Grammarly Review: Is It A Proper Grammar Checker For You?

Writing well is one thing; however, having good grammar and spelling is crucial in making your writing easy to read. If you’re writing for business-related topics, you want to make your writing professional and well-written. We want to avoid making lots of typos or grammar errors. I know one tool that can help, and that is Grammarly. But is it a proper grammar checker when you write documents? That will be the discussion as part of this Grammarly review.

What Is Grammarly?

The Grammarly web application offers grammar and spelling suggestions. The writing assistant uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make suggestions, along with customizing your writing style, tone, and language.

Founded in 2009 by a few Ukrainian individuals, Grammarly started out as a program for college students to learn English. Because of the minimal revenue it got from universities, the creators offered the service directly to individuals. 

Proper grammar checker: In this post, I write an extensive review on Grammarly, a well-known writing tool.

Over the years, the tool has improved and become one of the most well-known writing tools. It raised a lot of money to help develop and improve the product.

Grammarly has been used by over 30,000 teams, along with 30,000,000 daily active users. It has offices in the US (San Francisco, New York City), Kyiv (Ukraine), and Vancouver (Canada).

As a current user myself, I will go over how this tool can improve your writing. I will go over the top features, whether it’s worth it for you, and bring up my experiences using Grammarly myself.

Using the Grammarly tool: How does the writing assistant work?

Grammarly’s purpose is to improve communication through writing. To allow an opportunity for everyone, Grammarly offers a free plan for individuals.

A free account will give you basic writing suggestions. These include spelling, grammar, and punctuation corrections.

Proper grammar checker: Grammarly provides you with suggestions, such as better prepositions or revising wordy sentences.

Within my free account, I have suggestions that come up as I write out a document. These can be better prepositions or revising wordy sentences. These can be suggestions which you or someone else may not even consider.

Also, you have options on how you want to write your documents. These include writing in the editor, uploading a document (i.e. Microsoft Word), or simply copying and pasting your documents.

Proper grammar checker: With Grammarly, you have the option to write inside the editor, upload a document, or simply copy and paste.
Grammarly Editor (top left-hand corner)

Two types of plans

Although the free plan is useful, it’s limited to advanced suggestions. To make the most out of the tool, Grammarly offers two options:

  1. Grammarly Premium (For individuals)

The premium plan goes beyond the basics for grammar and spelling. Such advanced suggestions include:

  • More clarity in rewriting sentences (makes it better to rewrite hard sentences)

As someone who used the premium plan, this suggestion is one of my favorites. When I’m writing, my sentences may get too long and very wordy. So when that happens, Grammarly will provide a better option for rewriting a sentence.

  • Word choice (provides better words to replace vague ones)
  • Fluency (ensures that words sound natural to follow)

In professional writing, it’s important to make sure your writing is easy to read. In any type of business you’re in, that’ll help with communicating messages.

For more advanced corrections to improve your writing, premium can be an excellent choice. Any individual looking to make their writing sharp can make the most of the premium plan.

  1. Grammarly Business (For teams)

If you run a business or manage a team, this plan is brilliant for professional communication. Especially if you write often to customers, you want to make your writing clear and easy to understand.

Here are some of the advanced things you can do with a business plan:

  • Snippets– allows you to create reusable phrases, sentences, or terms to help you save time while writing

If you’re about being more efficient with your time, this feature is well worth using to maximize your team’s productivity.

  • Fluency and consistency included (available for premium and business plans)
  • Formatting guide to help assist with writing
  • Brand tones– these are great to make writing for your company sound more professional
  • Analytics dashboard– assists your team in identifying writing trends; more so, you can use it to improve and be more consistent with writing practices

Top Features

Grammarly comes with a lot of neat features. But for this review, I will focus on some of the best ones to utilize as a user. Keep in mind that some of these features are included in only the premium and business plans.

Tone Detector

This detector can help determine how you want to sound in written expressions. Do you want to sound friendly, but still act professionally to your clients? Could you write to someone and sound concerned, while not being angry or frustrated?

That’s critical to help you deliver messages effectively. It’s a great check on yourself, while considering others when they read your writing.

The photo below is a list of identifiers that may show up before you send messages (using Grammarly).

Proper grammar checker: Detecting the tone of your message is a great way to see what you sound like when you write it.

