What are the biggest challenges when building a truly global product?
Hey Product Hunt community! 👋
I’m currently working on a product designed for users around the world, and as exciting as it sounds, building something truly global comes with a lot of unexpected challenges.
Here are a few that I’ve encountered so far:
1.Localization — Translating text is just the beginning. Cultural context, tone, and even color choices can affect how users perceive your product.
2.AI prefers English — One specific issue I’ve noticed: even when users interact in their native language, the AI often replies in English—especially for code-related prompts. Balancing model behavior to respect user language while maintaining technical clarity is a tough challenge.
3.Time zones & scheduling — Coordinating actions (like notifications, support, or real-time interactions) across time zones is trickier than it seems.
4.Language limitations — Supporting multiple languages often means dealing with UI constraints, font rendering, and even right-to-left layouts.
5.Legal and compliance differences — Privacy laws, payment regulations, and data hosting rules vary greatly between countries.
I’m curious to hear from others building global or multilingual AI products:
How do you handle language fallback or preference issues with AI?
What’s been your biggest unexpected challenge?
And to non-English native speakers out there:
What’s your biggest frustration when using "global" tools that are clearly built with English-first assumptions?
Would love to hear your thoughts and real-world experiences! 🙌
Replies
Recently, we launched our Korean service globally. In Korea, teenage girls were the primary users, but in the global market, the user demographic has shifted to those in their twenties and older.
With this change in our main customer base, updating our marketing and content has been added to my to-do list. It's unfortunate that we can't share results yet, as it's been less than a month since the global launch, but I will share again once we have more data.
@imbud1980 Thanks so much for sharing. Definitely looking forward to your update when the data comes in!
minimalist phone: creating folders
In our case, it wasn't localisation in terms of language.
It was predominantly finding different paths and customising to people's mindset (it usually affected the pricing), and also differently crafted creative (you had to literally work with different concepts and tone of voice).
Totally agree — we've experienced something similar. Language is just one part of the puzzle; the real challenge is adapting to different mental models and expectations. Pricing perception especially varies a lot more than we expected.
Would love to hear how you approached creative localization — did you work with local teams or test different versions per region?
minimalist phone: creating folders
@yeedoong88 First, we started with the Localisation of United video versions – just switch the language and subtitles. But in some cases, we started ordering UGC from those specific countries to create videos with tailored scripts for specific markets.
@busmark_w_nika That’s such a smart progression. Love that you didn’t stop at translation but actually leaned into cultural relevance. 🙌
Haimeta
We believe the biggest challenge lies in localization. While our product supports multiple languages, apart from English and Chinese, all other languages rely on AI translations. To be honest, this doesn't look great, as AI-generated localization is far from perfect, and we currently lack the resources to proofread every language. We hope to address this issue in the future when we have more revenue.
Additionally, our product is designed for the web platform, and our UI has been developed with multi-language adaptability in mind, such as automatically adjusting container lengths to accommodate language switching.
@gin_6078 Thanks so much for sharing this — it really resonates with where we are too. AI translation can help get started, but yeah, it’s often far from the quality users expect. Totally get the resource constraint part — it’s tough to scale proper localization without serious budget.
Love that you’ve already considered UI adaptability for multilingual support — that’s a huge step many overlook. Rooting for your growth so you can invest more in native-quality content soon! 💪
I think localization is not only about translation, but also about the inequality of the global technological infrastructure. This can be found on the internet:
① Indian users often use apps with unstable internet connections and need strong offline capabilities.
② The African market is dominated by low- and mid-range Android devices, where memory optimization is critical.
③ Japanese and Korean users have a very low tolerance for page load times, about 40% lower than Western standards.
Regarding your mention of AI bias towards English. The solution may not only be technical, but require a fundamental rethinking of the design process:
① Consider fine-tuning with region-specific models rather than a single global model.
②Build multicultural development teams - I think this is much more effective than translating after the fact.
③ Adapt language switching in design - for example, consider separating code output from interpretation, allowing code to remain in English and interpretation to be in the local language.
