Short answer: in 305 one- and two-star reviews of six Shopify translation apps, the most common complaint was slow, absent or bot-only support (about 113 reviews, 37%). Next came translations that didn't cover all of the store's content (about 79, 26%) and apps that broke the store or left code behind after uninstall (about 66, 22%). The reviews were collected from the public Shopify App Store on 2026-10-24.
Disclosure: Civet is building a Shopify translation app, so we have an interest in what these reviews say. That's why the method, the counts and a link to every quoted review are on this page. Check them yourself.
Method
- Source: the public review pages of each app on the Shopify App Store, filtered to 1★ and 2★ (
apps.shopify.com/<app>/reviews?ratings[]=1&ratings[]=2). Ratings and review totals were read from the listings on 2026-10-24. - Sample: every non-empty 1–2★ review for four of the apps. For Transcy and Translate & Adapt, which have the most negative reviews, we read the 80 most recent.
- Tagging: one person tagged complaint themes with keyword searches, then checked each match by reading the review. A review can count toward several themes, so the theme counts add up to more than 305.
- Precision: counts are approximate (plus or minus a few). Percentages below are each count divided by 305, rounded.
- What we didn't do: we didn't contact reviewers or verify their claims, and we don't reproduce reviewer or store names.
The six apps
| App | Rating | Total reviews | 1–2★ reviews read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weglot | 4.5 | 824 | 65 |
| Langify | 4.7 | 727 | 43 |
| LangShop | 4.5 | 472 | 27 |
| Transcy | 4.5 | 2,567 | 80 of 133 |
| Translate & Adapt | 4.4 | 1,398 | 80 of 102 |
| T Lab | 5.0 | 1,038 | 10 |
| Total | 305 (122 dated 2025–26) |
Low-star reviews are a small share of each app's reviews. T Lab, for example, had 10 one- and two-star reviews out of 1,038. This page describes what goes wrong when it goes wrong. It doesn't rate the apps.
What merchants complained about
| # | Complaint theme | Reviews (≈) | Share of 305 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Support slow, absent, deflecting or a bot | 113 | 37% |
| 2 | Incomplete coverage (other apps' text, metafields, checkout, menus, filters, URL handles) | 79 | 26% |
| 3 | Broke the store, or left theme code or DNS settings behind after uninstall | 66 | 22% |
| 4 | Pricing: word caps, forced upgrades, price increases | 59 | 19% |
| 5 | Poor translation quality, brand terms or glossary ignored | 44 | 14% |
| 6 | Overwrote or lost manual corrections | 32 | 10% |
| 7 | Slower pages or visible flicker from translation in the browser | 31 | 10% |
| 8 | SEO damage (hreflang, canonicals, de-indexing, ranking drops) | 23 | 8% |
| 9 | No automatic update when products are added or changed | 18 | 6% |
| 10 | Translate & Adapt's limit of two auto-translated languages | 13 | 4% |
Findings
Problems that come from how the app is built
Themes 3, 7 and 8 (store breakage or leftover code, slow pages or flicker, SEO damage) together account for roughly 120 theme mentions. Almost all of the SEO-damage reviews were about apps that translate pages with JavaScript in the browser or through a proxy. An app that only writes to Shopify's own translation storage, and adds nothing to the theme, avoids this group of problems by design. It doesn't avoid the others.
Overwritten edits are a trust problem
About 32 reviews (10%) describe a bulk or automatic translation overwriting corrections the merchant had made by hand. One Translate & Adapt reviewer wrote that "all manually edited translations are overwritten without any warning or confirmation dialog" (review). A Weglot reviewer wrote that the app "will continuously over write all your hard work over and over again" (review).
Large catalogs
We flagged reviews that mention catalog size or one-by-one manual work, then kept only those where scale was the actual complaint. That left 36 of the 305 translation reviews (12%). For example: "I have 2329 product pages. There is no way I can do it manually." (review).
Silent failures
Some reviews describe translations that failed without the merchant being told: "Many translations failed in the last 17 days… and I never noticed" (review).
The wider picture
The same study covered 1,107 non-empty 1–2★ reviews across 33 Shopify apps in five categories (translation; AI alt text, SEO and descriptions; back-in-stock and pre-order; B2B and wholesale; Google Merchant Center feeds) plus three bulk editors. Slow or absent support was the most common theme in every group, at 35–50% of reviews.
| Category | Apps | 1–2★ reviews read |
|---|---|---|
| Translation | 6 | 305 |
| AI alt text, SEO and descriptions | 9 | 259 |
| Back-in-stock and pre-order | 5 | 166 |
| B2B and wholesale order forms | 6 | 132 |
| Google Merchant Center feeds | 4 | 179 |
| Bulk editors | 3 | 66 |
| Total | 33 | 1,107 |
Limitations
- Low-star reviews are self-selected. They show what frustrates unhappy merchants, not how common a problem is among all users.
- The tagging was done by one person, with keyword searches checked by reading. Another reader might tag some reviews differently.
- Ratings and review counts change daily. These figures are a snapshot from 2026-10-24.
- Civet's own app isn't launched, so none of these reviews are about Civet.
How to cite this page
Civet, "What 305 one- and two-star reviews say about Shopify translation apps", getcivet.com, published 2026-10-24.
You can check a public Shopify store's multilingual setup with our free multilingual readiness check, or see how Civet compares with Translate & Adapt.