What is the best TMS in localization? I’ve tried 13 different platforms and I’ll try to rank them according to my first experience – which one stood out with its PM UI?
In this video, you’ll see my thought process behind the ranking of our favorite TMS tools. Everything is subjective, based on my own personal taste.
Andrej Zito
After two weeks, we are back guys, this is mini episode number two with the Tiermaker and my TMS rankings. In this one, we’re going to have a closer look at my personal experience with the project management user interface.
Andrej Zito
Guys, now before we get into the ranking, I have three important things to share with you. First of all, I tried to make this more practical because I wanted that once we get into the UI searching about project management, I could maybe come up with some ways how to let’s say, measure how efficient it is to create the projects, which could be looked at somewhat objective metric to rank these TMS platforms against. But because I didn’t want to go back to all the different TMS platforms, some of them are not even available as a free trial. I did this purely based on my videos that I recorded before when I was doing the individual reviews. And unfortunately, maybe I just gave up and I was lazy. But I think most of the ranking is pretty much still based on the design and style and my own personal user experience, how I thought about it how the UI looks like, it is not that important. I think what is important is if you can get your projects done, if you can actually clearly see where your projects are. And it’s not difficult to assign projects and different files to the translators. I think that’s what’s important. But I still do think that when it comes to the UI, you still want to use something that looks nice. I’ve been in that position before where I had to use some internal systems, or even some commercial TMS platforms, which look like shit. And when things look like shit, it’s very likely that they are also not that very usable. So I use a book, I mean, you can do the things in a much faster way. And you, let’s say, even enjoy creating the projects in a certain TMS platform, I still think that the design per step perspective, and the whole UX thing still plays a role when it comes to project managers doing their job well, and maybe better. But again, I just want to say that this whole video, all this series, everything that I said is, again, just my own personal taste, my personal preference. So that was message number one.
Andrej Zito
Message number two is for all the TMS companies who will be mentioned in this video. I’m not sure how the YouTube’s algorithm is going to like this video or not, if by any chance the algorithm likes it, and it keeps getting viewership as we go on into the future, I encourage you all please feel free to add some comments into the YouTube video section below the video and link it to let’s say if you have a new update about your user interface, okay, I don’t delete comments on this YouTube channel unless it’s a poor link, which I don’t get many these days, I don’t know why. So, I will be very happy if you post if you have an update. Ideally, if you have it still on YouTube, so it’s a link on YouTube, that leads to another YouTube video where you let’s say introduce the new changes of the UI because I don’t want this video to be seen as Okay, this is how the user interface of this TMS looks like in the future, okay, you will be doing some changes. So, feel free to use the comments as a way to lead or educate the audience that’s going to be looking at this video in the future and show them how your product looks like at the given moment.
Andrej Zito
Final thing I was sort of hinting at this before, this is my message to all the buyers if you have the power, because in most cases, the buyers unfortunately, have the power to decide which TMS to use. Please don’t only consider your own perspective, I had this personal experience where the customer pretty much just let’s say things about the quoting process. And they only care about the reports, which maybe they don’t even look at. But then the project managers at the agency they have to work with, let’s say you’re not very favorable, not very nice to… pretty shitty TMS, in the end, and they have to suffer. So trust me whenever you were doing the decision about which TMS to use. Always do consult the team that’s part of your localization program, whether it’s internal, or whether it’s your agencies or even go further and ask your translators. How will it be the translation experience for them? So this is important because you may make the decision based on certain criteria which may be good for you. But maybe you don’t even know how it looks like for the actual project managers when they start using the TMS to run your projects. So this is my little rant and favorite to ask of all the buyers who are looking at this video, please do consult when you make a decision about which TMS to deploy for your program. Because I think the project managers are the ones who are doing the actual work, they’re managing your project. So they should have a voice in deciding whether the TMS you picked is also going to work for them. So, enough talking, I think we’re ready to go right into the TMS ranking, using too many curves. This time, according to the project management user interface, again, still only based on this one person.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so here we are. Back with the Tiermaker, reshuffle again. And it’s time to look at the project manager, project management interface. Now I did a very quick refresh of my own my videos, the problem with this ranking will be that first of all, we’re not looking at the very latest UI, which even if I did it, at some point UI would be obsolete. So that’s one thing. The second thing is I don’t think I technically did the same things in every UI in some of them actually looked at some other features like analytics, statistics – those kind of things maybe I should leave that out from my ranking. But anyway, let’s start with it again.