Plagiarism Checker

This one is excellent for students who are writing academic papers. But really, it’s for anyone who wants to double check their writing properly. It is easy to copy another person’s text without giving credit or citing the source.

Grammarly detects what you wrote from billions of pages in ProQuest’s databases. When it’s scanned, it will provide you feedback on spelling and grammar issues, along with where to provide proper citations.

The plagiarism detector can significantly help anyone be better writers, while still keeping your writing original.

Proper grammar checker: Having a plagiarism detector can help you double check your writing in Grammarly.

App available via desktop (Windows & Mac)

You can easily download the Grammarly app through your desktop or laptop. So whenever you want to write, you can open it up and begin your writing assignment.

Integration for Microsoft Office (Outlook & Word)

Browser extensions

This one is a major thing to have on hand, which is convenient to have while on any web browser. You can easily download the Grammarly app on any browser (Chrome, Mozilla, Microsoft Edge). 

With Chrome, you can use it while writing in Google Docs. That’s something that I’ve utilized while writing documents in the past.

Proper grammar checker: Downloading Grammarly as a browser extension is nice to have while working on any web browser.

Mobile keyboard

Believe it or not, there’s an app you can download through your mobile phone (Android or IOS). When the app is active, it instantly works while typing or editing a document on a phone. Or even better, it’s nice for sending text messages as well.

I love using this feature, as it makes typing on my phone so much easier. Before I send any text messages, the Grammarly app will make corrections as needed. It helps make my text messages clear and easy to read.

Can Grammarly help you be a more efficient writer?

You may question whether using an AI writing assistant can make you a better writer. But ask yourself these questions:

  • Would you want to proofread your own writing? You may miss a few things if you’re the only one reading it yourself.
  • Do you prefer someone else to proofread your writing assignments? There’s nothing wrong with that. When I was growing up in school, that’s how I went about writing papers. Either my mother or a friend would look them over for me.

Or you can use a simple writing tool to instantly make corrections when necessary. For me, I write very often, so I enjoy turning to something quick for editing or revising my drafts. Now and then, that’s when I’ll use Grammarly to help me save time.

Who is Grammarly designed for?

Anyone can use the Grammarly tool (even for free), but it helps a few groups of individuals. The tool is best for:

  • College students- for writing academic papers and to double check on plagiarism
  • For managers who run teams: to help make writing simple and look professional

Can Grammarly help you write faster?

Based on my experience, I have mixed feelings about it. One of my weaknesses is that I get obsessed with all the suggestions that I get when writing. When I overlook that, that can slow me down sometimes.

The suggestions provided are extremely helpful. So I appreciate making the most of referring to them.

So my best tip would be: It may be tempting at first, but write out an initial draft first. Once you finish writing it out, then use Grammarly for editing. 

Or try this one: Write out a draft in a separate word processor (i.e. Microsoft Word or Google Docs), then copy and paste your document into the Grammarly editor.

Pricing

As mentioned, Grammarly has a free plan for anyone to use. But it does come with limits, so you only have the basics available.

For the two plans discussed earlier, the premium plan is suited for individuals. While the business plan is designed for teams. Here’s the breakdown of the types of payments you can choose from:

Premium Plan (For Individuals)
Monthly ($30/month)
Quarterly ($20/month)
Billed as one payment of $60
(save 30%)
Annual ($12/month)
Billed as one payment of $144 (save 60%)-
Best value
Prices Accurate As Of March 2021
Business Plan (For Teams)
$12.50/month/team member
Option to bill annually-
Minimum of three members on team
Prices Accurate As Of March 2021

Business plan features include:

  • Centralized billing
  • Discounted price
  • All premium features included 
  • Monitoring tools (i.e. analytics)

Along with the two plans offered, Grammarly also has an enterprise plan. This plan is usually best for larger businesses with complex needs. If you happen to fall under that category, reach out to customer support for more details.

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Free version
  • Easily downloadable on any browser extension (i.e. Chrome, Firefox)
  • Suggestions instantly come up as you write
  • Plagiarism detector- extremely helpful for students
  • Makes your writing clear and concise

Cons

  • Business data exposure- issue with privacy matters
  • Not always accurate (may miss some spelling errors)
  • Does not work in other languages (English only)
  • Can slow you down if you get too many suggestions
  • Heavy on advertising (upselling)

Is Grammarly worth it?

