Most localization purchases fail in the same place: the tool is judged on a single demo sentence instead of on the site it has to run. A small shop or blog has no localization team and little patience for a six-month rollout, so the checklist has to be concrete. Below is the order that tends to work. Write your answers down, compare candidates against the same list, and keep the notes with the invoice.

1. Start with the words that must not drift

Build the glossary before you shop. It should hold your brand name, product names, legal entity details, approved translations for key terms, and any phrasing you never want to see. Then ask each vendor how the glossary is enforced: can a term be locked per language, does the tool warn on a conflict, can a human override one sentence without editing the whole page, and can the glossary be imported and exported? A glossary that lives only in a help article is not a feature you can rely on.

2.…