{"id":9029,"date":"2026-07-24T10:02:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/?p=9029"},"modified":"2026-07-24T10:02:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:02:48","slug":"migrating-from-wpml-5-steps-to-preserve-your-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/en\/migrating-from-wpml-5-steps-to-preserve-your-translations\/","title":{"rendered":"Migrating from WPML: 5 steps to preserve your translations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Migrating from WPML to a native multilingual plugin is one of those tasks that commands respect, but it can be done without starting from scratch and, above all, without losing any of the translations that have taken you so much work to create. If your website or store has been translated with WPML for months (or years) and you notice the site is slower, each update is more complicated, or the dependency on the license is starting to weigh on you, switching to a native solution is a perfectly reasonable decision. In this guide, we explain step by step how to do it carefully and with a safety net.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/e9miay56dfh.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/migrar-de-wpml-plugin-nativo.jpg?strip=all&w=1920\" alt=\"Migrating from WPML to a native multilingual plugin without losing translations\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>The good news is that a well-planned change preserves translated content, URLs, and the ranking you have already earned. The key is the order of the steps and relying on a migrator that reads what you already have in WPML instead of forcing you to translate everything again. Let&#8217;s go step by step.<\/p>\n<h2>Migrating from WPML without losing translations: why consider the change<\/h2>\n<p>WPML is a veteran and very complete plugin, but that breadth comes at a price. Many projects reach a point where the balance tips toward changing for several specific reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Performance.<\/strong> WPML adds many queries and its own tables. On large sites, especially in WooCommerce, this is noticeable in the loading time of the admin and the front end.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cost and dependency.<\/strong> It is an annual license that renews year after year; if you stop paying, you lose updates and support.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Complexity.<\/strong> The combination of modules (String Translation, Translation Management, etc.) is powerful, but also difficult to maintain when the team changes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before deciding to migrate from WPML, it is worth being clear about your goal: a lighter site, with fewer moving parts and translation integrated natively. If you work with a store, we also recommend reading our <a href=\"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/en\/translating-woocommerce-complete-guide-in-7-steps\/\">guide to translating WooCommerce<\/a>, because products, variations, and attributes have their own particularities.<\/p>\n<h2>What is preserved and what should be reviewed before starting<\/h2>\n<p>The most common question for anyone about to migrate from WPML is simple: \u201cWill I lose what has already been translated?\u201d The short answer is no, as long as you use a clean migrator and respect the order. Even so, it is useful to separate what is imported automatically from what you will need to review yourself.<\/p>\n<h3>What a clean migrator imports for you<\/h3>\n<p>When migrating from WPML, a good importer reads the language structure and rebuilds it in the new plugin without translating anything again:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The already translated posts, pages, and product pages, with their relationships between languages.<\/li>\n<li>Translated categories, tags, and attributes.<\/li>\n<li>The active languages and the website&#8217;s default language.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What you will need to review manually<\/h3>\n<p>There are elements that no migrator can guess for you and that are worth checking carefully:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Theme and other plugin strings (buttons, menus, checkout text).<\/li>\n<li>WooCommerce transactional emails in each language.<\/li>\n<li><em>Widgets<\/em>, forms, and texts that were managed from String Translation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How to migrate from WPML step by step<\/h2>\n<p>This is the heart of the guide. The trick to migrating from WPML without surprises is to do it in a controlled environment and only deactivate the old plugin once everything else is already working.<\/p>\n<h3>Before migrating from WPML: make a full backup<\/h3>\n<p>Do not start without a recent backup of the database and files. Ideally, work first in a staging environment that is a replica of the live site, so you can make mistakes without consequences. If something goes wrong, restore it and try again.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 1. Import the existing translations<\/h3>\n<p>Install the native plugin alongside WPML, without deactivating the latter yet, and launch the importer. Here is the key part of the whole process: the migrator must read the translation pairs that already exist in WPML and recreate them, so that each page in Spanish remains linked to its version in English, French, or whatever language it is. Review a handful of pages and posts to confirm that the relationships have been rebuilt correctly.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 2. Review the URLs, slugs, and hreflang tags<\/h3>\n<p>This step has the biggest impact on SEO. Check that the language-based URL structure is maintained (for example, <em>\/en\/<\/em> or the subdirectory you were using) and that the translated slugs remain the same. Also verify that the <strong>hreflang<\/strong> tags are generated correctly so Google understands which version to show in each country. If any slug inevitably changes, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 3. Review theme strings and emails<\/h3>\n<p>Go through the site in each language, paying attention to the text that is not part of the content: menus, buttons, cart and checkout messages, and the emails the customer receives after a purchase. Translate any strings that were left behind from the new plugin&#8217;s interface.