Smartling Reviews & Product Details

Smartling’s automation capabilities are its biggest strength. The integrations with tools like GitHub, CMS platforms, and marketing tools significantly reduce manual effort. The translation workflows are well thought out, and the in‑context editing feature helps translators see how content will actually appear, which improves quality a lot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve can be a bit steep at the beginning, especially for users who are new to translation management systems. Some advanced features require time to fully understand and configure correctly.

Pricing can also feel on the higher side compared to simpler tools, which may be a concern for small teams or startups. A bit more flexibility/customization in reporting would be a nice improvement. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really value Smartling for its translation quality and GDN capabilities, which we used for our primary informational and sales websites. I appreciate how it allows for near-real-time translations of English source content into more than 15 languages without the need for coding additional pages. Smartling's framework and UI are very well developed, which makes it a premium product. The support team is very attentive and helpful at all times, and the client service teams are excellent. The drag-and-drop interface for documents is also very convenient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We did struggle a bit with form fields and random data being consumed by Smartling; and nailing down the specific rules for each page code / use-case was difficult, but we figured out everything eventually. Also the overall cost is premium-tier, and overages can add up, so be sure to align your project and budget with their team to avoid surprises. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

platform is fairly easy to use, but that's about it. I've not had a great experience overall. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The customer service has not been to the standard we were hoping for. We've had to spend a lot of time arguing with our reps to get what we need or what was promised. When we moved from basic to enterprise we were also not informed about 10% project management fees.

Translations are not always accurate - many times things are wrong. Once a project was translated into the wrong language and not what we requested. Many other times we're needing to have internal reviewers make a lot of edits that their human reviewers missed.

UX is not the most modern looking and is not entirely user friendly. Difficult to manage projects that are uploaded but not submitted, and hard to check/assess if all lines have been picked up by their AI when dealing with larger files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is fast and user-friendly, and the AI Hub is just so easy to set up and use. I was able to set up a profile and workflow with my company Gemini key in minutes and the raw translations we get are of great quality. A feature I also love is that Smartling shares the name of individual translators, so I always know who is giving us great quality and who needs more coaching. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

TM capabilities for bulk updating TM content are not great. Also, when using the LQA Suite for off-production LQA, there is no easy way to see the instructions that the original translation job had (you have to go back and forth between the original job and the LQA job) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use Smartling for corporate website and print copy translations, and it helps me translate our content consistently into our two main European languages. Most translators are good at understanding our technical background and can convey the message and meaning rather than translating the exact words. This reduces the time my coworkers and I spend reviewing and editing what Smartling sends back. The quality of the translations, ease of use for all of our team members, and consistent turnaround times were major reasons for switching to Smartling. The initial setup was very easy; we only had to send our glossaries in our core languages and brand guidelines, and it was set up. We got a training session and were ready to go. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Depending on which translator works on our translation, the style can sometimes be heavier and not flow as naturally. Also, when dealing with technical terms, they sometimes over-translate, not taking into account that some words make more sense to our audience in English than in their own language. Also, as LLMs improve, my prompting becomes more precise, and depending on the translator/editor, I sometimes find that LLMs handle the flow better and have a better understanding of the terms our audience uses, making the text sound more native. While French and German are pretty good, we are struggling more with other languages, where we do fewer translations and don't have a dedicated internal reviewer to train Smartling's teams on our expectations for these languages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I appreciate the dedication to evolving with the times, especially in the age of AI. There are many features and translation options that can vary by language, which makes it easy to customize. Having the GDN support when there was no dedicated localization manager was also so helpful. I can also say that the support was always timely and accommodating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the UI/UX to be quite dated and clunky compared to other enterprise TMSs. I also think it's a bit expensive, again compared to other offerings. I also think there should be regex feature in the search bar for more advanced search options. I also felt there was a lot of admin. I didn't havea. ton of control. Even when I wanted to give permissions to an external agency, I always had to go to the CSM. I didn't have a lot of freedom. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Integrations got better over the last year, namely with GitHub. There are still some issues with it. Changes in configurations quickly hit the GitHub API rate limits, and forces the content to be fully re-processed again, which tends to take a bit to time to get it done.

Although the interface seems a bit outdated, it simply works. It seems that function over aesthetics is the option, which is positive.

Pricing tends to be high, namely for AI based translation, which becomes highly expensive quickly. So if you are looking at Smartling to have it for a AI translation only tool, do check the pricing, there might be better alternatives for AI powered translations. When we used the AI based translations the quality was ok-ish. Our content tends to be more on the technical side, and sometimes it would be a hit and miss.

In terms of support and customer success or account managers, I'd say that the rotation is high and frequently changes. On the support side of things things tend to be solved, however sometimes they just take time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some issues, namely with the GitHub integration have been reported for several years. Markdown support is spotty at best. We ended up developing a custom transformation to another format that Smartling handles better.

Although it is mentioned that Smartling supports the GitHub flavored markdown, that is not entirely true. Task lists, and others are poorly supported and end up messing up the content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Smartling is a feature-packed platform that is very clean, versatile, and easy to use. We're able to push and pull translations easily between Sitecore (our CMS) and Smartling, making it very easy to translate our content-heavy site quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I honestly can't think of anything I dislike about Smartling. Their sales process is very transparent and forthcoming with information (especially compared to other competitors in their space), their support team is very responsive, and the platform itself integrates easily with our CMS and even allows us to translate content that doesn't exist on a webpage. They are so easy to work with that we've transitioned all of our translation work to them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the ability to choose the level of human involvement in Smartling. I find Smartling's transcreation service a valuable offering because it gives us access to native speakers who are thoughtful about how to convey the meaning of the text without getting stuck on a literal translation that might not be appropriate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The dashboard interface could be more aesthetically pleasing. It sometimes requires more clicks than we'd think necessary to drill down to the info we want. The setup isn't 100% intuitive. More importantly, the process of creating a library of strings from previously translated materials was opaque and cumbersome. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use Smartling for the localization of 70+ software products, which helps streamline and optimize the process. I find the CAT tool to be powerful, and I appreciate the great visual context and linguistic assets it provides. Our initial setup with Smartling went well, and we've been using it for over 10 years, connecting it to our internal CMS, Braze and Figma. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I’ve found the AI implementation isn’t fully adaptable, and it took a while to get to a point where it’s now working mostly well. That said, their business model of charging per word feels counter-intuitive in a fast-paced AI world, where you generally want to ship more—and faster. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.