Comparison
WordRate vs LSP.expert
WordRate suits the translator whose painful hour is the quoting hour, while LSP.expert is aimed at translators who want the whole freelance business recorded in one system.
Comparison
WordRate vs Protemos: quoting tool or project system
Protemos is built for translation businesses that route work to vendors, while WordRate is built for the shop where the person quoting is usually the person translating.
The short answer
Protemos is a translation business management system, so it thinks in projects with a client side, a vendor side and money moving between the two. WordRate assumes the person quoting is usually the person translating, or one of two or three people who are. If you already assign work to a bench of subcontractors and need to track what you owe them against what the client owes you, the project system suits you better. If you mainly need fast, defensible quotes on your own rates plus one home for client glossaries, WordRate is less machinery to run.
WordRate and Protemos side by side
| What you are deciding | WordRate | Protemos |
|---|---|---|
| Core unit of work | The quote, tied to a client rate card and a glossary. | The project, with client and vendor sides tracked against it. |
| Vendor management | Not the focus. Delivery tracking covers your own jobs and deadlines. | A central part of the model, aimed at companies that outsource translation work. |
| Setup effort | One rate card and you can quote the same day. | A project system expects clients, vendors and services to be entered before it earns its keep. |
| Rate card depth | Per client per word rates, minimums, rush tiers and fuzzy grids held together. | Rates sit inside a wider commercial model covering both sides of the job. |
| Terminology | Client glossaries stored beside the rates on the same record. | Terminology is normally kept in the CAT tools your linguists use. |
| Best sized for | One to three people who quote and translate. | Small and mid sized companies coordinating outside linguists. |
| What you outgrow it for | You start subcontracting most jobs and need vendor accounting. | Nothing to outgrow if you keep routing work out, which is what it is built for. |
What follows on the right is the shape of Protemos as a category: the workflow it assumes and the buyer it is written for. What a product covers moves over time, so verify where it stands today. WordRate is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose WordRate when
- You translate most of what you sell and only subcontract when a deadline forces it.
- You quote far more jobs than you win, so speed on the quote matters more than depth on the project record.
- You need a partner or an assistant to send a correctly priced quote while you are inside a file.
- You want a client glossary and a client rate card in the same place instead of two systems.
Choose Protemos when
- You route most jobs to freelancers and need both sides of the money tracked against each project.
- You are running enough concurrent projects that a project register, not a quote log, is the thing you check every morning.
- You want a single system to follow a job from client order through vendor assignment to final delivery.
Freelancer math versus vendor math
The moment you start paying another linguist, your arithmetic changes shape. You are no longer asking what this job pays per hour, you are asking what the gap is between the client rate and the vendor rate, and whether that gap survives review time and project handling. A project system is built for that second question and does it properly.
Until then, the vendor side is overhead you carry without using. A translator who subcontracts twice a year does not need vendor purchase orders on every screen. WordRate stays on the first question: is this job priced correctly against my own rate card, and did the minimum and rush tier get applied.
What a two person shop actually tracks
Ask a two person language company what they check on a Tuesday and the answer is short. Which quotes are outstanding, which files are due this week, which client needs the certified copy by Thursday, and whether the glossary for the pharma account got updated after the last review round. That is four things, and none of them requires a full project register.
WordRate is scoped to those four. Delivery tracking tells you what is in flight and what is due, the client record holds the rates and the terms, and quoting is the fast path. If your list of daily checks is longer than that, and especially if it includes who is translating what and when they get paid, you have grown into project system territory.
Moving up later without losing your rate history
Growth in this trade is rarely planned. A regular client doubles their output, you take on two freelancers for the overflow, and suddenly you are coordinating rather than translating. The question is what you carry across when that happens.
The valuable asset is not the software, it is the rate history and the glossaries. Rates agreed per client, the minimums you actually enforce, the rush tiers clients have accepted, the term decisions made in review rounds. Keep that in a structured form and any later move to a project system is a data export rather than a rebuild. Keep it in a spreadsheet named final version two and it will not survive the move.
Questions people ask before they choose
Can WordRate handle a job I subcontract to another translator?
You can quote it, price it and track the delivery deadline as normal. What WordRate does not do is manage the vendor side, meaning purchase orders and what you owe the linguist. If that side of the work is regular for you, a project system such as Protemos is designed for it.
We are two translators who occasionally hire a reviewer. Which one?
That pattern usually fits WordRate. Two people who both translate and quote need speed and a shared rate card more than they need a vendor ledger. Revisit the question when outsourced work becomes a steady share of revenue rather than an occasional overflow.
Do these two overlap at all?
They overlap on quoting and client records, which both have to do. They diverge on scope. Protemos is a business management system for translation companies that assumes work flows out to vendors, while WordRate is a focused quoting and rate card tool for people who do the translating themselves.
Other comparisons on wordrateapp.com
Comparison
WordRate vs Plunet BusinessManager
Plunet BusinessManager is enterprise translation management for agencies with dedicated project managers, while WordRate is for the small shop that quotes in the morning and translates in the afternoon.
See this head to head on a real file
Two columns of criteria read cleanly until your own fuzzy grid, minimum fee and rush tier get involved. Send us a quote you wrote last month and we will rebuild it live, glossary attached to the same client record, so you can judge the difference rather than infer it. If the other product suits your work better, we would rather tell you now.