Based on checking the website, Lokalise.com appears to be a robust, cloud-based translation and localization management platform designed to streamline the process of internationalizing digital products and content.
It offers a comprehensive suite of tools aimed at automating workflows, facilitating collaboration among diverse teams, and accelerating the delivery of multilingual applications, websites, games, and documentation.
The platform emphasizes efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, presenting itself as a “Git for localization” that unifies projects, locales, and teams in one centralized environment, ultimately helping businesses expand their global reach and deliver more impactful customer experiences worldwide.
Find detailed reviews on Trustpilot, Reddit, and BBB.org, for software products you can also check Producthunt.
IMPORTANT: We have not personally tested this company’s services. This review is based solely on information provided by the company on their website. For independent, verified user experiences, please refer to trusted sources such as Trustpilot, Reddit, and BBB.org.
Unpacking Lokalise’s Core Value Proposition
Lokalise.com positions itself as a critical enabler for businesses looking to expand globally, providing tools that automate and accelerate translation and localization projects.
Their core value proposition revolves around helping companies “reach global, speak local” by offering a unified platform for all localization needs. This isn’t just about translating words.
It’s about integrating the localization process seamlessly into development workflows, ensuring consistency, and drastically reducing manual effort.
Automating Localization Workflows
One of Lokalise’s primary draws is its commitment to automation.
The platform allows users to set up continuous localization workflows, which means translations can be integrated and updated in real-time as development progresses.
This is a significant departure from traditional, often manual, localization methods that can become bottlenecks.
- Auto-translate with AI: Lokalise integrates AI translation capabilities, allowing for rapid, bulk translations across 30+ languages. This feature is touted to save up to 70% in costs by providing accurate, ready-to-use translations right from the start. Users can also add style guides to give the AI context and correctly translate niche terminology, ensuring brand consistency.
- Automation Rules: The platform enables users to set up automation rules with a few clicks, including auto-approving and reusing translations. This reduces redundant work and maintains consistency across projects.
- Task Handoffs: Automated task handoffs ensure that content moves smoothly from one stage of the localization process to the next, whether it’s from developers to translators, or from translators to reviewers.
Enhancing Collaboration Across Teams
Localization is inherently a collaborative process, involving developers, product managers, designers, and localization managers.
Lokalise aims to break down silos by providing a shared workspace where all stakeholders can contribute and track progress effectively.
- Centralized Project Management: Described as “the Git for localization,” Lokalise unifies projects, locales, translation strings, and teams in a single environment. This eliminates the need to chase text across various spreadsheets, dev environments, and design files.
- Role-Specific Features: The platform offers tailored feature sets for different team members. Developers benefit from integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and SDKs. designers can start localization at the design stage with Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch integrations. and localization managers can oversee tasks, track progress, and analyze performance.
- Linguistic Assets: Teams can easily access and manage glossaries, translation memories, and style guides, ensuring consistency in terminology and tone across all localized content. This shared repository is crucial for maintaining brand voice and accuracy, especially in large-scale projects.
Deep Dive into Key Integrations and API Capabilities
Lokalise understands that modern development ecosystems are complex and rely on interconnected tools.
Their strategy emphasizes seamless integration with popular platforms and offering a powerful API for custom solutions, ensuring that localization isn’t an afterthought but an integral part of the development lifecycle. Oberlo.com Reviews
Extensive Integrations
Lokalise boasts over 50 out-of-the-box integrations, allowing teams to connect their existing tools and easily collaborate on multilingual products.
This wide array of integrations is a significant advantage, as it minimizes disruption to current workflows and maximizes efficiency.
- Design Tools: Integrations with design software like Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch allow localization to begin at the design stage. This proactive approach helps designers ensure that translated text fits within UI constraints, preventing costly rework later in the development cycle. For instance, character limits can be set at the design phase to avoid design breaks.
- Development & Version Control: For developers, Lokalise integrates with GitHub, GitLab, and Jira. This allows for smooth integration of translation software into the development workflow, enabling developers to work on multiple branches of their project, track changes, and revert them if needed, much like a traditional version control system.
- Content Management Systems CMS: The platform connects with various CMS tools, allowing for the localization of marketing content, blogs, campaigns, and emails directly. This is crucial for businesses that manage a high volume of digital content.
