Review and Test: Shopify Translate & Adapt

Top 10 Disadvantages of Shopify Translate & Adapt

While Shopify Translate and Adapt gives beginners a free and simple tool to translate their store, most merchants complain that they quickly encounter many obstacles when scaling or need more advanced localization features.
So, if you’re serious about global expansion, here are the 10 flaws of Shopify Translate and Adapt:

1. It only supports automatic translation for 2 languages

You can only automatically translate your store content into a maximum of two additional languages for free.
Any additional languages require manual translation, which can be a time-consuming process for large stores.
Too bad the number of supported languages is too limited.

2. The app has a limit of 100,000,000 characters for automatic translations per year

Shopify Translate & Adapt caps automatic translations at 100,000,000 characters per year.
This may seem like a lot, but in practice, it gets depleted quickly. For example, a medium-sized store with 200 products, each with detailed descriptions, can easily reach this limit.
And the bad news is that once you exceed this limit, you’ll have to handle all new translations manually, which can be time-consuming and inconvenient for growing businesses.

3. It doesn’t support image translation

A significant limitation observed by almost all users is the app’s complete inability to handle text embedded in images.
There’s no functionality to detect, translate, or replace images for different languages.
The only workaround is manual: merchants must create and upload different versions of an image for each language, then use custom code or a compatible theme to display the right one.
This makes true image localization impossible for most users of this app.

4. The app doesn’t allow setting custom translation rules

A notable disadvantage of Shopify Translate & Adapt is that it lacks custom translation rules (glossary).
This means you can’t control industry-specific terms (brand names, product collections…)
This poses a problem if your store name or product line is automatically translated into another language. It will lose its meaning or appear inconsistent across different pages.
Without the ability to lock or define these terms, you must manually review and edit translations to maintain brand consistency.

5. It has several SEO localization limitations

Shopify Translate and Adapt offers basic SEO localization functions. Specifically, the app allows you to translate URL slugs, meta titles, and meta descriptions, and automatically add hreflang tags to your web pages.
Nevertheless, it comes with several technical constraints that can negatively affect your international SEO and localization strategy. These include:

• Partial URL translation only: You can translate product slugs (e.g. “summer-dress” to “robe-d-ete”), but not default Shopify URL paths like /products/ or /collections/. These remain in your store’s original language, limiting complete localization.
• Same slug for all regions: If multiple countries use the same language (e.g. France and Canada for French), you can’t create unique URL slugs for each region. This restricts market-specific content and hinders localized SEO targeting by country.
• Hreflang tag limitations: The app automatically generates hreflang tags, but these are locked to fixed country-language pairs (like en-FR for English in France). You can’t adjust them manually, and changing default values requires contacting Shopify Support, which can prevent proper indexing of region-specific pages.
• Canonical URL conflicts: Some users have reported issues with canonical tags not updating correctly on language versions, potentially leading to duplicate content warnings in search engines.
• No metadata controls: The app doesn’t provide built-in tools to translate or customize meta titles and descriptions by language, meaning missed SEO opportunities unless managed manually through theme customization.

6. There’s no language selector customization

Another disadvantage of Shopify Translate & Adapt is the limited customization of the language selector – the feature that allows customers to choose their preferred language on your site.
The app provides a basic built-in language selector that works, but it doesn’t offer much flexibility in terms of design or placement.
Thus, for brands that rely on custom storefronts or have strict design guidelines, this can be frustrating.
This is because you can’t easily match the language selector to your site’s appearance, or place it exactly where you want, like in the header, footer, or a floating button.
This may seem like a small detail, but it affects user experience, especially for global shoppers.
If visitors have trouble finding or using the selector, they may completely miss the localized content.
Inconsistent or hard-to-access language switchers can also reduce trust and lead to lower conversion rates in non-English markets.

7. It lacks automatic translation of new content

A big disadvantage of Shopify Translate & Adapt is that it doesn’t automatically translate new content.
Every time you add a new product, blog article, or update a page, you must manually trigger the translation.
This may work for a small store, but for large businesses with lots of updates, it quickly becomes time-consuming and easy to forget.
Another problem is when you change your store’s default language. Doing this erases all existing translations linked to the old default language, meaning you’d have to start from scratch.
This can cause serious headaches for merchants managing multiple languages.

8. Incompatibility with third-party apps

One of the most frustrating limitations of Shopify Translate & Adapt is how it handles third-party app content. While it works well for translating the main parts of your Shopify store, it only supports external apps that are built using Shopify’s official translatable resource types.
In simple terms, unless the app is specifically designed to integrate with Shopify’s translation system, Translate & Adapt won’t be able to access or translate the content it generates.
This becomes a real problem because many Shopify merchants rely on third-party apps to power key parts of their storefront – like product reviews, search filters, chat widgets, pop-ups, loyalty programs, or upselling features.
If these apps don’t support Shopify’s native translation framework, the content they add to your site will remain in your store’s default language.
As a result, even if the rest of your store is translated, visitors might still see important features or messages in the wrong language, which can hurt trust and lead to a confusing customer experience.

9. Market-specific content options are limited

Shopify Translate & Adapt offers basic tools to customize content by market, but it has clear limitations when it comes to managing fully localized campaigns. While you can edit text for different regions or languages, the level of control is quite limited.
You can’t easily adapt content like homepage banners, promotional sections, or product highlights specifically for each market beyond simply changing the wording.
This makes it harder to manage region-specific campaigns, seasonal promotions, or localized brand messaging that truly resonates with different audiences.

10. Lack of translation backup functions

Unlike some third-party translation apps that store backup versions or allow you to export and restore translations, Shopify’s native app doesn’t offer this kind of safety net.
Merchants are left to rely on manual backups or hope nothing goes wrong. Without a backup system in place, an error or technical issue could undo all your localization efforts – which is both costly and time-consuming to repair.