Whether your writing for your personal blog, website copy, or even a school paper – writing is not a simple task for many people.
This is why freelance sites like Fiverr are so popular to outsource a variety of content.
I used to outsource a majority of the copywriting for my client’s websites myself. I always felt I was not that great of a writer and that it would take myself a lot longer to write an article than it would be for someone else who was more “qualified” than me.
So, why wouldn’t I just let the “experts” handle it?
Because writing is one of the best tools you will learn in your life. If you are always outsourcing it to other people, you will simply never learn.
It got to the point where I was spending hours editing articles provided by “copywriters” from these websites.
Not only was I paying a ton of money for these, but by the time I was done editing the articles, I soon found out that I could have written it better myself in the same amount of time!
Now don’t get my wrong – I still suck at writing. I have been out of school for ten years now and I’m very critical of myself when it comes to grammar.
I made it a point to teach myself on how to become a better writer.
I started reading blogs, trying different writing software, and writing as much as I could. I remember it would take me hours to write a simple 1,000-word blog post.
One tool that I fell in love with instantly was Grammarly. Which is why I decided to write this in-depth Grammarly review.
1. What is Grammarly?
Grammarly, Inc. launched in 2009 as a writing enhancement software. Grammarly includes a variety of different free and paid services to help check grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and even plagiarism by reviewing 250+ types of errors using their unique algorithm.
One thing I enjoy about Grammarly is that it not only fixes common writing errors but it also tells you why you should fix them and gives you a brief explanation of the problem. These suggestion citations alone should help improve your writing over time and to stop making the mistakes again in the future.
Grammarly currently supports Windows 7+ and MAC OS X 10.8+ and even has a web-based online text editor that I have started to use quite a bit when I am writing on my Chromebook.
2. Free Browser Extensions
One of most attractive features Grammarly provides is their FREE Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browser extensions. These extensions are totally free to use and work across most popular online platforms including:
- Email (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)
- Online Forums
- Online Forms
- Social Media
- WordPress Editor (One of the main reasons I love Grammarly!)
- Microsoft® Office (Currently Windows Only)
- and more…
3. Grammarly’s Pricing
Grammarly Pricing
The free version of Grammarly is pretty robust and finds most mistakes. I found it to be much better than the default spell checkers most software including Microsoft Word.
Grammarly Premium starts at $29.99/mo.
However, the pricing goes down significant if you purchases it quarterly ($19.98/mo.) or yearly ($11.66/mo.)
Unless you plan to use it for a major paper or writing project for one month and then canceling the membership, paying upfront for a year is clearly the better option with Grammarly.
While I really like the software I do feel 29.99/mo. is quite steep for what it provides. I think if they were able to cut that price in half for a monthly plan it would attract more users.
4. Grammarly Premium VS Grammarly Free
The free version is a no-brainer, I believe everyone should use it even if you are doing simple tasks like writing posts on social media and the occasional email.
I have been using the free version of Grammarly’s Chrome extension and web-based application for about a year now, but I have always been curious to try Grammarly premium to see if it is worth it or not, so I decided to try it out!
To be honest, I had low expectations with upgrading.
$29.99/mo. seemed like an awful lot of money to spend on a glorified spell checker, right?
Wrong.
I was quite surprised at how well the upgraded features improved my writing. Even while I was writing this article, it ended up catching way more errors than I would have expected.
This is because Grammarly Premium is where it gets interesting with all the different add-ons including:
- 100+ additional advanced grammar and spelling checks compared to the free version
- Vocabulary enhancement suggestions
- Genre-specific writing style checks
- Plagiarism detector that more than 8 billion web pages
I love the plagiarism checker that Grammarly offers. Now, I do not even bother to use Copyscape on my new blog posts to make sure they are unique.
I also like how you can select the document type. Whether you are writing a research paper, creative writing, or even a blog post (the one I have chosen for this article) it will help you structure your words accordingly.
Grammarly Premium Document Type Feature
5. Is Grammarly Premium Worth It?
If Grammarly Premium is worth it to you will depend on many different factors, including what you plan to use the software for in the first place.
After trying Grammarly Premium, I can say that personally, I am sold on the software and wished I would have upgraded sooner.
I plan to upgrade to a yearly plan as I can justify spending the $11.66/mo for their software and think it is definitely worth it.
This is because I write blog posts on this website, but also many others and I do not always have the opportunity to have a human editor for everything I publish.
If you do any professional writing, I would highly recommend checking Grammarly premium out. I think it can be a great tool if your writing web copy for a client or even a student writing papers for college.
I do wish Grammarly had an Android / iOS app and think it would add more value to their premium plan if they had one.
I hope you enjoyed this Grammarly Premium review!
Have something to add? Let me know in the comments below!
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Summary
The point is we all write important things each and every day. Whether your writing for your school paper, personal blog, or if you are a professional writer, we all could use a second pair of eyes to make sure we are putting our best foot forward when it comes to our writing. I think their monthly pricing is quite high for their premium version but I still worth it if you do any kind of professional writing and are willing to sign up for a full year in advance.
I have been using Grammarly premium for several months now. I had been noticing odd discrepancies where I thought I had written something and it felt like it was at an earlier state of editing when went back to the document on Grammarly. I guess I thought I was just losing it. It wasn’t me, it was Grammarly!
I just finished a paper and after a marathon of ten hours of writing, when I went back to Grammarly today and the document was reset to its rough draft, even the title was the working title again. All that work and the past two days of minor final edits are all gone.
I immediately contacted Grammarly support and they said it was because “the document in question has not been transmitted to our servers, which is why we’re unable to locate and recover it” and that I did not have “a stable Internet connection.” I know for a fact that this was not caused by the instability of my internet connection because I was using other web-based apps that connected and while writing I did hundreds of web searches, also the Grammarly app has an alert when it is unable to connect, and that alert did not happen at any time. I checked my browser history to confirm this.
I replied but they have not responded. I opened another case with more detail, but they have yet to take any action on it.
After this, I am now keenly aware that Grammarly has been resetting my documents to earlier iterations. Sometimes it is hard to tell because I will come back to a document a week later. After losing all this work I now see that this has been happening for a while.
I honestly do not care about having good grammar if it means that all my hard work may not be as I left it when I return to Grammarly and that their app can function doing countless corrections for days, and never tell me that all my work is in danger of not being backed up to their servers.
I’ve noticed the same problem happening when Grammarly checks fields on other websites! I thought I was going crazy! Something happens, and it undoes all of the corrections. Usually less than a minute after making the corrections.
Ryan – did Grammarly miss the use of the word “your”? Dying to know. I found errors in the free version years ago and messaged the company. They agreed with my finding; so I have been a little uncertain about using it again. I decided, after reading many reviews, that I would buy the premium in hopes to not find simple errors like I did with the free version. That said, I am curious to know if you ran this post through Grammarly.
Thanks for writing this review! I am also a slow writer I have been using the Free version. However, today is Black Friday and they are offering it at $5.25 per month. After reading your review l am in! Thanks Dennis
$5.25/mo is a killer deal for the software! Thanks for letting me and my readers know that they were offering this discount right now. I’m glad to hear that my review helped you! :)
Excellent article! However, Grammarly did not catch and correct the second word of your first paragraph (“Whether your writing for your personal blog…”). However, I suspect you may have done that very much on purpose. If so, brilliant! Anyway, thank you for your review–it is much appreciated! Time to go download Grammarly…
its too expensive if you do not write a lot. Sadly. very cool tool.
I agree on it being on the expensive side but well worth it if your using it a lot!