How to localize a website automatically

Nowadays, website localization doesn’t have to be a manual process. Granted, automatic doesn’t always mean “hands-off.” There are different solutions that offer different levels of automation, flexibility, and quality control. Below, you’ll learn how to localize a website automatically. We’ll explain how each option works so you can choose the best fit for your needs.

Option 1 → Use an AI-powered TMS

We’re going to start with the easiest and most scalable solution for most businesses, which is to use a dedicated translation management system like POEditor. Tools like ours are designed to manage the entire localization workflow—from organizing translatable content to automating updates.

A localization platform such as POEditor centralizes every aspect of the localization process and facilitates collaboration. You can integrate with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Figma, WordPress, and many other tools. Instead of translating your website from scratch after every update, localization platforms only processes the content that has changed.

How it works:

1. You connect your website, application, or CMS to your TMS using integrations or API.
2. Import your existing translatable content.
3. Use AI-assisted translation/machine translation engines to generate initial translations.
4. Review and edit translations.
5. Publish the localized content back to your website.
6. Automatically sync new or updated content as your website grows.

This option is great for SaaS companies, e-commerce stores, and any business that continuously publishes new content, for that matter. Because even if your website continues to grow, your localization platform will ensure your translations remain consistent, organized, and easy to maintain.

Option 2 → Use an AI translation API

If you need complete flexibility, you can build your own localization workflow using machine translation APIs. Well-known providers like OpenAI, DeepL, Google Cloud Translation, and Microsoft Translator, among others, offer APIs capable of translating text programmatically. The process is simple: your application sends text directly to a translation API whenever you add new content or update it.

Building your own workflow gives you complete control over everything: which content gets translated, which languages are supported, when the translations are generated, how the translations are stored, and how the website displays the localized content. The downside is that you’ll have to do more engineering work.

You’ll need to build and maintain translation storage, update detection, error handling, retry logic, quality assurance workflows, translation review interfaces, and version management. Consequently, if your website grows, you’ll work more to maintain these systems.

Option 3 → Use your CMS’s localization features

It shouldn’t be too hard to find a content management systems that supports multilingual websites through plugins, extensions, or built-in localization capabilities. You can automate localization directly inside the CMS your team already uses.

WordPress offers several plugins that automatically translate content and also allow editors to review and improve the translations before publishing. For e-commerce businesses, Shopify supports multilingual storefronts through localization apps and built-in language features. Webflow too supports multilingual websites through localization tools and integrations. And these are just a few examples.

There’s minimum setup to this option, and little or no coding. It’s works perfectly for many small and medium-sized businesses that want to launch their multilingual websites fast, without dedicated developers.

Option 4 → Generate localized versions for static websites

Static site generators produce fast, secure, SEO-friendly websites. Frameworks like Next.js, Astro, Hugo, Gatsby, and Nuxt all support automated localization workflows. In a typical workflow, content is updated, the build starts, missing content is translated, language-specific pages are generated, and the website is deployed. Each language receives its own version of every page.

This option creates fully localized websites that search engines can index independently. You thus get strong SEO support and easy deployment through CI/CD. Go with this approach if you have a large multilingual website with frequent deployments. Your dev will probably combine this workflow with a headless CMS platform so that the editors can publish content while localization happens automatically in the background.

Which process is right for you?

A dedicated localization platform like POEditor is often the best choice for companies that want a scalable workflow without having to build a custom infrastructure. It centralizes translations, simplifies collaboration, and automates repetitive tasks. All these make it well suited to growing multilingual websites.

For companies with specialized technical requirements, it also works to integrate translation APIs directly into a custom workflow. You basically get maximum flexibility, but it does require more development effort.

If your website already runs on a CMS and you don’t want any hassle, you can rely on built-in localization features or plugins to launch multilingual content quickly and with minimal setup.

And if you’re using a static site generator, incorporating localization into your build pipeline can produce fast and SEO-friendly websites that are easy to deploy and maintain.