Is Grammarly Premium Worth It? An InDepth Grammarly Review

Is Grammarly Premium worth it? 🤔

If you sometimes need help with your grammar or spelling, you’ve probably heard of Grammarly, a tool that automatically scans your work for grammar and spelling errors. This tool is designed to replace the costly and time-consuming process of hiring an editor.

You can even use it for free. But, the premium version offers more features for those who want more in-depth writing help. ⚙️

🕵 In this Grammarly Premium review, we’ll explore:

Then, I’ll explain when it’s best to use Grammarly Premium and when you may want to consider other writing aids.

Let’s get started! 🏃

The core of Grammarly is the Grammar Checker, which is a bundle of writing suggestion tools. You can install this tool in your browser, Word, PowerPoint, Slack, and/or the LinkedIn app. This makes it possible for Grammarly to help you in every aspect of your work.

Once installed, Grammarly will read your work and provide suggestions to improve it. The free version only makes suggestions to refine your grammar, spelling, and conciseness. The Premium option, on the other hand, offers suggestions for numerous things, such as formatting, word choice, word and sentence variety, tone, and inclusivity suggestions.

• Formatting suggestions
• Word choice suggestions to make sentences more impactful
• Word and sentence variety suggestions to minimize repetition
• Tone suggestions to help your work sound more confident, friendly, diplomatic, formal, etc.
• Inclusivity suggestions to help you avoid offensive phrasing

When Grammarly Premium has a simple suggestion, it will let you know by underlining the relevant words or sentences. Spelling and basic grammar fixes will be marked with a red underline. Recommendations to improve conciseness will be marked with blue underlines.

Here’s an example of what Grammarly Premium looks like in action:

You can get more advanced advice in your blogging software by highlighting the text you want suggestions for and clicking on the Improve It button.

This will open a box in the lower right corner of your screen with a suggested fix. This box will also provide suggestions like Shorten it or Make it assertive. You can click on these options to see improved versions of your text:

You can cycle through these suggestions until you find a sentence you like, then choose Insert to add the one you like best to your text.

So, is Grammarly Premium worth it based on these tools? Well, Grammarly’s suggestion tools are easy to use and work efficiently within your existing writing software. The stylistic suggestions only available through a Premium plan are especially helpful for new writers.

GrammarlyGO 💡

The next thing I explored for my Grammarly Premium review is GrammarlyGO. This is a tool that opens in a separate tab of your browser. You can write directly in this tool or copy + paste your text into it.

GrammarlyGO is accessible to all users, but there are specialized features you can only access through Grammarly Premium. The most notable of these is the ability to set goals for your site type, writing intent, audience type, and level of formality.

Once you’ve selected goals, GrammarlyGO will use them to analyze your text. The analysis results will appear in the sidebar, with an overall quality score and categories for Clarity, Engagement, and Delivery. You can click on any of these categories to see relevant suggestions:

If you click on Overall score, you’ll also be able to see metrics related to things like word count, readability, and more.

These tools are great for understanding how effective a specific piece is. If you use them on a regular basis, they can also help you build an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

Note that the GrammarlyGO software will freeze and need to be restarted often if your internet connection is less than perfect.

So, is Grammarly Premium worth it for access to GrammarlyGO?

Well, using GrammarlyGO is a bit more labor-intensive than working with Grammarly directly in your writing software, but it’s absolutely worth it if you’re not confident in your writing skills. If you’re mainly looking for something to fix the occasional typo or misplaced comma, though, you’ll probably want to stick to using Grammarly in your usual writing software.

Business-level users can also add a style guide to GrammarlyGO. This makes it easy to ensure that every piece your team writes fits your brand.

The next thing I looked at to answer the question “is Grammarly Premium worth it” is the company’s generative AI tools. You can access them via GrammarlyGO.

The Grammarly AI can help you generate a variety of content, including:

• Blog post ideas
• Thought-provoking questions
• Progress reports
• Introductory emails
• Thank-you notes
• Business and marketing proposals

Choose the item you want to create, enter some basic information, and GrammarlyGO will create it for you. You can then choose to insert it as-is or have the AI modify it for things like tone and length.

Here’s an example of a marketing proposal created by the Grammarly AI:

I was impressed by Grammarly’s ability to create a comprehensive outline for a course that sounds effective in a matter of seconds. The writing lacks personality, so you’ll want to edit it to better match your own writing voice, but you can use this tool to generate the basis for any business communication you need to send.

However, it’s important to note that you shouldn’t use AI to generate any content you want to copyright. The US copyright office will not copyright AI-created work at this time. So, if you’re working on something like a blog post that you want to copyright, you should only use AI to help you find ideas rather than using it for the text itself.

So, is Grammarly Premium worth it for access to these AI tools?

Well, you can use Grammarly’s AI tools on a free account. The limitation is that you’ll only be able to enter 100 prompts per month. If you upgrade to Grammarly Premium, the number goes up to 1,000 prompts per month.

Security: what happens with your data 🔒

Security is always a major concern when you’re letting a program view your browser or other apps. This is doubly true in the age of AI, when many companies are scraping users’ data to train their AI tools.

Grammarly offers generative AI tools, so it’s probably not surprising that the software is scraping users’ data. What might be a surprise is that there’s no way for the average user to opt out of this. In fact, there’s no possibility to opt out unless you’re an enterprise with over 500 accounts.

Grammarly does say it takes steps to protect your anonymity and data privacy, but these steps aren’t fully clear, and their ability to protect you is somewhat dubious. This means you may want to avoid using Grammarly if you work with sensitive client information, NDAs, or other data you’re eager to keep safe and/or anonymous.

There is also the ethical concern. Many people believe it’s unethical for companies to scrape users’ data for AI use without providing an opt-out option and/or compensation to the users whose content is being used. If you’re one of those people, you’ll probably want to avoid Grammarly.

Pricing 💳

Grammarly Premium has two pricing tiers:

• Premium. This plan includes the features we looked at in this article and is available for $12 per month.
• Business. This plan includes everything we discussed in this article + team management tools like style guides. The plan costs $15 per member per month.

You can choose between monthly, quarterly, and annual payments.

So, is Grammarly Premium worth it? Well, Grammarly Premium offers accurate, high-quality writing fixes and suggestions to improve your work. It’s also more affordable than hiring an editor, which can often cost you upwards of $50 an hour. However, in order to really understand if Grammarly Premium is worth it, we’ve got to look at how it stacks up against the competition.

Grammarly Premium vs. the competition 🤼

There are several alternatives to Grammarly on the market. Looking at them all would make this article incredibly long, so I’m going to focus on two of them: ProWritingAid and WhiteSmoke.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is an advanced writing aid that goes beyond grammar to help you develop a unique, engaging writing style. The premium version of ProWritingAid has several standout features:

• Realtime grammar and style checker
• Word explorer for finding synonyms, rhymes, anagrams, and more
• Ability to create custom words and rules for your personal dictionary
• Style guide creation
• Writing analysis reports

Another benefit of ProWritingAid is that it doesn’t use your data to train its AI. Your data – and your clients’ data – stays safe when you use it.

ProWritingAid costs $120 per year. You can also invest in a lifetime membership for $399.

How it compares to Grammarly Premium

ProWritingAid is more affordable than Grammarly and offers more advanced features, especially for creative writers. It’s also a great choice if you’re concerned about data privacy.

WhiteSmoke

WhiteSmoke is an online grammar checker that can be connected to a variety of browsers and word processors. These include:

• Microsoft Word & Outlook
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Edge
• Safari
• Firefox
• Opera

WhiteSmoke also offers a plagiarism checker and a translator, which you can get access to for $5 per month (billed annually).

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find confirmation on whether or not WhiteSmoke uses your data to train its AI. This means there may be some concerns about data privacy if you’re using it.

How it compares to Grammarly Premium

If you’re looking for basic grammar checking at an affordable price, WhiteSmoke is a great option. WhiteSmoke can also be great for plagiarism checking and basic translation. However, it doesn’t offer the same level of stylistic aid you can get from Grammarly Premium or ProWritingAid.

Is Grammarly Premium worth it? Pros and cons 👍👎

Pros ✔️

• Works directly in a variety of browsers and apps
• Highly accurate grammar checker
• Provides stylistic analysis and suggestions
• Ability to set goals for individual writing pieces + get goal-based analysis via GrammarlyGO
• Access to AI writing tools
• Citation tools
• Plagiarism detection

Cons ❌

• Stylistic analysis isn’t as advanced as what’s offered by some other tools, like ProWritingAid
• Higher cost than other grammar checkers
• No ability for regular users to opt out of having their data used to train AI

Is Grammarly Premium worth it? Final thoughts 🏁

So, is Grammarly Premium worth it? 💎

Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a full suite of AI-assisted writing tools and you’re not working with sensitive data, Grammarly Premium can be a great choice.

The grammar checker is highly accurate, the stylistic suggestions can help you improve your writing, and the generative AI produces much higher quality content than other AI writing tools.

🧰 However, there are a couple of instances where you may want to consider other tools:

• 👉 If you want highly advanced stylistic suggestions and data privacy, choose ProWritingAid.
• 👉 If you just want basic grammar help and you’re working with a tight budget, choose WhiteSmoke.

What grammar checker are you most interested in using? Let us know in the comments section below!

Free guide

4 Essential Steps to Speed Up
Your WordPress Website

Follow the simple steps in our 4-part mini series
and reduce your loading times by 50-80%. 🚀

Was this article helpful?

No

Thanks for your feedback!

Keep reading the article at Themeisle Blog. The article was originally written by Dianna Gunn on 2023-10-17 04:00:00.

The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.