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 4. Check everything and deactivate WPML only at the end<\/h3>\n<p>Once you have verified that the content, URLs, and strings work, you can deactivate and uninstall WPML. Not a minute before. After doing so, go back through the key pages and check the sitemap and search console in case any broken links appear.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\">\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Aspect<\/th>\n<th>WPML<\/th>\n<th>EHERO Woo Multilang<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Model<\/td>\n<td>Annual license with separate modules<\/td>\n<td>Integrated native plugin<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>WooCommerce translation<\/td>\n<td>Requires additional modules<\/td>\n<td>Products, variations, and attributes out of the box<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>AI translation<\/td>\n<td>Credits purchased separately<\/td>\n<td>Bring your own key (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepL, or DeepSeek); you pay the provider a few euros for the whole catalog<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Performance<\/td>\n<td>Own queries and tables that hurt large sites<\/td>\n<td>Lighter structure<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Migration<\/td>\n<td>\u2014<\/td>\n<td>Importer that reuses what has already been translated<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n<h2>Common mistakes when migrating from WPML (and how to avoid them)<\/h2>\n<p>Most of the scares when migrating from WPML do not come from the new plugin, but from rushing. These are the three most common mistakes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Deactivating WPML before importing.<\/strong> If you remove WPML first, the migrator no longer has anywhere to read the translations from and you risk losing them. Always uninstall it at the end.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Losing translation links.<\/strong> Migrating the text but not the relationships between languages leaves \u201corphaned\u201d pages that are no longer linked to each other. Verify the translation pairs after importing.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Changing URLs without redirects.<\/strong> If a translated slug changes and you do not set up a 301 redirect, you lose the ranking of that URL. Keep the slugs or redirect them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Working with <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WordPress standards<\/a> helps a lot here: the more your site relies on the native way of managing content, the more predictable and cleaner migrating from WPML will be.<\/p>\n<p>Once your catalog is translated and stable, the next natural step is for your customers to find what they are looking for in their own language. For that, you can add <a href=\"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/en\/product\/ehero-smart-search-ai-search-for-woocommerce-that-understands-your-customers\/\">EHERO Smart Search<\/a>, which also works with the bring-your-own-key model: you connect your account with the AI provider you prefer and pay directly for usage, with no intermediaries.<\/p>\n<h2>Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Will I lose translations when migrating from WPML?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No, as long as you use a migrator that reads the WPML translation pairs and deactivate the old plugin only at the very end of the process.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will the URLs of my translated pages change?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>They do not have to. If you keep the same language structure and the same slugs, the URLs stay the same; if any change, a 301 redirect is enough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do I need to know how to code to make the change?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No. The importer does the heavy lifting; you will only need to review theme strings, emails, and a few details manually from the WordPress dashboard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How does AI translation work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the bring-your-own-key model: you connect your OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepL, or DeepSeek account and pay the provider a few euros to translate the whole catalog. The AI is not included, and we do not provide it.<\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Migrating from WPML stops being a leap into the void when you follow a clear order: backup, import what has already been translated, review URLs and strings, and deactivate WPML only at the end. With that method, you preserve your translations, your SEO, and your peace of mind, and you end up with a lighter site that is easier to maintain. If you want to take the step with a clean migrator that reuses what you already have, discover <a href=\"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/en\/product\/ehero-woo-multilang-the-plugin-to-create-a-truly-multilingual-woocommerce-store\/\">EHERO Woo Multilang<\/a> and start your migration without starting from scratch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Migrating from WPML to a native plugin step by step: preserve your translations, URLs, and SEO when switching multilingual plugins in WooCommerce without surprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jf_save_progress":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":"migrar de wpml, migrar desde wpml, cambiar de wpml woocommerce","rank_math_title":"Migrating from WPML: 5 steps to preserve your translations","rank_math_description":"Migrating from WPML to a native plugin step by step: preserve your translations, URLs, and SEO when switching multilingual plugins in WooCommerce without surprises.","footnotes":""},"categories":[825,34,827],"tags":[8026,8028,8030],"class_list":["post-9029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-commerce-en","category-marketing-digital","category-wordpress-en","tag-translate-woocommerce","tag-woocommerce-multilingual","tag-wpml-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9030,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9029\/revisions\/9030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consultoriaehero.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}