Andrej Zito
For some reason the RNG told us that we’re going to be starting with Crowdin again. Crowdin. The website was fine, a bit bland. The UI like hey, this is now a UI so what was even more bland graphic he’s got from a different era. Doc. This is just your initial setup. Not interesting. Okay, this is a project like Facebook or is this social media or what is this? I don’t know why that much space is used. Why do you why what? Already there is a project. Engine. Okay, one thing that I did everywhere was to create a project maybe that’s the first thing that I need to focus on the project form creation and the second one would be sort of like the overview of the projects which is what you would normally look at once you create it to manage the progression of your projects. You’re… this UI – you’re not great. It’s not great at all. Okay, building. Okay, these are the set. I’m really not sure. I tried to upload our strings 11. Oh. For all cells right. Right. Again, I don’t understand why did this one parse all the strings from the spreadsheet? I think that’s something that I was struggling with the auto TMS. Especially the ones who are focusing on software localization because they were forcing me to upload it in a very specific format the spreadsheet. First thing this one parsed everything no strings are listed. That’s the doc or this might get a spreadsheet. Parse everything spread that’s the end. Where would I put it? Wait. How does the overview of the project look like into projects? Doesn’t look that great. It’s so bland. Yes. Progress. So good. Maybe I’ll start and put it in the middle looks like previously. Okay, this is the end any kind of forget about the ending. What we need to do now with it, versus here. We’re done. So those are my comments, then. Hello, my comments. So, yeah, we completed the whole round trip in one hour. Oh boy cut it down to a little bit less. My final comments are very nice homepage, pretty clean animation was a bit of weird. The editor or the crowdsourcing looks very, very good. I think the only thing is that this thing for managers or project managers where you report where you upload files and download them, this is the worst part, super bland and the colors just don’t fit in. I don’t know why it’s different shades. Green. So those are my comments. And we’re done with Crowdin, you’ve reached the end of the video. Thank you very much for it’s quite funny that I said that. The homepage was nice. I think last time I put it into the B right. I’m actually inclined to put it into C but we might get back to it. Let’s use Crowdin as the as the proxy. Great. Next one.
Andrej Zito
SDL Language Cloud. Now why do we have SDL Language Cloud? SDL Language Cloud? They’ll probably look more interesting. SDL users I didn’t like that thing like this book experience. Okay let’s. Creation is definitely better than Crowdin. That’s for sure. This looks more neat. So that was the creation. I think the creation is better than Crowdin. Wondering, and the overview of the project. I definitely like this one. On the finalization for two guests. This one looks better. What else? Yeah. When this thing looks better, like the dashboard for your project? I’m not sure if I mentioned that before during the actual review of SDL Language Cloud. Not sure if this is actually useful for anyone. The content analysis, statistics. That’s pretty good that it shows here. Progress, yours. Good. Yeah, this is definitely better. Way better but then there were some issues about that. The program quickly go to the end. So then I translate it. And then here we have last thing 100% or less. Yeah, this looks very nice. Yeah, yeah, I would definitely put SDL Language Cloud above Crowdin. That’s it. That’s the second one. So far, so good.
Andrej Zito
Lokalise. Next one. It is really when I’m logged in here. I really liked it. Then I was questioning how you can measure and monitor the progress across let’s say 20 languages. If it’s stacked like this next to each other and then it goes to the next row. I think a table view is more practical and I think I didn’t find any way to change the view. It looks good right now, but I still think project creation is good. Okay, wait, this one’s a bit didn’t accept spreadsheet language right that’s key documents are toggle between the motor and boxes to edit. These are going to upvote. Is it what the reviewers doing? Creation with something it’s maybe means that it detected some changes in the click here. This new edition. Yeah, why is English there as well build and download? What? I don’t think it was that bad. I think it’s pretty good. But I don’t think I would put it next to SDL Language Cloud. This could be, again, just my personal preference. Could be my personal preference, and maybe the fact that Lokalise definitely intended for something else. And then what I use it for, but maybe right now, I would maybe put it next to Lok- Crowdin. With Crowdin. I still think Lokalise looks better, but is it same as SDL Language Cloud? I’ll leave it as it is now.
Andrej Zito
Next one, we have XTM Cloud. I was looking at this one. I couldn’t understand why I sort of had this impression that XTM sucked. This, this thing sucked, for sure. Getting in. But this looks pretty good. I don’t know, this thing looks pretty, pretty, pretty looks pretty nice and clean. I know that there’s some parts of the UI like the settings look completely different. And I was super frustrated about the machine translation, which didn’t work for me. I was like, Well, let me see what other things I had about. I was saying this in some previous project creation is smoothing is nice. I think they put it all the, let’s say the steps one or two subsections in one screen, instead of having it separated into steps like I think SDL Language Cloud did but I still think it works good. If I here’s the overview, the min status max status, I don’t get it. That’s a really sort of like a mathematical approach to aggregating the statuses. Maybe you just didn’t get it. I think this thing look good. This thing look like you have your own interface for your own project. With the different tabs here on the left side for a change of art, it fills up. Okay. Charts. Okay. Charts. So not looking very good repetition. I think. Maybe I should just mute myself. I don’t need to listen to myself. Okay. Flow management. Yeah, I think it’s good. This is the translation. Do not need to worry about that. This is me recreating a project to enable machine translation. Didn’t figure it out. So then I copy pasted it. Here we had it. Statuses didn’t update. Translate. Think the UI looks good. Except for some part, this part doesn’t look that good. But then, whenever my final class tells, it’s been like a lot of how I would expect it to look narrow. But when I go to settings, settings look completely different. Why? I have no idea where I want the projects. I never also mentioned this this menu. I mean, it’s functionable but so teeny, tiny. Yeah. Going back to the Tiermaker. I think I will put XTM Cloud next to SDL Language Cloud. They will look good at first glance, there were just some few teeny tiny things. I’m going to ignore the fact that the machine translation I couldn’t get it working. But I think the user interface for project managers looks good
Andrej Zito
Okay next one, Phrase. Phrase with me. Phrase. Okay, so you have this initial setup. Set your source language. This is where I was struggling with the format of the spreadsheet. And I created new projects oh yeah because it created these, I don’t know why edit extra languages for me. That didn’t make sense. As the software thing the keys just think I hated this thing. The yellow. I don’t know why it’s yellow. Maybe it’s because it’s assigned to me. I didn’t do anything. There we have the translation, right. Here’s an overview of the project languages. Now this is where it’s going to get tricky, huh? I think Phrase sort of gives me the feeling like Lokalise but doesn’t mean that you need to push Crowdin below. I think I might have to scroll down below. Yeah, probably. Right.
Andrej Zito
Next one. Memsource. Memsource. yes, I’m very familiar with Memsource. Project creation teeny tiny. Yeah, I don’t know why the target languages selection is so small. The rest looks clean. This one looks good, but I’m just so familiar with this. So, the translation like don’t need to look at that. This is the progress bar. I do not like it. What else do we have here? Where would I put it? Oh. Is it B or is it C? I’m just so used to it by now. I mean, look at the Crowdin and again, like it looks better than Crowdin for sure. It looks better than Crowdin. Is it better than Phrase or Lokalise? Where is Lokalise? Lokalise looks like this. If I’m strictly focusing on the visual aspect then probably Lokalise looks better. Question is, is it functional? That’s a question mark. I still I definitely like Lokalise more and I think Phrase was also better. Right? Phrase except for this thing. Phrase, I think, I think it’s C or B. Goddamnit. I think I said it’s better than Crowdin, right? Maybe I’ll just put it here for now. I think they’re already in the right way and that I think about them.
Andrej Zito
Okay, next one. Let’s go Transifex. Transifex. Transifex. That one should be good, I think. Yep, this one. Transifex really reminds me a lot about POEditor. Maybe it’s because they’re they all, they both have the fixed width in the UI. Editor is great. We know I’m bound to go away. On this one, translate it. Where does it show the language? Oh, no, it’s sort of documents are the files. I think it looks good. Okay, project creation. Order creation is pretty good here, I think even has some images here. It’s nice. I can target languages, then it’s created, then you just upload the files. Drag and drop it. Simple. Except bullet. There can spreadsheet. Oh, it’s resources, the files that you upload it and then okay, then the individual languages. Now, this is a question. Is it A? I think I like it more than Lokalise. Now how does it compare to these two? These two are sort of like the same way of approaching the project’s creation. For Transifex, I’m really not sure where to put it. Was it cleaner than SDL Language Cloud or no? This looks fine. Some flying cars are still good, I think. Yeah, exactly what I said at the end what? This looks good. In 24 hours, we’re going to publish this. So yeah, my final comments. I don’t have much to say. I think the website was good. I can’t even remember for that. Check yesterday. It was good. And the UI looks very, very nice. In the star reminds me of POEditor. I mean, it’s on that level. And it’s really nice and clean. Like I really like like, you know, like the buttons even though they’ve distinguished let’s say by using an orange it’s still this one is like the main button then we have the goes button. The everything like using what is grade? What is mean the page, so? Yeah, okay. I really did like it. So maybe I’ll put it at the front. Maybe it might be S. We’ll put it into S for now. Let’s see. All right.
Andrej Zito
The next one, POEditor. Well, is that the definitive S. So, this one oh my god, of course. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Oh, and they have this thing, this thing. They had this thing, which is the perfect thing to have for this series because it’s the first experience and they guide you what to do. What do you do? Yeah. So, what was nice the setting see everything is big for all like me. No teeny tiny things. This is great. I needed some help with the format. This is let’s say editor. This is where they asked me if I wanted to machine translate. Yeah, this is definitely S. All right that was easy POEditor.
Andrej Zito
Next one, Smartcat. Here, we’ll see. Well yes Smartcat. Of course, Smartcat is good as well. Smartcat I think maybe has the similar vibe in the similar style as I don’t know Memsource, Language Cloud, XTM Cloud but I think they do better. Yeah, this form here is awesome. This is where I thought it was misaligned. Here to form pretty good. This was good. Here you can set up the workload by dragging tasks along. This is ready. This looks good. I think I maybe didn’t even say doing the review. But I felt like there’s maybe too much of the purple. But I still think it looks good at the first glance. So yeah, I think I didn’t like these things here. Okay, the space. The website? Super good, super clean, good whitespace good use of color great hierarchy good screenshots not much more to say. Sign up was probably the easiest one I just gave them the email and then immediately I was into the in the UI creating my project. Creating project was super simple. Supported both file formats easily. The options were good during the creation of the project. And then the project interface is still pretty good like just it’s still a lot of the we’re still on color. I didn’t like the right things here. That’s too much. Yep. This looks fine. Yeah, it looks fine. The editor looked one is what do we have overall? A very good experience. And what am I right yeah, I think this one I meant um, question. I think it’s better than SDL Language Cloud, XTM. They had some issues there.
Andrej Zito
Okay, Wordbee. Now this will be – I remember that when I was doing my prep for this, my comment was just okay it’s looks old. Yeah, just the whole interface looks super old. But I think Crowdin still better, right? So those go here. It’s going to be a category of its own.
Andrej Zito
Okay, next one memoQ. MemoQ. MemoQ. The right words that you are here. Still not it. This is it. Okay, looks good. I know I was missing the purple. From the homepage, or even here in the admin section or whatever this is. Here. There’s no purple anymore. We’ve lost the purple but at least we have the orange main buttons. This is a good although I think it’s to separate it from in each other. Form looks fine. What else do we have here? Workflow are important documents. And this is the one where I actually could import things. One of the documents think this one looks better. Here it’s too what? Okay, editor sucks. But that’s sort of the next episode. Where was the percent? Oh yeah. I think the interface looks good. Looks good, but where does it go compared to the other ones? I think I might have to do some modifications here. I think memoQ looks good. Okay, we’re going to have to play with this for sure. I have so many in the in the top one.
Andrej Zito
Text United. I think that’s going to be a little bit lower. From what I remember. Yes, the colors were I think this was too colorful. Like these things. Back this thing here looks super easy. I remember that one. I think it doesn’t look good. Where would it be? Text United. I think Phrase and Lokalise are better. Text United would probably go here next to Crowdin.
Andrej Zito
And last one. Translate5. That is an easy one. That is a very easy one. I mean, just scroll here. And you’ll see why it’s so easy. Yeah, this is how the UI looks like. It’s a very, very, very old event. The whole thing. This thing? Like, I don’t know, Wordbee is better than this one. But I think I would still group them in the same tier. Translate5 is definitely at the end. Translate5, Wordbee. I think that categories, good.
Andrej Zito
Do I really have four S tiers? What? Okay, I cannot, I cannot make up my mind. Oh, Smartcat’s better. Transifex. Is Phrase not better? I feel like if I had if I had another tier, it would be POEditor, Smartcat. Then I would then Transifex, meoQ. Then I would have SDL Language Cloud, XTM, and so on. This is it. I did like Transifex. Yeah, I think I think I think we got it. Yeah. I’m going to stay with this because otherwise I’m going to spend my whole afternoon here. It’s been 15 minutes. I’ve been doing this.
Andrej Zito
Okay. Final recap. Starting from POEditor, absolutely the best one, it was one of the best experiences. And ever since I encountered POEditor, I’ve been comparing the other stuff just because the experience was so good. So, I think yes. S definitely, S. Everything there looks good. Smartcat. Yes. Smartcat does the let’s say more complicated user interfaces, a lot of forms and input fields. Better than the others I think, and it still looks nice and clean and purple. Transifex. It was very good experience, I would say that it’s slightly more attractive. Brother or sister of POEditor. They look to me very similar. Normal queue. Very clean. Not much to say there. It’s just not Smartcat. And we have the two giants, SDL Language Cloud, XTM Cloud. I think one of these could probably offer a lot more features than maybe POEditor and Transifex. But what I tried, they allow me to do it. They look good. There were a few tiny things in the UI. That’s also maybe what I should say that I think that the first four so S tier and A tier, I think there wasn’t much for me to say, when it comes to the UI flaws. I think they all look pretty good. These two guys, there were some things. Okay, next one is C. Lokalise. Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of that. Phrase. Some things in the UI and like Memsource, to techie tiny buttons and so on. And we have Text United. So many word colors. Crowdin looks a bit bland. And then finally Wordbee and translate5.
Andrej Zito
Now that was it. That’s the end of the second mini part in our Tiermaker series, where we finally trying to wrap up the whole PMS UX review series. This one about project management UI. Again, let me know below. If you have any different opinions you agree with the TMS that I put on the very top. Again, there will be a link to Tiermaker if you want to play with it and do your own. Do it. For the TMS companies, if you have any updates about your TMS if something has changed in the UI, feel free again to comment in this video, and direct the audience to your new video where you present your new TMS. That’s it for me. We’ll be back in two weeks to rank the TMS platforms according to the online editor, which again is something that I’m absolutely not competent to rank on, but I will just stick to my commenting on the design and style and my own personal user experience. So that’s a series we’re getting finally to the end. I’m actually quite happy about it. So, if you don’t want to miss the third video in the series, and then finally we will have the final ultimate ranking based on the first experience of this one Andrej Zito. Please subscribe to the channel. I do. I do. I do, of course another localization content. So that’s more things for you to look at. And I will see you in two weeks. So, bye bye. And I will see you in two weeks. Until then. Bye bye!
