Netwrix: Removing Language Barriers Across a Global Product Community

Netwrix builds data and identity security products, and through acquisition ended up with several products that came with large, established user bases in their original countries. Those users were used to talking about the products in their own languages.

Before February 2025, those conversations were scattered across Reddit, Stack Overflow, and a handful of third-party forums. None of it was owned, and none of it was searchable in one place; in some product areas, most of the discussion happened in languages other than English.

For Community Manager Derek Putnam, moving to Discourse was a game changer:

"We launched our community a little over a year ago to help bridge the gap between our users and the teams behind the products. Our community exists to broadcast product news, answer questions, provide additional guides beyond the scope of documentation, and gather feature requests."

— Derek Putnam, Senior Community Manager at Netwrix

A year in, the community holds 8,262 logged-in users, with 1,531 monthly active, 713 weekly active, and 198 daily active. The user base is genuinely global: English speakers are the largest group at 3,838, but German (730), French (462), English UK (412), Italian (162), Spanish, and Korean all show up in meaningful numbers.

The cost of being English-default

The community ran in a mix of English, "broken" English, and conversations in other languages. Product teams who'd arrived through acquisitions usually spoke the same language as their users, so from the inside, things felt manageable; but it masked a real problem.

New hires joining those product teams didn't necessarily speak the dominant user language - and anyone outside a regional language silo, whether internal staff or a new English-speaking user, was effectively locked out of the conversation.

"Discourse's original translation tools were available before we launched our current AI-powered version; but the catch was that users had to know the feature existed and remember to trigger it themselves."

Why turn on multilingual support

Putnam was looking for tools to grow activity in a still-young community; and Discourse's multilingual support fit the bill.

"To be honest, translations were not on my mind until I saw that Discourse could do it automatically. Since the product teams also spoke the same language as their users, I felt things were under control. But it definitely creates barriers to others engaging."

The decision didn't need a hard sell.

"The business has a lot of trust in my judgment, so I was able to make this call on my own. I considered this a clear choice with high benefits and low risk."

Putnam tracks Discourse Meta daily and tries new features as they ship. The multilingual rollout was a natural next step.

Picking the initial languages was straightforward. Putnam looked at the dominant languages already used in topics, then cross-referenced that against the languages users had proactively set their interfaces to; the data made the decision easy.

Putnam treated the multilingual rollout as a communication problem more than a technical one. He published a community-wide announcement the moment the feature went live, briefed every internal customer-facing team so they could tell their users directly, and updated onboarding material to walk new members through setting their interface language.

"I didn't feel that this required any changes, which was great. Once it was enabled correctly, it was pretty hands-off."

What changed

Of users who have posted, 76% are English speakers and 24% post in other languages. English speakers produce 86% of total posts (2,168) and non-English users 14% (340).

Across 6,507 English (or unset) users, 486 are actively engaged, an engagement rate of 7.5%; but across 1,755 non-English users, 153 are actively engaged, an engagement rate of 8.7%, with non-English speakers engaging at a higher level.

The data flips the easy assumption: non-English speakers want to engage, they were just blocked from doing it in their own language.

Among users who'd previously posted in English before AI translation went live, 8.2% (64 users) moved to posting in their preferred language afterwards. They were using English because they had to, not because they wanted to.

"I'll admit I wasn't aware of this exact conversion rate prior to this exercise, but I have noticed an uptick in translated posts. It's great that we were able to remove this communication hurdle for some users."

Internal teams started posting more, too

Once Putnam's internal colleagues understood translation worked automatically, they started posting more freely. Product announcements, surveys, guides, all of it.

"This has given our internal teams more reason to post things in the community, because we can leverage the ability to translate information."

PDF guides became something to convert to markdown, because markdown is translatable and searchable. The onboarding flow now explicitly nudges new members to set their interface language, because that one setting determines whether they get an intuitive experience or fight the platform.

What this unlocks

"Multilingual support makes our products globally approachable."

An English-speaking engineer onboarding to a product with a predominantly German user base can read what those users have said; and a French speaker browsing a thread that started in English can follow along without leaving the page.

"Since much of the discussion about those few international products is currently not in English, it may discourage new English-only users from engaging. Not anymore."

What's next

For now, Putnam isn't pushing for more languages. The languages already enabled cover over 99% of the userbase.

"Our immediate needs are met. I have been very satisfied with the direction Discourse is heading, so I'll absolutely implement any enhancements they add along the way."

His advice to other community managers sitting where he was a year ago is uncomplicated.

"I can't encourage this enough. It removes many barriers for the users in my community. Even if they're not actively participating, they're still benefiting from a translated conversation and UI."