If you’re a writer on a budget and looking for a professional grammar checker and proofreading tool, you’ve probably heard of Grammarly. Is Grammarly the best grammar checker? Is Grammarly Worth it? Check out this unbiased comprehensive Grammarly review to learn more.
Grammarly Review: Pros, Cons, and Best Features
If you can’t find the perfect words to express yourself, let Grammarly do it for you. From style to grammar to spelling and tone, Grammarly is truly a one-stop shop for flawless writing. This service provides handy suggestions for improving the composition of emails, documents, projects and social media posts on all the platforms you already use as you write.
[wp-review id=”11508″]Who is Grammarly for:
This software works best for a few different groups. Bloggers, professional content writers and academics will benefit the most from Grammarly as it makes writing more professional and engaging.
Also, Grammarly is a perfect solution for those who new to WordPress.
They will find Grammarly’s browser extension useful in scanning WordPress sites and posts to clean up content.
What is Grammarly?
Grammarly is an app and web-based writing improvement tool currently used by 20 million people who want to produce engaging, clear and concise written content. Grammarly checks your work for spelling, grammar, tone, style and plagiarized content in real time as you type on a variety of platforms including Facebook, Word, WordPress and more.
Grammarly Features
Beyond features such as grammar and spellcheck, improved vocabulary suggestions, writing-style corrections based on genre and a thorough plagiarism checker, Grammarly now includes a great new component that runs through text to detect its Flesch readability score. By estimating the level of education, a person needs to read the content easily, content creators can tweak their writing depending on the target audience.
Features of Grammarly Premium such as sentence structure analyzer and plagiarism checker come in handy too.
Grammar Checker
In both the free and Premium versions, Grammarly checks your writing for grammar mistakes and typos as you type to let you create mistake-free, compelling writing. The best thing about this app is how easy it is to use on our favorite platforms such as Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Outlook and more. In contrast, built-in grammar checkers for Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Office 365 are less efficient.
Grammarly also contains a handy error count tool at the bottom of every document. This helps you gauge how far into your editing process you are and when you can expect to finish.
Plagiarism Checker
While everyone wants to be a skilled writer, no one wants their work to sound exactly like someone else’s. For those writing academic pieces especially, users may inadvertently copy and paste chunks of text from online sources and forget to change the language afterwards.
Grammarly works to avoid this by comparing your work to text on 16 billion pages across the web. The plagiarism detector, however, is one of the features available with Grammarly Premium only, not the free version.
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Grammarly for MS Office
Grammarly has an add-in just for Microsoft Office (this will set you back only $6.99), but it’ll only work for Windows users. In both Word and Outlook, you can choose between the types of errors you want to see in your writing, such as style, grammar and spelling.
If you look at the Office Ribbon menu in Word and Outlook, you’ll find it as a menu item. If you’re on a Mac, however, you’ll have to use the online version.
The Grammarly Keyboard
If you’ve ever wanted to send typo-free text messages, social media posts and emails right from your phone, the Grammarly Keyboard does all that and more. You can install it right onto your mobile device and never have to deal with an embarrassing typo again. Both Android and iOS versions are available, and we really liked the clean minimalist look of both.
Users can go to Settings and further customize its appearance by choosing a light or dark color theme, hidden or prominent key borders and number rows, and even toggle sound settings and keyboard placement on the screen.
Grammarly’s Apps
Both Windows and Mac users can install the native Grammarly app right onto their desktops, and we strongly recommend they do. Much like the Grammarly Keyboard, we like the look of this minimalist yet highly intuitive app, which lets you drag and drop the files you want proofread as well as compose your writing in the editor itself.
But it’s the features that really stand out, such as the ability to add words to the custom dictionary, the option to switch between different types of English e.g. American, British, Canada and Australian, and the ever-so-handy Goals and Performance feature. This last one is where you can specify what kind of writing style you’re going for, what your intent is and who you’re trying to reach.
The Grammarly app will then analyze your writing with your specific goals in mind to tell you how you’re doing and how you can improve.
Grammarly for Business
Grammarly offers a subscription service for businesses at $15 a month. Marketing, sales and support teams will benefit the most from this, as it allows them to create engaging yet polite and professional-sounding communications for a variety of audiences and situations.
The pluses of this service are easy integration with MS Office, Google Docs, web browsers and email clients, along with privacy and security features keeping organizational data safe.
How to use Grammarly?
Ease of use is one of the best things about Grammarly. There’s a wide variety of options available to suit almost every user:
Method 1: With Ms Word
Using Microsoft Word? Click ‘Import” and upload the document into Grammarly and let it check for errors.
Method 2: Paste into Grammarly Editor
Use copy and paste to input text into Grammarly. This could be only certain passages you want to have checked or the entire book. You decide.
Method 3: Grammarly Editor
Forget the other apps and compose your work directly in Grammarly. The software checks your work in real time and automatically starts alerting you to errors.
Method 4: Grammarly Plugin
As mentioned before, there’s a Grammarly plugin on Microsoft Word for MS Office users. This plugin also work on MacBooks.
