Weglot: Export Translations, Cancel, Keep Your URLs

Cancelling Weglot is technically a few clicks in your dashboard. The hard part comes before and after: your translations live at Weglot and not in your CMS, and as soon as you cancel, the translated pages go offline. Work in the wrong order and you lose your French, English or German rankings. In this guide you will read how to export your translations, what happens to your URLs per setup, how to avoid 404s and duplicate language versions, and how to cancel and remove Weglot cleanly afterwards. A checklist is at the bottom.

This guide is the Weglot part of our broader guide to leaving a translation tool without losing SEO. Still unsure whether Weglot is enough for you? Read our Weglot review first.

What happens when you cancel Weglot?

Weglot is clear about this. Its article on cancelling or pausing states that after cancelling, your translations are no longer active: they no longer appear on your site and your translated pages are gradually removed from search engines such as Google. Your subscription falls back to the free plan, and according to the same article your project is automatically deleted after three months of inactivity, unless you delete it earlier yourself.

That makes sense, because Weglot translates through its own servers. Your CMS only contains your source language. Without Weglot, your French or German pages simply no longer exist. Hence the first rule: only cancel once your language versions are live somewhere else.

Step 1: know what Weglot publishes today

Before you export anything, make an inventory. You want to know:

Which setup you have. On WordPress, Weglot works through the plugin. On other platforms you choose in the Weglot dashboard under Setup between a JavaScript integration or an integration with subdomains or subdirectories.
Every translated URL per language, with the matching source URL. If you have translated slugs (a Pro feature), note them separately: /fr/services/ is a different URL from /fr/diensten/.
Which translated pages earn traffic. Filter Search Console on the language folder or subdomain and export the pages with impressions and clicks. After the switch, those must be on the same address or redirect with a 301.
The hreflang and canonicals Weglot generates today. Our free hreflang checker shows which language versions point to each other and recognises an active Weglot installation.

Step 2: export your translations

According to the Weglot help center on import and export, export is available from the Advanced plan. You have three ways:

All translations: in your dashboard under Projects, Translations, Languages you choose Actions and then Export. You pick the file format, the language pairs and which translations you want.
Per URL: under Translations, URLs you select the pages and export only their translations.
Specific translations: per language pair you select sentences and export those.

The file arrives by email and is also listed in your dashboard’s activity feed. Weglot recommends synchronising your translations with your current content first, so the export is complete. The formats are CSV and XLIFF. Note: a Weglot export is a list of sentences (source and translation), not ready-made pages. You use it to build the language versions in your CMS, not to import them one to one.

On a lower plan? Then, according to Weglot, you edit translations one by one in the translation list, without bulk export. Two options: upgrade temporarily to Advanced for the export, or fetch (crawl) the translated pages yourself while they are still online. With the second option you save the full HTML per translated URL, including title and meta description. What each plan costs today is in what Weglot really costs.

Step 3: build the language versions in your CMS

Now you put the translations into your own CMS’s multilingual setup as real pages, linked to their source page. On WordPress you can do that with a multilingual plugin or multisite; how those routes compare with Weglot is covered in Weglot vs WPML. Drupal and Joomla are multilingual in core, Webflow has Localization. The overview per CMS is in our guide to leaving a translation tool.

Use the moment to improve the translations: align titles and meta descriptions with what people search for in each language, and have CTAs and forms proofread. That is often the biggest gain of the whole switch.

What happens to your URLs when the proxy stops?

This is the part most exit guides skip. The answer depends on your setup.

WordPress plugin with subdirectories

The Weglot plugin creates the language folders (/fr/, /de/). WordPress itself does not know those addresses. Deactivate the plugin and those URLs return a 404, unless your new multilingual setup takes them over. The good news: with a multilingual plugin on /fr/ you can keep exactly the same URLs. Do check that the slugs stay the same. Where a slug changes, you add a 301.

Subdomains (fr.yoursite.be)

With a subdomain integration, a CNAME record (for example fr) points to Weglot’s servers. Stop Weglot without changing that record and nothing useful is left on fr.yoursite.be. You have two choices:

Keep the subdomain: point the subdomain to your own server or CMS and serve the French version there on the same paths.
Move to subdirectories (often simpler in a CMS): point the subdomain to your own server and redirect every old URL with a 301 to its new address, such as fr.yoursite.be/contact/ to yoursite.be/fr/contact/.

Subdirectories on a non-WordPress site

Here it is less visible. According to Weglot’s article on switching from subdomains to subdirectories, a subdirectory integration means changing an existing DNS record (for a domain without www, your A record) to Weglot’s value. Weglot explicitly adds that you must reset that record to its original value when you stop the integration, and recommends taking a screenshot of your settings beforehand. If you skip that, your whole domain still runs through a service you no longer use after you stop.

JavaScript integration

If Weglot only works through a script in your header, there are no translated URLs that Google indexes. No 301 map is needed. You remove the script and build the language versions properly in your CMS for the first time.

Avoiding 404s and duplicate language versions

Two mistakes come back in every Weglot exit.

404s on translated URLs. They appear when you switch Weglot off before your new versions are live, or when slugs change without a redirect. For a site move, Google recommends deciding per old URL where it should go, using permanent server-side redirects and keeping them for at least a year. Test your list with our redirect checker.

Duplicate language versions. They appear when Weglot and your new setup are active at the same time. You then have two French versions of the same page (for example on a subdomain and in a subdirectory), two sets of hreflang tags or two language switchers. So never run Weglot and the new setup live side by side. Work on a staging environment and switch over in one go. Afterwards, check that every language version lists itself and the other versions correctly; how to do that is explained in our guide to hreflang.

Step 4: remove Weglot cleanly

Once the new language versions are live and the redirects work, you remove Weglot:

WordPress: deactivate and delete the plugin. Check your menus and widgets for a leftover Weglot language switcher, and remove extra CSS you added for the switcher.
Shopify: deleting the app does not always remove a manually added language switcher. In a help article on leftover buttons, Weglot describes removing the lines {% render 'weglot_hreftags' %} and {% render 'weglot_switcher' %} from theme.liquid, and searching other theme files for weglot and elements such as <div class="weglot_here"></div>.
Other platforms: remove the Weglot script from your header and reset the DNS records (CNAME for subdomains, A record for subdirectories).
Then search your source code for “weglot”: leftover hreflang tags pointing to Weglot URLs are worse than no hreflang.

Step 5: cancel and delete your account

Only now do you cancel. According to Weglot, you go to Billing in your dashboard, choose Cancel current plan, confirm and optionally leave feedback. If you also want to delete your account, you can do that yourself via your profile on a free plan. On a paid plan, according to Weglot’s help article on account deletion, you request it from Weglot by email. Weglot repeats there that your translated pages gradually drop out of Google after cancelling, which is no longer a problem for you, because they now live in your CMS.

Checklist: cancel Weglot without losing SEO

Setup identified: WordPress plugin, subdomains, subdirectories or JavaScript.
List of all translated URLs per language, with hreflang, canonical, title and meta description.
Translated pages with traffic exported from Search Console.
Translations exported (CSV or XLIFF from Advanced) or translated pages crawled.
Language versions built in your CMS’s multilingual setup, proofread where it matters.
Same URLs where possible, a 301 redirect per changed URL, tested.
Hreflang complete and reciprocal, canonical per language version to itself.
Weglot and the new setup never live at the same time: switch over in one go.
Plugin, app, script and DNS records removed or reset; source code searched for “weglot”.
New sitemap submitted, indexing and 404s per language monitored in Search Console.
Only then: subscription cancelled and account deleted if needed.

Frequently asked questions

Can I export my Weglot translations on a cheaper plan?

Not in bulk. According to Weglot, export and import are included from Advanced. On lower plans you can upgrade temporarily for the export, or fetch the translated pages yourself while they are online.

Do my translated pages stay in Google after cancelling?

No. Weglot writes that they gradually drop out of search engines after cancelling. That is why you first put the new versions live on the same URLs or with 301 redirects.

Do I have to move from subdomains to subdirectories?

Not necessarily. It is often the simplest setup in a CMS, though. If you choose subdirectories, redirect every old subdomain URL with a 301 to its new address.

Is there an alternative without CMS work of my own?

Yes, another translation tool, but then you stay in the same model. We compare the options in Weglot alternatives compared.

Need help with your Weglot exit?

Want to leave Weglot without losing rankings? We make the inventory, export your translations, build the language versions in your own CMS, set up the 301 map and the hreflang, and only cancel once everything is live and checked. See our translation tool migration.