Users of the project and service include Mozilla, PBS, Khan Academy, Netflix, Twitter, Coursera, Udacity,[2] and Google.

In January 2020, Amara announced that the platform would become proprietary and closed source, citing that it wanted to have more control over how it is deployed and used, and protect its work from being used by for-profit companies in means that are "inconsistent with its values".

[6][7] Mozilla and the Knight Foundation invested a total of 1 million dollars into the project in 2011, citing support of global translations and the open web.

The name was chosen for several unspecified associations, but the announcement mentions the Spanish verb amar (to love) and that the word in Sanskrit means eternal.

[22] It received the ninth Intercultural Innovation Award, a combined effort from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the BMW Group, in 2011 for "bridging the gap" between languages.