Alex Shevchenko and Max Lyvyn created Grammarly and released it in 2009. It is a cloud-based writing enhancement platform. It is an app that automatically detects errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, mistakes in writing style, and plagiarism. So why are people still asking does Grammarly really work?
Grammarly is a product that can be a tremendous help to people who write for a living, for play or personal reasons. Even the most educated folks look to this writing tool to ensure their work is error free.
In 2013, Grammarly received the “Gold Award” from the Top Ten Reviews and held a rating of 8.88.
Who Can Benefit from the Product?
Grammarly can be an asset to anyone who writes; whether it’s for your writing, as a student, educator, entrepreneurs, professional, or a freelancer. In this age of technology, I can’t see even the most prolific writers not using some tool like Grammarly.
When I write, I don’t think about whether I am spelling a word correctly; have the right punctuation or even if my grammar is as it should be. Why?
It’s because I know that when I let Grammarly proof my document, it will find all of my writing errors no matter what they may be. All I have to do is then make the corrections!
This tool will be of great benefit to the beginner, who has recently gotten into writing or the most advanced writer who has pumped out ten best-selling novels. It’s for everyone!
Best Features of Grammarly
This app includes a variety of features whether you are using the free or Premium version that I will cover in this section. For that reason, this is one of the best benefits of using the app. I have segmented the features into categories to discuss what is right about this tool.
Spell Checker:
It’s a feature that most of us are familiar with if we use Microsoft Word. However, Microsoft Word’s spell checker doesn’t compete with Grammarly. Grammarly identified misspelled words. It also recognizes words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly.
Not only does it find errors, but it also provides suggestions for making corrections by including a brief explanation for its recommendations. The tool provides a short example of the correct grammar usage.
It works with a variety of browsers; Safari, Chrome, Edge, and
Grammar Checker:
In this area, the tool has a high rate of success, mainly when checking simple grammar structures.
As I mentioned before, I don’t think there is a document checker that is always 100 percent accurate, that includes Grammarly. I have come across situations where Grammarly marked something as incorrect (such as “incorrect use of the word”) and the word that it suggested made no sense in the context used.
That was no problem because this tool has an “ignore” function that will allow you to overrule Grammarly’s correction advice!
This tool allows you to choose between American English and British English as well as the writing genre you want.
It allows you to add words to your dictionary.
Plagiarism Checker:
Grammarly allows you to check to ensure your document is 100 percent original. This tool checks over 16 billion web pages. Grammarly has access to the ProQuest resource. ProQuest gives access to about 40 of their complete databases.
The databases have content of over 175 subjects. ProQuest is the broadest research resource in the world!
I had previously checked my written document, and there was no plagiarism found. I made some changes to the text and then ran it through Grammarly again to see if I had made any errors in the new material.
Grammarly found that the document was 100% plagiarized! Not to worry, the link to the copied site showed up as my website URL. I think it is probably impossible for any checker to find every single mistake 100% of the time. However, Grammarly is capable of being up to 95% accurate in its findings.
Upload one of your documents and try a free plagiarism check now!
Proofreading Tool:
The tool is an automated proofreader. It checks for spelling errors. It also reviews over 250 types of grammar and punctuation mistakes in the free version and over 400 in the Premium version.
Accuracy:
Grammarly does a terrific job finding spelling errors as do many other spell checkers. It also tells you how your vocabulary compares to other Grammarly users. What tips the scale is that this tool is also an excellent grammar checker.
Interface:
The Grammarly tool has a simple interface. All you have to do is turn Grammarly on, and it goes to work for you. You can also upload the document into Grammarly, and it automatically begins to show every type of error you have made in the text.
When using any app or software, people will always critique how user-friendly it is. No learning curve is needed because it is straightforward to use.
Grammarly is not an invasive application.
When typing in a text box, it will merely provide a red underline under the error.
