Selling into a second country on Shopify is mostly a settings job now. Markets handles domains, languages, currencies, duties and market-specific pricing, and Translate & Adapt does machine translation with manual editing for free. The apps below are for what Markets does not cover: translation workflow, content that lives inside other apps, and currency display where a market is not fully configured.
Start with what is native, then add the app you actually need — because the expensive mistakes here are not app fees, they are the SEO losses from doing it in the wrong order.
Summary
- Shopify Markets + Translate & Adapt — domains, currencies, duties, machine translation. Free. Start here.
- Weglot — the fastest route to a fully translated store, including app content.
- Langify — long-standing Shopify translation app with granular control.
- LangShop — translation with AI engines, glossaries and currency switching.
- Currency Converter Plus — display-level currency conversion where Markets pricing is not in play.
What Shopify Markets gives you free
- Markets with their own domains or subfolders, and correct hreflang between them.
- Local currencies with rounding rules, and market-specific price lists.
- Duties and import taxes collected at checkout where supported, so the customer is not ambushed by a customs bill.
- Payment methods per market, and local delivery rules.
- Translate & Adapt: machine translation of the storefront, editable, with the ability to adapt content per market rather than only translate it.
PawGuard launched with Markets configured from day one on the standard Shopify plan — DNS, hreflang, geo prompts and per-market shipping profiles — because retrofitting cross-border onto a store that already ranks is far more work than building it in. That is the recommendation: configure Markets at launch even if you only sell in one country today.
1. Weglot
Weglot is the fastest way to a fully translated store: it detects all translatable content — including text that comes from third-party apps, which is what most translation projects get stuck on — translates with AI or professional services, and gives you a dashboard to edit and approve. It handles the language switcher and SEO-friendly URLs. Priced by words and languages, which is the thing to model before committing on a large catalogue.
2. Langify
Langify is the veteran Shopify translation app: theme, product, checkout and app content, with granular manual control and a customisable switcher. Teams that want to own every string rather than accept machine output tend to prefer it.
3. LangShop
LangShop combines AI translation engines (OpenAI, DeepL and others), glossaries for brand and product terms, currency switching and multi-language SEO fields. The glossary matters more than it sounds: it is what stops “lace front” or a product name being translated into nonsense across a thousand pages.
4. Currency Converter Plus
Currency Converter Plus displays prices in the visitor’s currency with rounding rules and auto-detection. Use it only where Markets multi-currency pricing is not in play — a display-only converter that charges in a different currency at checkout is a conversion killer, because the customer sees one number and is billed another.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Translates app content | SEO URLs | Glossary | Currency | Pricing model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markets + Translate & Adapt | Partial | Native | No | Native | Free | Every store, first |
| Weglot | Yes | Yes | Yes | Via Markets | By words and languages | Fast, complete translation |
| Langify | Yes | Yes | Limited | Switcher | Flat monthly | Manual control |
| LangShop | Yes | Yes | Yes | Switcher | Tiered | AI translation with brand terms |
| Currency Converter Plus | — | — | — | Display only | Low monthly | Display currency without Markets pricing |
The SEO mistakes that cost international stores
- Client-side translation. If the translation is applied by JavaScript after the page loads, Google indexes the original language. Use Shopify’s market URLs — subfolder or domain — so each language is a real, crawlable page.
- Missing or wrong hreflang. Markets emits it correctly when the markets are configured; hand-rolled setups routinely get the return links wrong, and the languages then compete with each other.
- Untranslated metadata and schema. Body copy translated, titles and structured data left in English. The snippet is what people click.
- Duplicate English markets. US, UK and AU storefronts with identical copy and no differentiation — pick a canonical market or genuinely adapt the content.
- Currency shown but not charged. Display-only conversion at checkout is a trust break at the worst possible moment.
Verify all five with the free SEO audit, which reads the markup Google actually sees on each market URL.
Translation is not the whole job
A translated store still fails in a market if the shipping is not priced, the duties are not collected, the payment methods are wrong and the delivery promise is fiction. That is the scope of our international expansion work: Markets architecture, per-market shipping and duties, local payment methods, content adapted rather than translated, and the SEO structure that keeps each market’s rankings its own. For the migration side of a multi-market store, see the migration tools guide — cross-border URL mapping is the part most migrations get wrong.
FAQ
Does Shopify Markets handle translation?
Markets handles domains, languages, currencies, duties and market-specific pricing, and Shopify Translate & Adapt gives you machine translation with manual editing for free. The paid apps add translation workflow, third-party app content, glossaries and professional translation ordering.
Do I need a separate store for another country?
Almost never. One store with Shopify Markets, market-specific domains or subfolders, local currencies and duties handles most expansion. A separate store is for genuinely different catalogues, legal entities or fulfilment — and it doubles the maintenance.
How do I avoid losing SEO when adding languages?
Use Shopify’s own market URLs (subfolder or domain) so hreflang is emitted correctly, never a JavaScript-only translation layer, keep one canonical per language, and translate metadata and structured data as well as body copy. A translation app that swaps text client-side is invisible to Google.
Should I show local currency or charge in one currency?
Show and charge in the customer’s currency where Markets supports it: conversion improves and chargebacks fall. Add duties and import taxes at checkout in the markets where they apply — an unexpected customs bill is a refund and a lost customer.