- SDKs and OTA: Lokalise provides Software Development Kits SDKs and Over-the-Air OTA translation capabilities. This means apps can be translated without building and submitting a new release, and dynamic content can be updated on the fly, significantly speeding up content delivery.
Robust API for Customization and Control
For organizations with unique requirements or complex technical environments, Lokalise offers an industry-leading RESTful API.
This API provides extensive control and automation capabilities, supported by clear how-to documentation and script templates for faster implementation.
- 95 Endpoints: With 95 distinct API endpoints, developers can control and automate nearly every aspect of their translation tasks. This level of granular control is invaluable for large enterprises needing to integrate localization into highly specific or custom internal systems.
- 33 Webhooks: Webhooks provide real-time notifications about updates in localization projects. This allows for proactive responses to changes, such as triggering automated QA checks once translations are complete or notifying specific team members.
- 10 Pre-made SDKs: To jump-start multilingual projects, Lokalise provides 10 pre-made SDKs. These SDKs simplify the process of integrating Lokalise functionalities into various programming languages and frameworks, reducing the need for crafting custom solutions from scratch. This accelerates development time for teams implementing localization features.
The “Git” for Localization: Version Control and Data Management
Lokalise’s self-proclaimed status as the “Git” for localization is more than just marketing jargon.
It signifies a fundamental shift in how translation assets are managed and collaborated upon.
This approach brings the principles of version control, traditionally applied to source code, to linguistic data, addressing common pain points in the localization process.
Centralized Source of Truth
One of the biggest challenges in localization has been the fragmentation of translation assets across various spreadsheets, emails, and isolated development environments.
Lokalise aims to solve this by providing a single, unified platform.
- Organized Project Structure: The platform allows for the organization and unification of projects, locales, translation strings, and teams in one centralized place. This eliminates the “chasing text” problem and ensures everyone is working from the most up-to-date information.
- Key Referencing: A standout feature is key referencing, which allows linking same-text keys across multiple platforms. If a “parent” key is changed, all linked instances automatically update, ensuring consistency and drastically reducing manual errors and rework. For example, if a button text like “Submit” is used in both your mobile app and website, changing it once updates it everywhere.
Version Control Capabilities
Mirroring the functionalities of Git, Lokalise provides robust version control for translation content. Flotato.com Reviews
This is crucial for managing changes, collaborating on different versions of content, and ensuring data integrity.
- Branching: Users can work on multiple branches of their project, allowing for parallel development and localization efforts without affecting the main release. This is particularly useful for features in development or A/B testing different localized content.
- Change Tracking and Reversion: Just like with code, Lokalise allows users to track all changes made to translation strings. If an error is introduced or a previous version is preferred, changes can be easily reverted. This provides a safety net and helps maintain the quality and integrity of linguistic assets over time.
- Activity Logs: Detailed activity logs provide transparency, showing who made what changes and when, which is invaluable for auditing, debugging, and team accountability.
Accelerating Time-to-Market with AI and Efficiency Hacks
Lokalise understands this and leverages AI, automation, and streamlined workflows to significantly reduce the time it takes to launch multilingual products, providing a clear competitive advantage.
AI-Powered Translation and Quality Assurance
Lokalise AI is designed not just for speed but also for accuracy and cost-effectiveness, aiming to provide production-ready translations.
- Faster Translation Pace: The platform claims to enable users to translate 8X faster with AI, achieving ready-to-use translations from the first attempt. This speed is critical for agile development cycles and frequent content updates.
- Cost Savings: By providing accurate AI translations, Lokalise suggests users can save up to 70% in costs, reducing reliance on manual translation for initial drafts or large volumes of content.
- Contextual AI: The ability to add style guides to the AI provides context, ensuring that translations are not only grammatically correct but also on-brand and context-specific, handling niche terminology effectively.
- AI-Powered QA Reports: Beyond translation, Lokalise offers AI-powered QA reports, complementing its 13 built-in QA checks. These reports can be generated with one click, helping identify potential issues such as missing translations, inconsistent terminology, or character limit breaches, thus ensuring high-quality output.
Streamlining Workflows for Efficiency
Beyond AI, Lokalise focuses on optimizing every step of the localization process through smart design and automation.
