Weglot review: what automatic translation gets wrong and when it is enough

Weglot is a translation platform that translates your website automatically and puts a separate version online for each language, without you having to rebuild your CMS. The short verdict: technically, Weglot does a lot right for SEO (separate URLs per language, hreflang, translated metadata), but the text itself remains machine translation. For a Belgian company that wants to convince French-speaking or Dutch-speaking customers, that is exactly the weak point. In this Weglot review you will read how Weglot works, what it costs according to its own pricing page, where automatic translation goes wrong in practice and when Weglot is good enough.

This article goes deeper into one part of our guide to website translation. If you are mainly unsure about the SEO side of automatic translation, also read what Google thinks of machine-translated pages.

How exactly does Weglot work?

Weglot sits between your website and your visitor. According to Weglot’s own features page, it works with a reverse proxy combined with JavaScript: it detects the text on your pages, has it translated by a machine translation engine and shows the translated version to the visitor. Weglot names DeepL as its main engine and also works with Microsoft and Google Translate. New content is picked up and translated automatically.

An important detail is in the same documentation: the translations are stored at Weglot and accessible through the Weglot dashboard, not in your CMS. That makes the installation light, because you are not building a second site, but it also makes you dependent on the platform. More on that below.

You can edit translations in a list view or in a visual editor, build a glossary so fixed terms are always translated the same way, and bring in professional translators from the dashboard. Weglot also adds a language switcher automatically.

What does Weglot do well for SEO?

The technical foundation is solid, and that is more than you can say for some translation plugins. According to Weglot’s documentation on SEO for WordPress, the platform does the following:

• A separate URL per language. Weglot creates a subfolder for each translated language, for example /fr/ or /nl/. That is what Google recommends: separate URLs per language version instead of switching language via cookies or browser settings.
• Hreflang tags. Weglot adds the hreflang annotations to your source code automatically, so Google knows which versions belong together. How those tags work is explained in our guide to hreflang for Belgian sites.
• Translated metadata. Meta descriptions and image alt texts are translated too, and the translation sits in the source code, not only dynamically on screen. Search engines can therefore read and index the translated pages.

Two caveats. On WordPress, Weglot does not set the x-default tag by default; according to the same documentation, that requires custom work. And translated URL slugs (so /fr/services/ instead of /fr/diensten/) are only included in the Pro plan, according to the pricing page. A French-language page with a Dutch slug is not a disaster, but you miss a signal in the URL and in the search results.

What does Weglot cost?

Weglot charges per plan, with a limit on the number of translated words and the number of languages. Important: the word limit counts per language, so a 20,000-word site in two extra languages uses 40,000 translated words. The amounts below come from the Weglot pricing page, consulted on 6 October 2026, with annual prices in brackets. Check them before you decide, because software prices change.

According to Weglot, every paid plan comes with a free 14-day trial. For a Belgian B2B site that wants to serve NL and FR with translated URLs, you quickly end up at Pro in practice. If you might ever want to take your translations to another solution, also look at export: that only comes from Advanced.

Where does automatic translation go wrong in practice?

The technology is usually right, the language often is not. A machine translation is grammatically correct enough to understand, but a French-speaking or Dutch-speaking customer notices immediately that the text was not written for them. These are the mistakes we see most often on automatically translated Belgian sites:

• Tone and form of address. A breezy Flemish informal “je” sometimes becomes “tu” in French, sometimes “vous”, sometimes both on the same page. For a French-speaking business audience that sounds sloppy.
• Belgian French and jargon. An engine does not know the difference between France and Belgium by default. Sector terms, job titles and administrative concepts (VAT, the KBO/BCE company register, paritair comité or commission paritaire) often come out literally or in the French-from-France variant.
• CTAs and microcopy. Buttons, form error messages and confirmation texts are translated short and without context. “Request” can go wrong in five ways, and that is exactly where the visitor decides whether to make an enquiry.
• Text in images and PDFs. A proxy does not translate what is in an image or a download. Your French-language page then shows a Dutch-language infographic.
• Legal and technical pages. Terms and conditions, privacy policy and product specifications require a precision an engine does not guarantee.
• Keywords. A translated page targets the translation of your Dutch keyword, not the word French speakers actually type. That is not a Weglot problem but a translation problem, and it costs you findability.

When is Weglot enough?

Weglot is a good choice when speed matters more than perfection, or when the translated language is not a core market. Concretely, it works well for:

• Supporting content such as a knowledge base, FAQ or product catalogue with many pages, where perfect style weighs less than availability in the customer’s language.
• A quick start in a new language, to measure whether there is demand before you invest in rewritten copy.
• Sites without a technical team, where a second language would otherwise simply not exist.

For your money pages, meaning the homepage, service pages, pricing information, landing pages and contact forms, machine translation is only a first draft. There your copy deserves a native speaker who rewrites rather than corrects. That hybrid approach (machine for volume, human for conversion) works inside Weglot itself: you adjust the translation in the visual editor and Weglot remembers your version.

How do you get the most out of Weglot?

If you choose Weglot, a few interventions limit the biggest risks:

1. Build a glossary for your brand name, product names, sector terms and form of address. That way Weglot translates fixed terms consistently.
2. Rewrite your top 10 pages manually in the visual editor, with a native speaker. Start with the pages that generate leads.
3. Switch off automatic language redirects and rely on the language switcher, so Google and visitors can reach all versions.
4. Check your hreflang and x-default after installation. Our hreflang checker shows which language versions point to each other correctly and whether a translation plugin is active.
5. Do keyword research per language and adjust titles, meta descriptions and headings to what French speakers actually search for. How that works is explained in SEO for translations.
6. Keep an eye on your word limit. Every new blog post counts in every language.

Weglot or something else?

Weglot is not the only route. Roughly speaking you have three alternatives: a translation plugin that stores translations in your own CMS (such as WPML or TranslatePress on WordPress), your platform’s built-in multilingual features (Webflow, Shopify and others offer this), or separate, human-written pages per language. The difference comes down to three questions: where are your translations stored, who writes them and how much control do you have over URLs and metadata? If you want to weigh that up for your market, read our strategy for a multilingual B2B website or the practical guide to a bilingual NL/FR website.

Frequently asked questions about Weglot

Want your translated site reviewed?

Is your site already running on Weglot or another translation plugin, and are you unsure whether the translated versions bring in customers? We review your language versions, your hreflang and the pages that need to bring in leads, and tell you honestly where machine translation is enough and where it is not. See how our website translation services deliver native NL and FR copy and a correct multilingual SEO setup.

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