How Much Does Grammarly Cost?
So, how much does Grammarly cost? The free version of Grammarly is just that and may work well for some people’s needs.
For those looking for access to Premium features, there are three plans and pricing options. You get monthly access with no commitment for $29.95. This means you can go month to month and cancel when you don’t need it anymore.
If you sign up for the quarterly plan, you’ll get a slightly better rate of $19.98 per month for three months. This is billed as one payment of $59.95.
The most economical choice is the annual plan, billed as $139.95, which works out to $11.66 a month. Having said that, Grammarly frequently offers discounts to users of the Free software, so it’s a good idea to wait for a deal.
Free Version
A web browser extension can be downloaded at no charge, and while it’s limited in features, some people don’t need more than what it offers. With the free version of Grammarly, you get critical grammar and spelling checks as well as a conciseness checker.
Grammarly Premium Version
The Premium version gets you all sorts of extras, such as the option to have a human proofreader look over your work, writing-style checks specific to genre, the aforementioned plagiarism checker, and the ability to introduce a wider vocabulary into your writing.
There is also a new and nifty consistency checker in the Grammarly desktop app for Premium users. This feature scans your document for style issues such as different date and time formats, inconsistent capitalizations and acronyms.
Overall, Grammarly premium provides a much more enhanced experience, including helpful emails with insights about your writing habits, top mistakes and overused words among other things.
Best Grammarly Alternatives
At this point, you’re probably wondering what services are out there to compare Grammarly to.
The best Grammarly alternatives we found were ProWritingAid and HemingWay Editor, and here’s why.
Paraphraser.io
Paraphraser.io is an online suite consisting different tools for content optimization, SEO, and website management. It also has a grammar and plagiarism-checking tool: which makes it an excellent alternative to Grammarly.
Both registered and unregistered users can access Paraphraser. While Grammarly users need to have a registered account in order to use it, this limitation doesn’t exist for Prepostseo users. Compared to Grammarly, the paid plans offered by Paraphraser are very affordable, and annual plans start at just $150/year.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid, like Grammarly, has a free and a paid version. It’s also a downloadable web browser extension that you can use as you type in common platforms such as Gmail, WordPress and various social media channels.
Incorporation with Microsoft Office and Google Docs is a breeze, and ProWritingAid also offers the option to switch between types of writing and types of English. The service also works without an installation, and the Premium version comes with a relatively cheaper price tag than Grammarly at $60 per year or $210 for a lifetime subscription.
HemingWay
If you’re looking to get something for free, HemingWay is the best bang for zero bucks. While you can download the desktop version for $19.99, you can also use the online version with the same features without paying.
HemingWay primarily improves language and readability of your work, while picking out passive voice and suggesting simpler word alternatives. A good positive of using HemingWay is the ability to add hyperlinks, headings and differentiating texts with ease. This is not, however, a tool that picks up grammar errors very well.
Is Grammarly Worth it? My Verdict
A wide selection of Grammarly pros deserve a mention. During testing, it was the clear winner when it came to actually identify spelling mistakes, passive voice and grammatical errors. A small percentage of the time, the software suggested a comma where it wasn’t necessary, but overall its suggestions were helpful and made writing cleaner.
Grammarly Pros
If an error was caught that we didn’t understand, the software provided a short explanation. The service also made it easy to ignore suggestions we didn’t want to accept, and even allowed us to add our own words into the dictionary. This last feature was especially useful for slang, brand names or acronyms.
We find Grammarly makes doing work faster because it automatically offers suggestions in real time. Easy to understand suggestions appear as you use the mobile app or type in your web browser (Chrome, Safari and Firefox) and on everyday platforms such as Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Facebook, Twitter and more.
Suggestions aren’t intrusive like other apps we tried, and the errors are marked with simple red underlining. Grammarly’s mobile keyboard is great for on-the-go writing improvement too.
For those using Microsoft Word, this is the clear choice. You may think Word’s built in grammar and spellchecker is good, but Grammarly takes it to the next level by catching more mistakes, more syntax errors and offering suggestions to improve vocabulary.
Integration with Word is instant and easy, and we didn’t find it to be buggy at all. Best of all, there’s a 24/7 support team who’ll answer your question if you run into an issue.
Grammarly Cons
Are you wondering what Grammarly cons are?
Advertising for the Premium version can be slightly aggressive once you start using Free Grammarly, and the cost of upgrading from Free to Premium can be prohibitive for some. Additionally, you need to be connected to the Internet for the service to work.
Conclusion:
Overall, even with the slightly steep price tag, Grammarly is impressive in how thoroughly it checks your writing. The features are a cut above Microsoft Word’s, and not only help you clean up grammar and tenses but also suggest replacing overused words with less ubiquitous language.
The plagiarism checker is a handy tool, as is the ability to adhere to a user-set performance goal. It now also supports Google Docs, via the Chrome web browser, and Medium, which will increase usability for some.
Our verdict? Go ahead and splurge on finding the perfect words to express yourself (with a little help from Grammarly).