Rating: 4/5

Grammarly is a unique tool for improving your writing. The fact you get real-time suggestions does come in handy. If you value your time a lot, this tool might be an excellent solution for your personal and professional needs.

The plagiarism detector is an excellent feature for anyone to use, especially for college. Along with that, it’s nice that it helps make your writing more fluent in the long run.

Although it’s not completely perfect, some people that I follow in the Quora account say that’s the case. Maybe it does not capture every single error, so it’s good to keep an extra lookout for that.

Proper grammar checker: Grammarly can be used anywhere you type or write text, including email and social media platforms.

Also, There’s been an issue with exposing business data. For users with an enterprise plan, Grammarly permits data to be shared through other apps or services (i.e. using Slack).

With sharing business data, it can lead to intellectual property concerns. I won’t go over too much of it, but a recent article explains how Grammarly may cause those concerns.

Grammarly states on their website that they take privacy matters (protecting user data) seriously; however, with their enterprise plan, they’re not very clear on addressing that issue. So that’s something they need to address more properly.

My Takeaways

I’ve been a Grammarly user for the last few years, and I enjoy using the tool. I think it’s a great alternative compared to asking someone else to proofread my writing.

I used to have a premium plan, but since then, I’ve switched back to the free version. These days, I don’t use the premium features that much. So whenever I want basic spelling and grammar corrections, the free version will work fine on my end.

Also, using it sometimes slows me down a lot. So that’s another reason I don’t use it as often as I did in the past. But my preference to anyone would be to start with the free version and then go from there.

Final Words

Grammarly is one of the top writing tools to use today. The best part is you can start now by trying out the free version.

If you’ve tried out the free version but want more out of it, check out their premium plan to make the most out of your writing. If you manage a team, consider the business plan to make your writing look more professional.

Whatever decision you make, I believe Grammarly can be very useful for your writing assignments. Try it today.

Your Turn: Is Grammarly the best for your writing needs?

I would like to get some of your thoughts on Grammarly. Do you think it’s an easy tool to use for writing? If you’ve tried it, do you like the corrections it suggests to you? 

What is your favorite part about using Grammarly? What don’t you like about it, or how can it improve as a writing assistant?

Feel free to leave your thoughts by leaving a comment below. I look forward to reading your thoughts, and I’ll respond back promptly.

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Eric is the owner and chief editor of notimekillers.com. 

He takes great pride in helping people manage their time and grow their businesses. 

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4 thoughts on “Grammarly Review: Is It A Proper Grammar Checker For You?”

  1. I decided to give this a go for my writing- the browser extension is awesome! Sometimes the checker gets in the way of different UI elements depending on which site I’m using it on, but that doesn’t happen very often. 

    And the fact that it gives you an idea of what type of “tone” you’re writing in… I think it’s a must-have for anyone doing any extensive amount of writing work. Thanks for covering it! 👍

    Reply
    • Hi Colton,

      Having a nice, easily-accessible browser extension helps. The one associated with Grammarly is great and convenient to use.

      I do like the fact it gives you that “tone” about what you’re writing in. Especially when it comes to the flow of writing, you want to make sure it sounds fluent. So it sure helps while you’re writing any type of document.

      I’m glad you liked how this tool works. It can do a lot with the power structure it carries. 

      Thank you for sharing your thoughts- they’re greatly appreciated.

      Reply
  2. Hi,

    I use Grammarly-the free version. It is very helpful, especially with spelling, punctuation marks, and spacing. 

    You just have to be mindful because some of the suggested words are not compatible with what you are really writing about. It also suggests the correct term for something- thus, really useful.

    Your review is so exhaustive and informative.

    Thanks for this,

    Marita

    Reply
    • Hi Marita,

      The free version of Grammarly works just as good as the premium one. Although it has it’s limits, it can catch a lot of basic grammar and spelling errors.

      I agree that some of the suggestions are not always the best to replace. It works at times, but other times- it does not make sense. 

      I’m glad you’re a current user of it- it sure does come in handy when it comes to better writing. You definitely should make the most out of it.

      Thank you for sharing your thoughts- they’re greatly appreciated.

      Reply

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