Polylang vs. WordPress Multisite: Which is Better for Your Multilingual Site (Comparison)

With the growth of global trade, a multilingual website helps you expand your target market. To build a multi-language site on WordPress, you have many options for managing content and user experience. In addition to various translation plugins, you can also use Multisite to create a multilingual website where each language is a subsite. In this article, I will get deep into comparing this two method, using multisite with the WordPress Multisite and using a translation plugin with a widely trusted translation plugin - Polylang - in detailed functionality.

In general, both two methods are quite comprehensive to have a multilingual website. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. With this comparison, we hope that you can choose the method that best fits your needs and circumstances.

Polylang

Polylang is one of the most popular WordPress plugins designed to create multilingual websites. It’s known for its ease of use and seamless integration into existing WordPress sites. Polylang allows users to translate the following things within a single WordPress installation:

• Posts, pages, and custom post types;
• Terms: like categories or tags (as well as, automatic copy of categories, post tags when creating a new post or page translation);
• Custom fields: Polylang allows you to either synchronize data of custom fields across languages or translate each of them;
• Menus: Polylang creates clones of menu locations for each language, so you can create another menu and assign it to other menu locations for languages;
• Classic widgets;
• RSS feeds;
• RTL scripts.

It supports various languages and compatibility with other popular plugins like ACF, Meta Box, SEO plugins (Yoast SEO, Rank Math, Slim SEO, SEOPress), etc.

Please note that for translating text strings in plugins and themes, you still need to use the Loco Translate plugin.

Pros

Using Polylang is similar to using a WordPress plugin. Thus, everything about content management for different languages is just like managing posts on a site. Thanks to that, you can manage the content (including media) more streamlined.

Moreover, this plugin allows you to synchronize many components, including custom fields. So, you just edit the data in one language. After that, the remaining tasks will be handled by Polylang.

Not least, Polylang is good for SEO, especially sitemap. Only one sitemap for all languages. It makes Google discovery and processing easier. Also, the plugin automatically adds the Hreflang tags to your pages and helps search engines serve the correct language version to users based on their location and language preferences.

A significant benefit is that Polylang can switch to the corresponding page/post exactly when you change the language. It’s convenient for your visitors.

In terms of data, Polylang will create clones of posts, terms, menus, widgets, etc., for each language. Assuming that you have three languages, your data will be tripled. These objects will be stored in the default WordPress tables as usual.

Cons

The biggest weakness of the Polylang free version is it can not translate the slug of post types and taxonomies. For example, if you have a product post type which has an URL like this in English: "example.com/product/product-name/". In another language like Vietnamese, we expect the slug of the post type product to be changed to something like san-pham, so the URL would be: "example.com/san-pham/ten-san-pham/". However, it's not doable in the Polylang free version.

Besides, the free version doesn’t support WooCommerce.

These features are only available in the paid bundles.

Also, Polylang doesn’t support translating settings pages automatically. For example, if you have a settings page for your website for entering the company address. You usually enter the address in the main language of the website, like English. When switching to another language, you need to translate the address to that language accordingly. However, this is not supported by Polylang. A workaround is creating 2 settings pages for each language, and using code to output the correct version of data depending on the language. This method requires development time & effort.

Multisite

Using Multisite allows you to create a network of separate websites, each representing a different language version of your content. This approach provides maximum flexibility, as each site can have its own settings, plugins, themes, and content structure. With Multisite, you can manage multiple language sites under a single WordPress installation, making it easier to maintain consistently across sites while still allowing for unique customizations tailored to each language.

However, this method may require more resources and management effort compared to other multilingual plugins, as each site operates independently within the network.

Because using a network, users share the same logins across sites, which means they can use one login to access multiple sites in the network.

In terms of data, each subsite in the network will have its own separate tables. Therefore, data storage is isolated between sites. Although there are more tables in the database, the masses of data stored in the database are equivalent to Polylang, since each post, term, menu, widget, etc., is saved with the same number of lines.

Pros

You can translate everything, not only post types, terms, custom fields, settings, menus, widgets, but also slugs and settings pages, which the free version of Polylang can’t do.

Since data on subsites is stored in different tables, data management may be easier.

Cons

First, when the visitors change language from any location on the website, they will be redirected to the homepage instead of the corresponding post/page where they are. It may be the biggest issue of this method.

For sitemap, in the case that you use Polylang, SEO plugins will integrate with it to add the language versions of Polylang into the sitemap. So, just one sitemap is enough.

But with multisite, each subsite in the network will have its own sitemap, and whenever you want to submit to Google Search Console, you need to submit all the sitemaps of those sites. It can affect Google's processing.

From my perspective, these drawbacks are not too serious.

In addition, by default, WordPress does not allow the sharing of media such as images and files between sites. As a result, it’s unable to access images of a different language (a different site) with Multisite. Therefore, for each uploaded image, you have to upload multiple times corresponding to the number of languages. This leads to duplicate and redundant data storage on hosting.

To handle this issue, you should install the Multisite Global Media plugin so that the media library will be shared by all sites in the network.

Comparison chart

To get an overview of the features of these two methods, you can refer to the comparison table below.

Besides, I would like to highlight some similarities between Polylang and Multisite regarding aspects such as setup and filtering for your reference.

The data storage in the database is quite the same. While Polylang stores data in a table but doubles the number of lines, Multisite saves data in two tables (the number of lines is kept intact).

You also can set up filters and query for the corresponding language. For instance, if you search for anything on the English website, the results will be in English as well.

In the case that the page hasn’t been translated yet, both Polylang and Multisite are direct to the Homepage. For a part of content, it’ll not be displayed if it was not translated.

In terms of setup time, both methods are quite similar. It’s straightforward to build sites in different languages. Otherwise, using a plugin makes the process more convenient, as you don’t need to set up logos, images, and other elements from scratch.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this comparison is useful for you. From a personal perspective, if you're only using the free version of Polylang, I think Multisite might be the more powerful and flexible tool. However, if you have the Pro version, the plugin would be the optimal choice.

The choice between Polylang and Multisite depends on the specific needs of your website, the level of complexity you're willing to manage, and your budget. Have you made your decision on the suitable method?

For more options to have a multilingual website, WPML is also a great tool. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment.