Crowdin is a cloud-based translation and localization management platform. It’s ideal for software organizations that want to manage community input for translation projects without sacrificing control or quality.
Here’s how you can add crowdsourcing to your project workflow in the workflow editor:
Just set your project to allow open access. Then, share the link on your website, socials, or wherever your community hangs out.
Crowdin’s GitLab integration automatically presents new strings to the community for quicker translation. Once proofreaders approve the translated strings, the tool immediately creates new merge requests to be integrated into your code.
Plus, you can create different branches for features. These branches are separate from the master branch, so smaller changes won’t impact your overall interface.
All community contributors have access to a shared glossary and translation memory. The tool even prompts real-time suggestions based on TM and glossary to help translators make on-brand suggestions.
Crowdin lets the community decide what sounds best. Multiple versions of a string? Let users vote. Then, you can pick the most-loved translated version.
Plus, the platform lets you set up custom QA checks. This way, it’ll flag missing punctuation, placeholder issues, or anything else you’d rather not catch at the last minute.
What’s even more impressive is that the platform supports 100+ file formats—from Java to PHP. This makes Crowdin useful for different types of localization projects.
Key features
- Custom end-to-end workflows: Create a mix of human and automated steps to control the quality of translations.
- Role-based access control: Assign specific roles (translator, proofreader, or manager) with different permissions so that many people can contribute, but only trusted users can review or approve translations.
- Wide variety of integrations: Crowdin integrates with over 600 different tools based on your needs, including several CMS and developer tools.
Pricing
Free plan, paid plans start at $50/month
5. Transifex by XTM: Best for managing localization across distributed teams
Transifex is a great TMS for complex and asynchronous workflows among developers, translators, localization managers, and QA reviewers.
With live editing, translators can see each other’s updates and leave inline comments, reducing duplicated work and miscommunication.
Transifex also offers in-context and visual translation tools. If a string is tied to a screenshot, a handy little image icon gives translators what they need, without bugging a developer on Slack at 2 a.m. on another continent.
As a localization manager, you can monitor progress across multiple projects, spot bottlenecks, and balance workloads from a unified dashboard.
And for the developers and designers, Transifex fits into a stack of all your favorite tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Figma, Slack, and more. Content flows in, translations flow out, and no one has to copy-paste strings into an email ever again.
Key features
- Activity logs: Get detailed logs of user actions (who did what and when) so you can audit and investigate errors if issues are raised.
- Priority-based translation queues: Project managers can assign priority levels to certain strings, tasks, or resources so they show up at the top of the translators’ queue.
- Contribution tracking: Every string translation is tied to a specific contributor and timestamp. You can see how many words each translator completed and review their contributions.
Pricing
Paid plans start at $120/month
Take your translation projects to the next level
Choosing a translation management system can seem like a never-ending process.
But it becomes a lot easier when you focus on a few good options instead of testing every tool in the market. Bookmark this guide, and test all the platforms that align with your budget. Then, make an informed decision based on your testing experience.
And if you want to take a holistic approach to translations, choose a versatile platform like Lokalise. More than just a TMS, it offers a feature-packed AI suite to create multilingual content quickly and effortlessly.
Get started with a 14-day trial (no credit card required).