- Continuous Localization: By integrating deeply with development tools and automating many routine tasks, Lokalise facilitates continuous localization workflows. This means localization is no longer a separate, post-development phase but an ongoing process that keeps pace with product development.
- Reduced Manual Tasks: The platform explicitly aims to reduce time-consuming manual tasks, such as copying and pasting text, managing spreadsheets, or manually tracking progress. This empowers developers and localization teams to focus on higher-value activities.
- Task Templates: Creating translation and review tasks using task templates streamlines the assignment and management of work, ensuring consistency in project setup and execution.
- Localization Analytics: Lokalise offers analytics to track localization and translation data. This data-driven approach allows organizations to optimize time, resources, and costs, ultimately helping them understand and maximize their return on localization investment ROI. For example, data can show which languages are most actively used, informing future localization efforts.
Customer Success Stories and Industry Recognition
Lokalise highlights its success through customer testimonials and emphasizes its strong support system, aiming to build trust and demonstrate tangible benefits for its users.
Real-World Impact
The website showcases several success stories, emphasizing quantifiable improvements in efficiency, speed, and cost savings achieved by real companies using Lokalise.
- Withings Case Study: Withings, a smart health solutions company, reported a 90% faster feature rollout and a 9-hour decrease in manual work after implementing Lokalise’s Figma integration. This illustrates how integrating localization early in the design phase can significantly reduce operational workload and improve overall customer experience.
- HiBob Case Study: HiBob, an HR platform, achieved 70% faster collaboration and 50% savings on language launches. Their testimonial highlights a shift from manual, time-consuming processes taking “days versus hours” to automated workflows that increased performance by about 50%. These examples provide concrete evidence of the platform’s effectiveness.
Best-in-Class Guidance and Support
Lokalise places a strong emphasis on its customer support and guidance, positioning itself as a reliable partner in the localization journey.
- High Customer Satisfaction: The company states that 95% of its customers consider them a great partner and that they are “rated highest in the industry for customer support.” This suggests a commitment to providing excellent service.
- Expert Team: They promise an expert team that provides “real solutions, technical expertise, and resources” to help users get started quickly and keep localization moving smoothly. This includes access to clear documentation, API tutorials, and changelogs through their Developer Hub.
- Hassle-Free Experience: The overall message is one of “hassle-free localization,” suggesting that Lokalise takes the complexity out of the process, allowing businesses to focus on their core product.
Financial Considerations and Accessibility
While Lokalise promotes significant cost savings through automation and AI, understanding the financial investment and accessibility of the platform is crucial for potential users.
Although specific pricing tiers aren’t immediately visible on the homepage, the emphasis on efficiency implies a long-term cost-benefit.
Cost Savings Beyond Initial Investment
The website frequently mentions substantial cost savings, primarily driven by: Octopus.com Reviews
- Reduced Manual Labor: Automating tasks like translation imports, exports, QA checks, and task handoffs minimizes the need for human intervention in repetitive, time-consuming processes. This directly translates to reduced labor costs.
- AI Translation Efficiency: The claim of up to 70% cost savings with Lokalise AI suggests a significant reduction in reliance on external translation agencies or in-house linguists for initial drafts, allowing human translators to focus on nuanced editing and quality assurance.
- Faster Time-to-Market: Accelerating product launches globally means faster revenue generation. The case study with HiBob mentioning “50% savings on language launches” points to operational efficiencies that lower overall project costs.
Trial and Demo Options
Lokalise.com makes it easy for prospective users to explore the platform without immediate financial commitment:
- 14-day Free Trial: A prominent call to action is the “Start free trial,” which is a 14-day trial requiring no credit card. This allows teams to test the platform’s features, integrations, and workflow capabilities in their own environment.
- Request a Demo: For larger enterprises or those with more complex needs, the option to “Request a demo” allows for a personalized walkthrough of the platform’s capabilities, tailored to specific business requirements. This can be particularly useful for understanding how Lokalise can integrate with existing, intricate systems.
The Future of Localization: AI, Scale, and Global Reach
Lokalise positions itself at the forefront of localization technology, emphasizing how AI, scalability, and seamless integration are shaping the future of global expansion for businesses.
The platform is not just about current translation needs but about building a sustainable and scalable localization infrastructure.
The Role of AI in Evolving Localization
Lokalise clearly sees AI as a pivotal element in the evolution of localization, moving beyond simple machine translation to intelligent, context-aware assistance.
- Beyond Basic Translation: The emphasis on “no loss in quality” and “correctly translate niche terminology” with AI indicates a move towards more sophisticated AI translation that understands context and adheres to brand guidelines. This makes AI suitable for a wider range of content, reducing the need for extensive human post-editing.
- Predictive Localization: While not explicitly stated, the integration of AI suggests a future where the platform could potentially predict translation needs based on development patterns or even suggest linguistic asset improvements over time.
- Augmented Human Translators: Lokalise’s model doesn’t replace human linguists but augments their capabilities, allowing them to focus on high-value, creative, or sensitive content, while AI handles the bulk of repetitive or straightforward translations. Users can invite in-house translators to collaborate or hire translators directly from the platform, offering flexibility.
Scaling Global Operations
Lokalise is built for scale, designed to support companies of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, in their global expansion efforts.
- Industry-Leading API: The extensive API with 95 endpoints and 33 webhooks is a cornerstone for scaling. It allows businesses to integrate Lokalise into their existing tech stacks and automate processes at a level required by large, complex organizations. This flexibility is key for handling massive volumes of content and a growing number of target languages.
- Manage Multiple Projects: The platform’s ability to unify projects, locales, and teams under one roof simplifies the management of multiple ongoing localization initiatives, which is common in large enterprises.
- On-Demand Resources: The option to hire translators from within the platform provides elasticity, allowing companies to scale their translation capacity up or down based on project demands without the overhead of maintaining a large in-house team for all languages.
Strategic Global Launch Framework
Lokalise outlines a clear 5-step framework for successful global launches, demonstrating a structured approach to localization that goes beyond just translation.
- Connect Your Tools: Emphasizes integration with various product development stages via out-of-the-box integrations or the API.
- Automate Workflows: Focuses on automating translation imports, updates, exports, QA checks, and task handoffs.
- Translate with AI or Linguists: Offers flexibility in translation methods, leveraging AI for speed and human linguists for quality assurance and nuanced content.
- Review, Test, and Launch: Highlights the importance of testing localized products to ensure they resonate with target markets, utilizing built-in QA checks and AI-powered reports.
- Analyze Localization ROI: Stresses the importance of data-driven decisions through Lokalise Analytics to optimize processes and maximize return on investment.
This comprehensive framework positions Lokalise not just as a tool, but as a strategic partner for businesses aiming for sustainable international growth.
The Importance of Security and Data Handling in Localization
When dealing with potentially sensitive intellectual property and user data, the security measures and data handling practices of a localization platform are paramount.
While Lokalise.com’s homepage doesn’t explicitly detail every security protocol, the nature of the service implies a commitment to robust protection.
Protecting Translation Assets
Localization platforms handle a vast amount of textual data, which can include product specifications, marketing copy, and even confidential internal communications. Cornstarch.ai Reviews
Ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of this data is critical.
- Access Control: A professional platform like Lokalise would inherently implement role-based access control, ensuring that only authorized team members can view, edit, or approve specific translation strings or projects. This prevents unauthorized access and maintains data integrity.
- Version History & Audit Trails: The “Git for localization” approach implies detailed version histories and audit trails. This not only helps in reverting changes but also provides a clear record of who accessed or modified specific data points, crucial for compliance and security auditing.
- Secure Integrations: When connecting with other platforms like GitHub, Figma, or CMS systems, Lokalise would use secure authentication protocols e.g., OAuth and encrypted data transfer to protect information during transit.
Data Center Security and Compliance
For a cloud-based service, the physical and digital security of data centers is foundational.
- Cloud Infrastructure: While not specified, Lokalise likely leverages major cloud providers e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud known for their high security standards, physical data center protection, and global redundancy.
- Data Encryption: Data at rest stored on servers and data in transit moving between client and server would typically be encrypted using industry-standard protocols e.g., AES-256 for data at rest, TLS/SSL for data in transit to prevent unauthorized interception or access.
- Compliance Certifications: Reputable SaaS providers often pursue certifications like ISO 27001, SOC 2, or GDPR compliance, which demonstrate adherence to international security and privacy standards. While not explicitly listed on the homepage, these are important considerations for potential enterprise clients.
- Backup and Disaster Recovery: Robust backup and disaster recovery mechanisms are essential to ensure business continuity and data availability in case of unforeseen incidents.
The implicit promise of a professional localization platform is that it handles sensitive linguistic data with the same level of care as code repositories, ensuring that intellectual property is protected throughout the internationalization process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lokalise.com?
Lokalise.com is a cloud-based translation and localization management platform designed to streamline the process of internationalizing digital products and content, such as mobile apps, websites, games, and documentation.
What are the main benefits of using Lokalise?
The main benefits include automating localization workflows, enhancing collaboration among diverse teams, accelerating time-to-market for global products, and leveraging AI for faster and more cost-efficient translations.
Is Lokalise suitable for small businesses or large enterprises?
Yes, Lokalise is designed to cater to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, offering scalable solutions and robust features for managing complex localization projects.
Does Lokalise offer a free trial?
Yes, Lokalise offers a 14-day free trial that does not require a credit card, allowing users to explore the platform’s features.
How does Lokalise’s AI translation work?
Lokalise AI leverages artificial intelligence to provide rapid, bulk translations across many languages.
Users can add style guides for context and ensure accurate translation of niche terminology, aiming for production-ready output.
Can Lokalise integrate with design tools?
Yes, Lokalise integrates with popular design tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch, allowing localization to begin at the design stage and ensuring design consistency across languages. Gptchart.ai Reviews
What development tools does Lokalise integrate with?
Lokalise integrates with key development and version control tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Jira, enabling seamless integration of translation processes into existing development workflows.
Does Lokalise support continuous localization?
Yes, Lokalise is built to support continuous localization workflows, automating translation imports, updates, and exports to keep pace with agile development cycles.
What are Lokalise’s API capabilities?
Lokalise offers an industry-leading RESTful API with 95 endpoints and 33 webhooks, providing extensive control and automation capabilities for custom integrations and complex localization needs.
How does Lokalise ensure translation quality?
Lokalise ensures translation quality through built-in QA checks 13 of them, AI-powered QA reports, the ability to incorporate style guides, and options to involve human linguists for review and refinement.
Can I manage multiple projects in Lokalise?
Yes, Lokalise allows users to organize and unify multiple projects, locales, translation strings, and teams in one centralized platform, simplifying multi-project management.
Is it possible to revert changes in Lokalise?
Yes, similar to version control systems like Git, Lokalise allows users to track changes and revert them if needed, providing a safety net for linguistic assets.
Does Lokalise help with cost savings?
Yes, Lokalise claims to help businesses save up to 70% in localization costs, primarily through automation, efficient AI translation, and reduced manual tasks.
What kind of customer support does Lokalise offer?
Lokalise emphasizes best-in-class guidance and support, with an expert team providing technical expertise, resources, and real solutions, boasting high customer satisfaction ratings.
Can I hire translators directly through Lokalise?
Yes, Lokalise allows users to invite in-house translators to collaborate within the platform or hire external translators directly from within the platform.
What are linguistic assets in Lokalise?
Linguistic assets in Lokalise include glossaries, translation memories, and style guides, which help teams ensure consistency in terminology and tone across all localized content. Activesheets.io Reviews
How does Lokalise handle character limits for translations?
Lokalise allows users to set character limits for translations, especially important in design, to prevent design breaks and ensure translated text fits UI constraints.
What is the “Git” for localization concept in Lokalise?
The “Git” for localization concept means Lokalise provides version control for translation assets, allowing for branching, change tracking, and unification of localization projects in a centralized system, much like Git does for code.
Does Lokalise provide analytics for localization?
Yes, Lokalise offers localization analytics, allowing users to dig into translation data to make data-driven decisions, optimize processes, and understand their return on localization investment ROI.
What types of content can be localized using Lokalise?
Lokalise can be used to localize a wide range of content, including mobile apps iOS, Android, games, websites, documentation guides, FAQs, and marketing content blogs, campaigns, emails.
Leave a Reply