FAQ

If we get asked or emailed about something more than twice, we try to add it to the FAQ here!
(If you think something should be here and isn’t, please let us know.) Latest update: 22 May, 2023

Why would I use Blackbird?

Connecting to endless content repositories and creating highly automated, advanced workflows remain two big challenges for professionals in the localization industry. It's still a headache. Blackbird eliminates the need to commit engineering capacity to create APIs, integrations or custom, automated workflows. Software engineers and localization leaders can have more time to focus on performing the high-value tasks that they were primarily hired to do.

On a technical level, Blackbird offers a modern iPaaS (integration-Platform-as-a-Service) architecture to get integration and automation done. Blackbird allows businesses to integrate a broad variety of cloud and on-premise applications to facilitate hybrid data flows, synchronize data, improve operational workflows, and gain better visibility.

Ultimately, Blackbird can help your business adapt an agnostic - and headless - framework for connectivity.

Want to see it in a demo? Book one now! You are also invited to review our technical documentation.

What applications do you support?

Live (Available Now): Airtable, Asana, Box.com, ClickUp, Contentful, DeepL, Dropbox, Figma, Github, Google Analytics, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Translate, HubSpot CMS, HubSpot CRM, JIRA, Lokalise, Modelfront, ModernMT, memoQ, MyAcclaro, OpenAI, Phrase TMS (Memsource), Plunet, SFTP, TAUS Estimate, Trados Enterprise, Translate5, Trello, Slack, XTRF, Zendesk, Wordpress.

All our Public Apps are open-sourced, published on GitHub.

In Development (Coming Soon): Adobe Experience Manager, RWS Language Weaver, Marketo Engage, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, Supertext API, XTM, QuickBooks Online.

Under Planning: ActiveCampaign, Eloqua, Cohere.ai, Transifex, FlowFit, Monday.com, Teams, OneDrive, YouTube, Zoom, Vimeo, CaptionHub, SYSTRAN, Amazon MT, Typeform, Mailchimp, Sitecore, Intercom, Magento, Shopify, ZoHo, Zoom. See full list here >>

What if an application I need is not on your list?

You can request any application from us, and if there is a solid business case, we have a team that can build it (very) quickly. Some in just a few hours! More consequently, Blackbird offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) for building any connector - see our developer tools here.

I already have access to many plugins I need to use. How is Blackbird relevant for me?

Your plugins and Blackbird can co-exist and complement each other. You could think of it is a multi-tiered connector strategy where Blackbird could become a key new tier. Some of the advantages of using Blackbird’s technology:

#1 Blackbird connectors are highly usable, consistent, maintainable, and upgradable. You can extend and customize our Public Apps in flexible ways. You can start with one of our Public Apps and make it into your customized Private App. Our SDK is open-sourced and available on NuGet.
#2 Multipoint connectivity: you can connect any number of applications into any kind of orchestrated workflow.
#3 Beyond linear workflows: you can add non-linear steps like loops, branches, delays, and other advanced conditions.
#4 We may have connectors that your favorite loctech vendor don’t offer. E.g., memoQ doesn’t connect with HubSpot. Lokalise doesn’t connect with Plunet. Blackbird already enables these integrations!
#5 We don’t just connect CMSs to TMSs but really anything to anything. You can use Blackbird for process orchestration of internal operations, and not just exclusively for localization related tasks. You can use it to orchestrate tasks around marketing, sales, finance, support or HR. You can also use it to leverage emerging technologies like LLM and NLP apps.
#6 Sometimes, there are valid reasons to adapt an agnostic model, which Blackbird iPaaS offers. This can often mean not just winning independence and control, but cost savings too. Your business can get rid of a complex spaghetti architecture that is hard to maintain and change.

Beyond connectors, what is the product roadmap?

At GALA Annual Conference 2023 in Dublin we launched Blackbird as a commercial product. New features are released continuously. We are especially excited about the following functionalities coming in early Q2 2023: Workspaces (update: ✅); Bucketing Triggers - batching; Custom Sub-Domains. We are also working towards our vision of a fully embeddable product.

We continue focusing heavily on the support of NMT, and new technologies like MTQE and risk prediction (e.g. TAUS Estimate or Modelfront), large language model APIs (e.g. OpenAI, HuggingFace Inference) and NLP technologies (e.g., Cohere.ai, Amazon Comprehend).

Our visual workflow orchestrator/editor is called the Bird Editor — here, our focus is to ensure that anything that a programmer could achieve using code becomes possible, but with #nocode. We are nearly there already!

Is Blackbird secure?

Blackbird is a secure, cloud application running on Azure multi-tenant environment. Each Blackbird tenant runs under a separate account. Permissions limit access to customer’s own data. We enforce a strong password policy. We offer SSO and multi-factor authentication. Most important, we are SOC 2, ISO27001 and GDRP ready. You can read more about our security and compliance posture here.

How much does Blackbird cost and what is the pricing model?

Blackbird is available in a transparent and simple subscription (software-as-a-service) model. The pricing reflects our goal to offer significant ROI to our customers: a monthly Starter subscription starts at $249, Growth Plans are available from $879. We also offer Enterprise Plans.

Pricing is based on active workflows (Birds) published. As number of Birds increase, unit cost of Birds decrease. We don't put any cap on operations (Flights), number of steps in a workflow, data passing through, or connectors used.

Do you offer professional services?

We do! We have an amazing team of Solution Architects and Software Engineers who can help our customers in designing, building, implementing complex solutions. We also offer custom training and premium support.

Can I become a Reseller or a Solutions Partner for Blackbird?

We are very open to enabling partners to become independent Blackbird consultants or even resellers. We are ready and open to discuss ideas, including value-added reseller frameworks with revenue sharing. Reach out to exchange ideas!

Where are you located?

We are headquartered in the USA, but have been functioning as a fully global, remote team from the beginning. We have key people who can work with customers and partners in the USA, in Canada, in the Netherlands and in Hungary. We also have engineers in Ukraine and Bulgaria. We cover a lot of time zones and plan to add more soon. See our job openings!