Ever wished you could double your traffic by reaching international audiences who don’t speak English?
Imagine if you could click a few buttons to translate your entire WordPress site into 70+ languages without hiring a developer or professional translators.
Sadly, most website translation tools are either crazy expensive, painfully slow, or so poorly built that they damage your SEO the moment you activate them.
It simply shouldn’t be this hard to speak to your global audience in their own language.
That’s why today, I’m excited to announce Universally, an AI-powered translation platform that turns your WordPress site into a fully-translated, SEO-ready, multilingual experience in minutes.
Simply put, Universally is truly the “set-it-and-forget-it” translation engine you’ve always been waiting for.
Background Story – Why Universally?
For years, I’ve wanted to translate WPBeginner and my other eCommerce websites into multiple languages because we have users from around the world and many have even asked for it.
So, last year I decided to give it a try.
The journey of making a multilingual eCommerce website in WordPress is a lot bumpier than I would’ve hoped. And the problem extends to every mid to large content site as well.
That’s because every well-known WordPress translation plugin inefficiently stores translations inside the WordPress database. I tried them all on WPBeginner, and every single one of them made our WordPress admin area so slow that the post editor was practically unusable.
When we tested them on our eCommerce sites (both Woo and EDD), we noticed that the performance impact was on our entire checkout process, and that’s not good for conversions & revenue.
Out of every WordPress translation plugin that I tried, only ONE worked, but it required converting the website into a WordPress multisite which comes with its own set of complexities and technical challenges.
As I went through this process, I literally thought to myself why is this so hard? Clearly there has to be a better solution.
So I looked into some well-known SaaS solutions that offered AI translations, and they worked very well. Unfortunately, the cost for us would be hundreds of thousands of dollars to use their platform for just WPBeginner alone. If I included my other brands like WPForms, AIOSEO, and others, our translation cost would likely go into 7 figures.
In the age of AI, translation platforms shouldn’t be this expensive. The new AI models have gotten so much better that a small business owner who is not leveraging translations is just missing out.
After going through this painful process personally over the last year, I asked our team to build an AI website translation platform that we can use for our own brands, and make it available to our community (YOU).
Because in 2026, small businesses and eCommerce website owners need an easy & affordable way to translate their websites without having to compromise on website speed.
That’s exactly what Universally offers.
The best part is that it will work on all website platforms including WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Loveable, Replit, etc.
You simply connect your website with Universally, select the languages, and let our intelligent multilingual AI platform expand your global reach.
We have already translated over 250 million words on the platform during our internal launch and private beta.
Here’s a quick overview:
What is Universally?
Universally is an AI-powered website translation platform built for WordPress site owners, WooCommerce stores, SaaS companies, and agencies that need to go multilingual without the usual translation headaches.
Once installed, it automatically detects every translatable element on your site, including blog content, button text, menu items, form labels, image alt tags, schema.org data, even your product descriptions in WooCommerce, and more.
Universally translates them into 70+ languages within minutes.
Unlike traditional plugins, Universally doesn’t store anything extra in your WordPress database. No duplicate posts, bloated tables, or slowdowns. Translations live on Universally’s cloud and content is delivered from edge (cloud servers closest to the user). This means your international visitors will likely see a faster version of your website, never slower.
Here’s what makes it special:
Full Website Translation in Minutes, Not Months
If you’ve ever worked with a translator, you know how tedious the process is…
You export strings to a spreadsheet and send it to a translator. You get the translated content 2 weeks later, only to realize that the context is wrong. So, you’ll have to repeat the same process… and for every language you want to translate.
Universally skips that entire back and forth.
You pick your target languages once, and within minutes your entire site is live in every language you selected, including content you forgot you had (old blog posts, archived product pages, buried checkout strings).
And it doesn’t stop there. Every time you publish or edit a post in your source language, Universally automatically catches the change and pushes the updated translation across every language version. You never have to remember to “also translate this” again.
For quality, Universally targets 90-95% AI accuracy out of the box, with optional professional human translation available for critical pages like your pricing page, checkout flow, or legal terms.
Multilingual SEO That Actually Works (Without a Developer)
Multilingual SEO is where most translation tools quietly fall apart.
Google has very specific rules for multilingual sites. You need hreflang tags on every page. You also need translated meta titles and descriptions, properly structured URLs, and multilingual XML sitemaps.
For Arabic and Hebrew translation, you need RTL (right to left) support to ensure those languages are properly displayed.
Miss any of those rules and Google either ignores your translated pages entirely or flags them as duplicate content.
Universally handles all of it automatically.
It provides:
- Automatic hreflang tags on every language version
- Translated title tags, meta descriptions, Open Graph, and Twitter Card tags
- Schema.org / JSON-LD structured data translation
- Automatic lang attribute and dir=”rtl” for right-to-left languages
- Multilingual XML sitemaps generated automatically
- Internal link rewriting (your /about link becomes /fr/about on French pages… without you lifting a finger)
- Subdirectory, subdomain, or separate-domain URL structures supported
AI Glossary – Protect Your Brand in Every Language
If you’ve ever seen a major brand’s product name get awkwardly translated into a random foreign word, then you know how painful this can be.
Universally’s AI Glossary lets you lock down specific terms, like your brand name, product names, technical vocabulary, legal wording and so on. That way they either stay untouched across every language or get forced into a specific translation.
You can build the glossary manually, let Universally’s AI suggest entries based on your existing content, or import your terminology into Universally.
A Language Switcher That Looks Great
You can place the Universally language switcher in multiple locations on your website, depending on your layout and user experience needs.
Universally gives you four built-in switcher styles, such as bottom right, bottom left, top right, and top left. It also comes with a Language Switcher block as well.
The Most Affordable AI Translation Tool
Universally is the most affordable AI translation tool on the market. Compared to other platforms, like Weglot, for example, Universally is up to 50% cheaper.
Here’s how to try Universally on your site:
✅ Step 1: Sign up for a free Universally account. The free plan gives you 1 site, 1 language, and 2,000 translated words per month… no credit card required.
✅ Step 2: Install the Universally plugin from the Universally site.
✅ Step 3: Paste your API key into the plugin settings.
✅ Step 4: Pick your source language and target languages, then save.
Universally starts translating immediately, and your language switcher appears on your site automatically.
If you need more words or more languages, you can consider using the paid plans, which start at $7.5/month when paid annually.
What’s Coming Next?
My goal with WPBeginner has always been to help small businesses grow & compete with the big guys.
Every big company is already translating their websites and expanding their global reach. We’re building Universally to level the playing field, so small businesses can also expand their global presence.
We’re truly building something special, and it would mean a lot to me if you join us on the journey while also expanding your global audience. My goal is to make Universally, the best translation solution on the market, and the best way to do that is by listening to you.
I would love to hear your honest feedback.
While we have an exciting roadmap ahead, I want to make sure we’re building exactly what you need. If you have ideas for languages, features, or platform integrations that would make your life easier, please send us your suggestions.
If you’re an agency that builds multilingual websites, we would love to work with you.
If you’ve been putting off translating your site because it felt too expensive, too technical, or too fragile, give Universally a real look. The free plan is genuinely free, and you can see your website running in a second language in less than 10 minutes.
Thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner and the products I’ve been part of over the years. I look forward to helping you reach a global audience without the complexity, cost, or maintenance headaches that have held WordPress site owners back for years in making their websites truly multilingual.
Let’s make websites universally accessible.
Yours Truly,
Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner
