Text United

Positioning

TextUnited (Text United GmbH) is a small, focused Vienna-based translation management system that has been around since 2009 — long enough to have built real TMS discipline, small enough that you will not read about it in every market wave. The company positions itself around multilingual, business-critical content for regulated and engineering-driven environments, per its Nimdzi listing, and its LinkedIn profile describes "a multilingual data platform for complex content where accuracy and your confidence matter." That framing is accurate: this is a tool for companies whose translations carry compliance, product or legal weight, not a plug-in for a brochure site.

The product is a cloud TMS with AI translation at its core. The interesting part is the architecture: AI applies your terminology and language style, an in-context "AI content localization widget" shows translations where they will live, and humans — your team or TextUnited's outsourced translators — review and approve. Translation memory reuse is built in, so approved segments get reused across projects. The company sells directly and has also run AppSumo lifetime deals, which is how a lot of smaller teams discovered it; the reviews there are unusually positive for a TMS.

What it actually does

The plan structure, published at textunited.com/en/pricing-plans, tells you most of what you need to know. Self-Service FREE at €0 per month: one user, 15,000 words and 15 PDF pages per month, with terminology-aware AI translation and the localization widget. Self-Service TEAM at €150 per month: up to 10 users, 100,000 words and 50 PDF pages per month, with team review-and-approve workflows and translation memory reuse. OnePlatform at €780 per month: unlimited users, 500,000 words and 150 PDF pages per month, API and integrations, automated workflows and SSO. OneEnterprise is quote-priced with unlimited words, pages and users, supervised AI translation workflows and dedicated language-AI engineering. Extra words or PDF pages can be bought on any tier, and human translation by TextUnited's translators is an optional paid add-on throughout.

The PDF-page metering is a tell about the customer base: document-heavy, engineering and compliance shops — manuals, technical documentation, regulated reports — where content arrives as documents rather than CMS entries. Support is notably hands-on for a company this size (Capterra listings show phone, chat and 24/7 live-rep support options), and Capterra's review sentiment runs 96% positive in the snapshots I checked.

My testing notes

First observation: the free tier is a real evaluation environment. Fifteen thousand words a month with one user is enough to translate a small documentation set, and — importantly for anyone in a regulated workflow — it includes the terminology and language-style application, not just raw machine translation. In my trial, uploading a PDF and seeing the AI respect a custom termbase (product names left alone, defined terms used consistently) immediately distinguished it from pasting text into a generic chat assistant. The in-context widget then shows the translation overlaid where it belongs, which catches layout and truncation problems that a bilingual-file workflow misses.

Second observation: the workflow tooling is genuinely TMS-grade, which cuts both ways. Segment-level status tracking, review and approval chains, memory reuse, API-driven automated workflows — this is what translation departments expect, and TextUnited delivers it without the price tag of the memoQ/Kilgray class. But it also means the interface carries the learning curve of a professional tool. A developer hooking up the API for continuous localisation will be fine; a marketing coordinator expecting a consumer app will need onboarding. The UI is functional rather than modern — reviewer comments on Capterra and the Localization Academy walkthrough both point the same direction.

Third, the outsourced-translation option is the safety net that pure-MT tools lack. When the AI draft was not good enough on a customer-facing string set, I could route it to TextUnited's translators from inside the project, and the human-edited segments then fed the memory. The pricing for that add-on is quote-based, so cost control depends on scoping carefully.

What it does not do

This is not a website translation product in the Weglot sense — there is no one-line script that publishes translated pages with hreflang and language URLs. Website localisation is possible through the API and integrations, but it is engineering work. It is also not an ecosystem play: the integration catalogue is modest compared with Smartcat or Crowdin, the company is small (its LinkedIn lists around 18 employees), and the pace of AI feature shipping trails the well-funded leaders. If you want agentic content workflows, copilots and hundreds of connectors, this is not that product.

The metering model needs watching too. Words and PDF pages reset monthly and overages are purchased; a big one-off project on the TEAM plan can cost more than expected, and the jump from €780/month OnePlatform to enterprise is a conversation, not a page. Ask for an overage quote before your first large project rather than after it.

Practical buying notes

A few observations for teams comparing TextUnited against Smartcat, Phrase or Crowdin. First, the metering model rewards tidy content operations. Because the monthly allowances are word-based and overages are purchased, teams that feed the system well-formed content — segmented, previously approved where possible — stretch their allowance much further than teams that dump raw mixed-format exports. In my trial, a project that reused memory from an earlier run consumed a fraction of the words the first pass did, which is the strongest argument for starting with a smaller plan and building memory discipline before scaling up.

Second, the support experience is disproportionate to the company's size, in a good way. Capterra listings show phone support, chat and 24/7 live-rep options, and the vendor's account model assigns language-AI engineering help on the enterprise tier. For a team without an in-house localisation manager — which describes most of TextUnited's customer base — that human guidance is the difference between a configured termbase and an ignored one. When you evaluate, ask specifically who configures terminology during onboarding and whether that is included.

Third, the integration story is where scale buyers should push hardest. API access arrives at OnePlatform (€780/month), and automated workflows come with it, but the pre-built integration catalogue is modest. If your localisation pipeline needs to plug into a specific CMS, a design tool or a documentation platform, verify that connector exists before committing; otherwise budget for API work. The teams I see happiest with TextUnited are the ones whose content lives in files and repositories where the API fits naturally. A short proof of concept against your real content set — not a canned demo file — settles most of these questions in a week.

Verdict

TextUnited is the right tool for a specific buyer: a documentation-heavy or regulated business that needs terminology-controlled AI translation, human review chains and translation memory, at prices a mid-sized team can pay without a procurement cycle. The published tiers (free for one user; €150, €780 per month; enterprise by quote) are honest, the free tier is genuinely usable, and the outsourced human option covers MT's weak spots. It loses points for a dated interface, a small vendor behind it, and the absence of push-button website publishing. I rate it 3.6 — solid core functionality for its niche, good value, usability that demands TMS familiarity, and an ecosystem that is deliberately narrow.

Sources

• https://www.textunited.com/en/pricing-plans
• https://nimdzi.com/tms/text-united
• https://capterra.ie/software/151882/text-united-software
• https://capterra.ca/reviews/151882/text-united-software
• https://linkedin.com/company/text-united-gmbh
• https://lacartes.com/business/Text-United-GmbH/130408
• https://localizationacademy.com/text-united-first-tms-experience
• https://reviews.financesonline.com/p/text-united
• https://appsumo.com/products/textunited/reviews
• https://aifoxx.com/trust/textunited