In the Premium version, the tool opens up on the side of your document and Grammarly will proceed to proof the text and list all the errors found on its page beside the paper reviewed.
Reports:
In addition to Grammarly proofreading your documents for all types of writing mistakes, it will also send you weekly reports of your Grammarly usage.
The reports do a great job of letting you know the categories where you make your mistakes.
Also included in the weekly reports are articles and tips for writing improvement.
The reports provide the same type of information regardless if you are using the free or Premium versions.
It also tells you what features you have turned on. If you have the Premium version, you have access to all six features; browser extension, Mobile Keyboard, MS Office Add-in, and Premium checks (advanced).
For those that notice that the Mobile Keyboard is not turned on, it is because at the time I took the image I was working on my laptop, not my mobile device.
What’s Not to Like About Grammarly?
Let’s face it; nothing is perfect. Even though this tool has attempted to get to that point, it does have a few faults. Again, I have broken the “cons” into the featured categories.
Speed:
One thing I have noticed is that Grammarly can be a little slow at times, but I can’t say it’s enough to make me want to holla! However, its purpose is not about the speed of its review. Its goal is to assist writers in creating documents that are error-free.
The one place I did find Grammarly to be troublesome was when I was sending a private (direct) message. There was a tremendous slow-down with the appearance of the words on my screen.
There were periods of long lag time before the words show on my screen. It was so annoying that I have to turn Grammarly off until I finish writing the private message. I then turned it back on to catch any errors.
I noticed that sometimes when I made the suggested correction, there was a lag before Grammarly made the changes.
The Plagiarism is only available with the Premium version.
Grammar:
You can request your document to be proofread by a human for an additional price. You can pay either by “per-word” or a total amount for each job. You can see the price before you order no matter which payment method you choose.
This point could be a “Pro” if you are only using the free plan that will only give you a basic check and does not provide a “full” review check.
However, since Grammarly toots its horn about the Premium version and that it can find even more errors, using a human proofreader seems a bit redundant.
When you pay for human proofreading, the proofreaders will review and make corrections “ONLY on spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.”
When I have used the Premium version, Grammarly was able to find anywhere from more than 40 to over 60 additional errors that fell into those other areas that are checked such as incorrect word usage, words used too often within the document, passive voice errors.
I thought the Premium upgrade was a little pricey, but I think the cost of a human proofreader is crazy! Take a gander at one of the 2225- word articles of mine that I checked to see what it would cost for a human proofreader.
If you are using the free version, you are only using the essential Grammarly features, which are the browser extension, Native Desktop App, and the primary checker.
Once signed up, Grammarly immediately starts to push for you to upgrade to the Premium version. They seem to utilize the “Advanced Errors” as their method of persuasion to upgrade when you see a large number of errors still pending in your writing.
You must upgrade to Premium to fix all of the “advanced mistakes” within your writing.
This image shows the number of advanced mistakes I made in all the articles I ran through the tool for a week when I was using the free version. These are a lot of mistakes to try to figure out what and where they are in your writing! You can’t fix what you can’t see!
Terms of Service
Terms of Service (TOS) is an essential notice of any plagiarism and grammar checkers before you sign up with them. There is one little “not so good” thing that they probably want you to miss. I have yet to come across any of this kind of software or app that does not do this!
They can sell your content to others. I think it’s a kind of ironic that you use a plagiarism checker to ensure that your document is entirely original, but the folks who own the plagiarism software or app have the right to sell your material to third parties and make money from it!!
The information below is an excerpt included in Grammarly’s TOS, User Content section.
“By uploading or entering any User Content, you give Grammarly (and those it works with) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable and sub-licensable, perpetual, and irrevocable license to copy, store and use your User Content (and, if you are an Authorized User, your Enterprise Subscriber’s User Content) in connection with the provision of the Software and the Services and to improve the algorithms underlying the Software and the Services.”