Finally, have you considered adopting an “incremental globalization” strategy, first validating in culturally similar markets and then expanding outward?🤔
@partick_support
Wow — this is an insightful comment. Thank you for laying it out so clearly. 🙌
Totally agree that localization isn’t just about words — it’s also about respecting real-world constraints and cultural expectations. I hadn’t seen the stat about Japanese/Korean tolerance for load times before — that’s a huge insight.
Your point about rethinking the AI design process really hit home. Especially the idea of keeping code in English but localizing interpretation — that’s such a smart, balanced approach. We’ll definitely explore that.
Also, I love the idea of incremental globalization — we’ve been struggling with trying to serve “everyone” from day one. Targeting culturally similar markets first might actually give us the focus we need.
Would love to hear if you’ve seen any examples of companies doing this particularly well?
I'm only annoyed when I have to learn that a product isn't working with non-English input. I've encountered problems with the decimal point and thousands separators for numbers or text input only accepting US-ASCII letters even for things like names. All other things, I can tolerate.
As a maker, I concentrate on making the app work no matter what language etc. is used, while leaving the language in English. For a solo dev (or a small team) I think our time is best spent on features, focussing only on real obstacles for non-English users.
@stefanfis That’s a really grounded way to look at it — appreciate you sharing!
Totally agree that for small teams, focusing on functional access is more important than full language support upfront — it’s a good reminder to separate “nice to have” from “must have.”
I'm curious to know. Is there a particular reason why you are trying to go global right off the bat?
@dg_ Great question — thanks for asking!
Our product is AI-based and developer-focused, which naturally draws interest from users in different regions, even from the very beginning. So in some ways, we didn’t choose to go global — it kind of happened organically once we launched.
At the same time, we didn’t want to block access or create a poor experience just because someone isn’t from our “core market.” We’re very aware that we can’t make every user in every region happy from day one — but we’re trying to find the right balance between inclusivity and focus.
Right now, we’re still figuring things out — observing where interest comes from and learning what kind of support different regions might need. We’re a small team, so our goal is to grow thoughtfully without excluding valuable communities early on.
Would love to hear how others have approached this balance!
@yeedoong88 That makes sense. Probably the most important part is the focus of the team, and how your prioritise when conflicting requests come in...
Are there any tools or products worth recommending for solving globalization/localization challenges?
VMEG
Triforce Todos
Absolutely agree with you.
I am also working on a multilanguage tool, and yeah, it is kinda annoying when AI suddenly switches to english.
Legalities and time zones not really made sense to me at first either still getting used to
@abod_rehman Haha yes — the random English switch from AI is so real 😅
Glad I’m not the only one still wrapping my head around legal stuff and time zones too. It’s like a whole new dimension of product thinking.
Good luck with your multilingual tool — would love to hear how you're tackling the language switching issue!
SlashPage
I'm building a website & community builder called Slashpage, and I realized that users find it difficult to support multiple languages. I started offering multilingual support pretty early on.
@elly_sp
That’s awesome to hear — and great job on adding multilingual support early on!
Totally agree, many users want to support multiple languages on their pages or communities, but the tools often don’t make it easy.
Out of curiosity: how did you approach it on Slashpage? Built-in translations? Dynamic content per locale?
Maybe we should start a “localization-first” builder club 😂
SlashPage
@yeedoong88 Basically, the owner of the site sets which languages they want to support (select a language and it will be translated automatically), and if any of those languages are the same as the language setting of the visitor's browser, it will show the content in that language. Is this the right question to ask?
When launching a global product, do you think it's more effective to focus on a specific region first? Or is it better to go with an English-first launch to reach a wider audience?
@kay_arkain That’s such a great question — and honestly, we’ve gone back and forth on this ourselves.
Starting with an English-first launch does get you broader reach faster, especially in early discovery channels like Product Hunt, Reddit, or Hacker News. But we’ve found that unless the product is truly usable in other languages, it creates false hope or churn among non-English users.
Focusing on one region first (especially one close to your team's native culture) can help you really nail the UX, support, and local edge cases — which creates a strong foundation to scale from.
We're currently testing a sort of hybrid: launch globally in English, but invest early in 1–2 regions for proper support and localization.