Is Grammarly Really Worth It?

Grammarly

Is Grammarly Really Worth It?

Is Grammarly Really Worth It?

In this digital world, your writing is your way to express and impress. You can reach out to people and deliver your ideas across the globe with just the power of your writing. It is imperative that what you write is easy to digest for your readers and, at the same time, error-free in order to have a great impression on your readers.

Grammarly is an online proofreading and grammar checking tool that can save you from embarrassing grammatical errors as well as typos. But is Grammarly really worth paying for? Is it really accurate in resolving your grammatical errors? In this article, In this Grammarly Review, I will be giving you a detailed overview of everything you should be knowing about Grammarly.

So let us get started with the Grammarly Review.

A Brief Idea Of What Grammarly Is.

Grammarly is an online tool for checking grammatical errors in your written content. Not only that, but it can also check the spellings and plagiarism. Overall it is a tool that will proofread all that you have written and improve it with its plethora of features. You can use the Grammarly software as both a desktop app as well as a browser extension. Grammarly can be pretty beneficial if you are an author, blog writer, student, or even content writer. With Grammarly, you can learn and understand many of the troublesome grammar rules. This tool will thus be helpful in catching plagiarism issues, grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation problems.

It will not just point out your mistakes but will also provide you with an in-depth explanation of the grammatical errors you made. This way, you can become better at writing when you use it. It is available in both paid as well as the free version. 

What Exactly Does Grammarly Do?

Grammarly helps you by checking for errors in your write-ups. These errors could be:

  1. Grammatical And Punctuation-Based: From basic to advanced level, it can detect both punctuations as well as grammatical mistakes. You also get a guideline on how you can be correcting these mistakes. 
  2. Spell Check: This tool will help you in mistake-free writing. 
  3. Plagiarism: By comparing all that you have written to more than a billion web pages on the web, Grammarly helps you in detecting plagiarism. 
  4. Writing Style: You will also learn about self-editing your work as it provides real-time insights regarding your readability, length of your sentences, so on and so forth. This proves out to be pretty helpful in adapting the genre-specific writing style for specific audiences. 

In the next section of the Grammarly Review you will learn if this tool is great for you. 

Grammarly Is Great For You If

  1. You do not use English in your writing quite often.
  2. Bloggers.
  3. Authors.
  4. Copywriters And Content Marketers.
  5. Academics
  6. Students
  7. Business professionals

Grammarly acts as the defence line for both new as well as professional writers even though you are a native English speaker. You can set your languages to Australian, American, British And Candian English and a lot more. With Grammarly, you can make sure that an article, blog post, or book is easy to read and accurate too. Premium versions work wondrously for all those students who want to get a lot of their work checked.

Next up in this Grammarly Review, I will talk about how grammarly works. 

How Does Grammarly Work?

With the Grammarly Desktop Dashboard, you can adjust and make Grammarly adapt your style, may it be informal or formal. Simply open a new document and set your goals for writing. 

With the Grammarly Goal features, you can set goals on the basis of intent (tell a story, convince, describe or inform), the audience (expert, knowledgeable or general), formality (neutral, informal or formal), domain (academic, business, general, email, casual, creative) and tone ( neutral, confident, joyful, optimistic, friendly, urgent, analytical, respectful).

Keep reading this Grammarly Review ahead to know the usage of this tool.

Tool Usage

There are numerous ways in which you can be using the Grammarly software in order to review the work. There is no need to know any technical know-how for this as well. These are the ways you can be using the tools.

Option 1

You can copy-paste your article, extracts of what you have written, or a book into Grammarly for spell check, grammar check, or proofreading.

Option 2

You can also hit the ‘Import’ tab and upload a Microsoft Word document to Grammarly. 

Option 3

You can use it as your primary app, as you can write directly in the tool. When you start typing, Grammarly will begin pointing errors. When you click the “Correct with Assistant” tab, you will start seeing errors.

Option 4

If you are a windows user, then you can install the Grammarly plugin on Microsoft Word, and that will help you in detecting errors while you write. The plugin is not available for Word in Macbook. 

Grammarly Suggestions

As you incorporate the text, this tool will begin underlying your mistakes. Even in the free version, you will come across detailed suggestions of the errors you made in structuring sentences. This will work wonders, especially if you are a non-native English writer and want to improve your grasp on grammar rules of the English language. But in my opinion, you should still put into use your judgment before you decide what to fix or leave.

You get insights about the content like the estimate of reading time, structure analysis of a sentence, readability score, spelling checker, wordiness, punctuation, and grammar. It also analyzes Flesch reading ease of your content and estimates the level of education required by a person in order to read what you have written with ease.