Courtesy of Grammarly http://sheownsit.com/may-not-enjoy-grammar-worth-giving-away-content-legallysavvysbo/
Training/Tools Overview:
I wouldn’t say that Grammarly had any real training, but they do have a section called Tips and Tutorials that do have some information on how to use the product. They also have an FAQ page. There is no knowledge base.
There is a Grammarly Handbook provided where you can find answers to an issue involving grammar.
Support
All registered subscribers have access to 24-hour support from Grammarly’s official website by submitting a request ticket. They also have an FAQ page set up. If you don’t find an answer on the FAQ page, you will be prompted to submit a support ticket.
Support indicates they will respond to your ticket within 24 hours. I sent in a support ticket during business hours and got a response within 30 to 45 minutes.
The fact that I submitted a ticket during business hours in the early part of the day could have been a factor for the quick response. I can’t be sure.
Pricing
Grammarly has a free version and a Premium version. Most people will sign up for the free version first. Grammarly has three price rates.
When paying more than one month at a time (i.e., quarterly or annually), it bills as one payment. Grammarly doesn’t offer any life-long plans.
You can make payments in whatever your local currency is, and it will be converted to US dollars using the exchange rate that is current when you make the purchase.
For businesses, I would suggest that if you have many employees who will have access to Grammarly, it may be a good idea to contact customer support before purchasing to ensure you are getting the best deal possible.
Educational institutions must get a quote as there are usually thousands of potential users within those institutions. You have to submit an input form that includes the number of users you want to allow.
There are customized plans for educational institutions. Schools should sign up for a free trial at Grammarly@edu. Send any questions to Gregory Carpets at greg.carpets@grammarly.com.
Grammarly accepts these methods of payment:
Credit Cards
PayPal
Debit Cards except for MasterCard Maestro, Interac, and Visa Electron.
They won’t accept personal checks, money orders or phone payments.
I started with the free version, but not long after I did upgrade to Premium. Why? Grammarly always shows a little yellow button that shows you the number of “advanced” errors that are showing in your writing. In my case, it was still a relatively high number of advanced errors that I never gave a thought to when proofreading.
Because I have another stream of income writing for other individuals and businesses, it was worth the cost to me. That made me upgrade to the Premium version, which costs $29.95 per month. However, I opted to pay quarterly and was able to save $119.60 a year instead of the $359.04 it would cost me by paying only $29.95 on a monthly basis.
Membership Levels
There aren’t any membership levels, but there is a distinction as to whether you are a free user or a paid user. Refer to the information in the pricing section.
Live Community or Forum
There is no active community or chat area or a forum. The only way to contact Grammarly is through a support ticket. There is no phone support, and they indicated that it is not because of a lack of interest, but does not explain any further. It seems to me that they want to limit contact through the support ticket.
Complaints
According to the Better Business Bureau, Grammarly has an A+ rating. They only had 59 negative complaints since 2012 when they registered with BBB.
All of those complaints got resolved. Below will show the type of allegations that occurred. If you would like to see these in more detail, you can check them out here.
Final Opinion/Verdict
I believe we agree that proofing our writing is a big chore and most of the time we probably don’t do a very decent job of it. However, if you write for a paycheck, you can attest to the fact that proofreading your work is a must before submitting it. Think of the embarrassment some of us would have if we didn’t!
The processors with auto-correct and spell-check are only the first line of defense and should not be used solely to verify the accuracy of your written document. My first recommendation to automate proofreading your documents is Grammarly.
There are many features included in the free version, and that is probably good enough for those who need some help with their writing to start out. I’ve used Grammarly for all the written work I do, especially my content writing.
I was surprised at some of the “bad” habits I developed with my compositions. Grammarly brought to my attention, errors that I repeat over and over again. Now I have been more alert to these mistakes as I am writing and have seen improvement in those areas.
We all make writing mistakes; sometimes because we don’t know the correct way and sometimes it’s because we are careless.
No matter the reason, creating well-written documents that are error-free without any help takes years of writing and dedication to your craft. In the meantime, Grammarly is the tool to help you with that.
Someone told me that Grammarly is not a tutorial (i.e., a learning tool), but only gives you reminders. I disagree with that. There are things that I learned in school about grammar that I have probably forgotten over the years and yes, Grammarly has brought it back to the forefront of my mind which allowed me to stop making those mistakes.
However, there are some things that I did not know and now do because Grammarly taught me about them via the brief explanations provided during the review process.
I don’t write anything without the help of this useful tool anymore. I see the improvement in my writing because I used the tool.
All that said, I have to admit that I think that the Premium pricing is too high when compared to other document checkers. Whether or not Grammarly is worth the price is in the eye of the user.
More than the price of the Premium version, what I dislike the most about Grammarly, is that it can sell the documents you upload in their app to third parties.
However, mostly all of the other plagiarism and grammar checkers do this too. I don’t know how we can get around it other than not use these tools.
What’s a writer to do? I for one, won’t pay that exorbitant price for a human proofreader; nor can I afford not to use something other than my natural eye to proof my work. For now, I’m sticking with Grammarly.
Due to the TOS issue, I did knock my rating down by one point, but I still believe based on my own experience with using this tool, that it is the best-automated proofreader on the market right now.
Can you find some mistakes called incorrectly by Grammarly? Yes, you can, but to resolve that the tool gives you an option to ignore its errors. Make sure you are right before you ignore it!
I have shared my experience with using Grammarly and I, for one no longer have to ask, “does Grammarly really work?” I know for a fact that it does.
I may not like the price of it, but Grammarly checks for a lot more writing mistakes than spelling and grammar. Other proofreading tools don’t offer anywhere near the number of reviews as Grammarly does. You get what you pay for, as they say!
Well, I have finished this review, but before I publish I’m going to run it through Grammarly first!
I would enjoy hearing about your personal experience or brief assessment of Grammarly. If you still have any questions, feel free to leave them below.
Please contact me if you need help with anything. Comment below, or you can always get in touch with me through wealthyaffiliate.com (here is a link to my profile).
I totally agree with you that Grammarly is an awesome tool! Unfortunately, I do not feel that I write enough to justify the pricing in the premium version. So far, I’ve been quite content with the free version.
Although I’ve always known about the premium version… I was not aware of the Plagiarism Checker inside, among some of the features available in the premium version – which I think are pretty cool.
Your article was very impressive… thanks for sharing!
I also think that Grammarly could be priced somewhat lower. However, I haven’t come across any other grammar/spell checkers that are as good as Grammarly. Most checkers seem to do a more cursory review and don’t get those “advanced” errors like the Grammarly tool. I have actually learned a lot about my own writing since I have been using this tool. Writing has always been in my wheel house, but I didn’t realize the amount of errors I was really making.
I actually moved forward to purchase this tool mainly because of the plagiarism checker. I used the Viper for a long time and it was an excellent tool. A lot of people rely on Copyscape, but I have run Viper behind writings that were supposedly checked by Copyscape and I would find a lot of plagiarism. Viper used to be a free tool, but more recently they went the paid route. They still have a free version, but it is of lesser quality and there is a limit now to how often you can use it. The price for that is even more than Grammarly. So, I had to make a switch.
What ever direction a writer goes, it is very important to check our content for plagiarism, spelling and grammar. If the articles are full of writing errors it will turn visitors off real quick.
Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you found this article helpful. Stop by anytime and let me know if there is anything I can help you with,
Hi Verna,
Thank you for sharing. I find your information exhaustive enough.
I agree with you about Grammarly. When I started writing my articles, I used only the free version, and most people told me that they found some errors in my posts and that I should have used a spelling checker.
I’m not an English native, and I thought to try the Grammarly premium because it’s essential to present good written articles.
I must admit that it works for me.
Greetings,
Marta
I guess people have to look beyond the price and decide if the tool is going to be valuable to them. I would have preferred for it to be about $19 rather than $29. However, when I ran the free version it would tell me how many more critical errors I had even though I thought my final was grammatically correct. I felt that if I still had 42 more critical errors that needed correction I had better upgrade to the paid version. My thoughts were on how visitors would view all the mistakes I didn’t correct and leave my site. No one wants to go through an article having to mentally correct the errors as they read.
Plus, I didn’t have to find another plagiarism checker because Grammarly has one included.
I understand that people just starting out with an online business may not be able to afford all the essential tools needed to help them move forward in business, but they should at least use the free version. However, I have seen some pretty poorly written articles online that made me wonder if the even proofread the work before they published it.
Grammarly has allowed me to remember some of the grammar lessons that I had long forgotten or never knew about. Through repetition I have learned not to keep making those same mistakes. I found out that I used a “passive voice” way too much when writing and I’m still working on that!
Thanks for stopping by and checking out this article and I’m glad you felt it was useful. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with. Hope to see you around soon.
Hi Verna-
I totally agree with you that Grammarly is an awesome tool! Unfortunately, I do not feel that I write enough to justify the pricing in the premium version. So far, I’ve been quite content with the free version.
Although I’ve always known about the premium version… I was not aware of the Plagiarism Checker inside, among some of the features available in the premium version – which I think are pretty cool.
Your article was very impressive… thanks for sharing!
Hello Mark,
I also think that Grammarly could be priced somewhat lower. However, I haven’t come across any other grammar/spell checkers that are as good as Grammarly. Most checkers seem to do a more cursory review and don’t get those “advanced” errors like the Grammarly tool. I have actually learned a lot about my own writing since I have been using this tool. Writing has always been in my wheel house, but I didn’t realize the amount of errors I was really making.
I actually moved forward to purchase this tool mainly because of the plagiarism checker. I used the Viper for a long time and it was an excellent tool. A lot of people rely on Copyscape, but I have run Viper behind writings that were supposedly checked by Copyscape and I would find a lot of plagiarism. Viper used to be a free tool, but more recently they went the paid route. They still have a free version, but it is of lesser quality and there is a limit now to how often you can use it. The price for that is even more than Grammarly. So, I had to make a switch.
What ever direction a writer goes, it is very important to check our content for plagiarism, spelling and grammar. If the articles are full of writing errors it will turn visitors off real quick.
Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you found this article helpful. Stop by anytime and let me know if there is anything I can help you with,
Cheers,
Verna
Hi Verna,
Thank you for sharing. I find your information exhaustive enough.
I agree with you about Grammarly. When I started writing my articles, I used only the free version, and most people told me that they found some errors in my posts and that I should have used a spelling checker.
I’m not an English native, and I thought to try the Grammarly premium because it’s essential to present good written articles.
I must admit that it works for me.
Greetings,
Marta
Hi Marta,
I guess people have to look beyond the price and decide if the tool is going to be valuable to them. I would have preferred for it to be about $19 rather than $29. However, when I ran the free version it would tell me how many more critical errors I had even though I thought my final was grammatically correct. I felt that if I still had 42 more critical errors that needed correction I had better upgrade to the paid version. My thoughts were on how visitors would view all the mistakes I didn’t correct and leave my site. No one wants to go through an article having to mentally correct the errors as they read.
Plus, I didn’t have to find another plagiarism checker because Grammarly has one included.
I understand that people just starting out with an online business may not be able to afford all the essential tools needed to help them move forward in business, but they should at least use the free version. However, I have seen some pretty poorly written articles online that made me wonder if the even proofread the work before they published it.
Grammarly has allowed me to remember some of the grammar lessons that I had long forgotten or never knew about. Through repetition I have learned not to keep making those same mistakes. I found out that I used a “passive voice” way too much when writing and I’m still working on that!
Thanks for stopping by and checking out this article and I’m glad you felt it was useful. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with. Hope to see you around soon.
Cheers,
Verna