The Plagiarism Detector

It is included with your Grammarly account and is useful if you are someone who writes academic content or reviews the peer work. It is very useful for content marketers and bloggers as it lets them check if the content is original. The feature is also great as it can help college students concerned about plagiarism.

Next section of this Grammarly Review talks about the ease of use. 

Is It Easy To Use Grammarly?

It is pretty simple to install Grammarly and use it as a tool that checks your grammar and spelling in real-time because of its Windows and Mac app. You also can use it as a web extension and also mobile ones. There are not many technicalities, and all it takes is a few minutes to check the article. You can also use Grammarly Keyboard, which can check what you write so you can easily create a text free of mistakes, and it is completely free. 

Grammarly Pricing

Monthly Subscription: $29.95 per month.

Quarterly Subscription: $19.98 per month and a one-time payment of $59.95.

Annual Subscription: $11.66 per month and a one-time payment of $139.95.

You can always try it for free if you want to test it first.

Free Vs. Business Vs. Premium

Apart from the plagiarism detector, suggestions on vocabulary enhancement, and advanced grammar check in the free version, you will get mostly all the features. So if you are someone with a minimal budget, then a free version will be ideal for you.

With premium, you get the detailed information regarding all your grammar mistakes. You also get additional insights and can also set writing goals. As compared to the free version, you can fix a lot more errors. But as I mentioned earlier, if you are someone on a budget, you can always use the free version of Grammarly. 

Now, Grammarly also introduced the business version in which they have included features like monitoring tools, priority email support, and user management control for better security and privacy. It costs $15 for each member.

Accuracy Of Grammarly

You will come across all the errors in your texts like errors in a preposition, overused passive voice, repetition of words, wordy sentences, spelling errors—grammar mistakes, and other rules that might be overlooked. 

Can A Human Proofreader Be Replaced By Grammarly?

In my opinion, the answer is No. Grammarly at times overlook numerous mistakes in fiction and creative writing. And you also cannot give feedback or context like a human proofreader. From the Grammarly dashboard, you can send you content to a human proofreader, which costs you $0.02 per word. If English is your native language, then Grammarly is very helpful as it will teach you finer points. But even if it is not your first language or you don’t write too often even then, it is excellent as it can work as an aid to learn Grammar if not a teacher. 

The top 2 Reasons which makes Grammarly great are

  1. You do not have to be a techno-wizard as it is not complicated and works with a very simple user interface. Within a few simple clicks, your job is done. 
  2. It will teach you all that you should know, along with pointing out your errors. Thus those micro lessons will help you in bringing about an improvement in your grammar and vocab. 

In the upcoming section of this Grammarly Review I will be comparing Grammarly to other competitors providing similar services. 

Grammarly Versus Others

Though Grammarly is not the only grammar checking tool, it boasts a base of 10 million subscribers. There are many other checkers with almost similar features like Ginger, WhiteSmoke, and ProWritingAid. Even they have punctuation, spelling, and grammar checks. In this section of the Grammarly Review, I will be comparing Grammarly to its other competitors. For that, I will be comparing free versions of all these tools.

ProWritingAid

Pros

  1. One of the best alternatives for Grammarly.
  2. From grammar errors and spell checks, it will also focus on improving your writing by checking the structure of your sentences, style issues, cliches, repeated phrases, repetitive words, or lack of variety. 
  3. You also get a detailed report of what you write as it focuses on the bigger picture of issues. It is very handy to use, especially for long content pieces like essays or books. 
  4. They also have an incredible focus on a style. 
  5. The value for money is incredible. The Premium version is for $60 per year. Premium plus, which comes with a plagiarism checker, is for $70 per year. At the same time, Grammarly costs more at $139.95 per year.

Cons

  1. It loses its simplicity in its comprehensiveness. 
  2. It is not as user-friendly or advanced as Grammarly as it is purely a grammar and spelling checker.
  3. It offers massive information about the style of writing, and unfortunately, most of it is unnecessary.  
  4. It is not very seamless to use as you only get the Chrome browser extension.

Ginger

Pros

  1. It has certain features that are extra as compared to Grammarly. For example, the translator option that will enable you to translate your text into 60 languages. It is excellent for those who need to write in more than just the English language.
  2. You also get a personal dictionary. This is very useful in case you do not want a certain word to be identified as an error or if you use some unusual character name or a jargon.
  3. The yearly subscription costs $89.88 as compared to Grammarly’s subscription costing $139.95.

Cons

  1. Though there are a lot of similarities in the functionality of Grammarly, it isn’t very easy in usage, and the interface is a bit ugly.
  2. The errors are not shown immediately. You need to hover over the mistakes, which will slow down the proofreading to some extent. 
  3. Does not integrate with MS Word, nor does it offer a Mac Desktop app. 

WhiteSmoke

Pros

  1. It integrates with all significant platforms like macOS, Windows, and for all other major browsers and an extension (Opera, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome).
  2. It also helps you in composing professional documents and provides important templates to write certain projects like Sorry Notes, Condolences, and Thank You notes. 
  3. The cost of a yearly subscription is $79.99, as compared to Grammarly costing $139.95.

Cons

  1. It is not as great and advanced as Ginger, ProWritingAid, and Grammarly when it comes to speed and user interface. You may find it very clunky in usage.

In this final section of my Grammarly Review, I will talk about why grammarly is still the best choice. 

What Makes Grammarly the Best?

These grammar checkers are definitely a great competition to Grammarly.

ProWritingAid, WhiteSmoke, and Ginger are incredible punctuation, spelling, and grammar checkers and possess some features which Grammarly does not. It provides comprehensive feedback on the writing style. Ginger, on the other hand, has a language translator, whereas WhiteSmoke provides professional templates that help in drafting professional documents. Most importantly, they are cheaper as well when compared to Grammarly. 

But despite all these reasons, I still find Grammarly to be the best. The foremost reason is that it is very intuitive and easy in usage. All the other three options are clunky in comparison. Grammarly, on the other hand, is a very functional, streamlined, and elegant tool. The desktop app of Grammarly looks incredible, with a highly functional layout and icons that are very minimalist. It is very easy to see mistakes as well as the reasons for those mistakes, and you can simply apply or discard the suggestion with one simple click. It is very easy to install Grammarly, and the best part is it can also work very seamlessly in the background. All in all, it is way more beautiful and easy to use when compared to its other competitors simply because the company is huge with massive resources. 

Pros

Grammarly provides really accurate and quick spelling as well as grammar checks and boasts incredible interface across various platforms. It is a premium tool for writing styles, and even the mobile keyboard of Grammarly, which is totally free, is very astounding. 

Cons

Just like every other thing, in my opinion, Grammarly too has a couple of shortcomings. With Grammarly, you cannot edit in the offline mode. Plus, it is very expensive as compared to other competitors. 

Bottom Line

All in all, the bottom line of this Grammarly Review is that it is affordable, and a very useful writing tool that belongs to your toolbox. It will be of great help for you in finding and fixing all your grammatical errors. 

 FAQ’s

Q.1. Is Grammarly worth it?

A: Grammarly is a really worthy deal if you are a blogger, writer, or any author who always takes his work seriously. It helps in finding and fixing errors in your text really fast.

Q.2. Is it safe to use Grammarly?

A: Grammarly uses online servers to find and fix errors in your text. Hence, you cannot guarantee full security. However, Grammarly is as safe as sending emails using Gmail.

For very sensitive and highly classified documents, it is prescribed not to use Grammarly.

Q.3. Is it possible to integrate Grammarly in different document writing apps like Microsoft Word? 

A: Grammarly has added support for various major writing applications and continues to add more and more every day. Hence you can use Grammarly with other applications. For example, you can use Grammarly integration directly in your Microsoft Office application.

Though, it is still unavailable for some applications.

Q.4. Can Grammarly be used in order to check plagiarism?

A: Yes, you can easily use Grammarly for the purpose of plagiarism check. It will tell you which line is similar to what website on the web.

Q.5. Can Grammarly be used on Mac?

A: Absolutely yes, Grammarly can be used on any device capable of accessing the Internet and a browser. It is completely platform independent.

Q.6. How exactly does Grammarly Premium work?

A: Grammarly Premium contains all the features Grammarly has to offer. It can check the tone of the document, the nature, and the style of writing.

Q.7. How does Grammarly compare with other proofreading software?

A: There are various other software like Grammarly; however, I still feel that Grammarly is the best of them all.

Q.8. Does it provide a cancellation policy?

A: You can avail of the cancellation policy if you don’t like the premium version of Grammarly. However, it is only valid for a period of 10 days.

Q.9. Can I use Grammarly for free?

A: Grammarly has a free version which is lacking some of the features found in the premium version. However, you can still use the free version for a lifetime.

Q.10. Is Grammarly reliable?

A: Grammarly is very reliable and works perfectly for any kind of document. However, for a book or a very important document, I would suggest you to hire a human proofreader.

Q.11. Can I use Grammarly on my phone?

A: You can use Grammarly on your smartphone on both the iOS and Android platforms.


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