Grammarly writing tool

Grammarly is a tool designed to make your writing the best it can be. With the flexibility to span across all of your smart devices in one way or another, it really can be a game-changer for nearly anyone who types regularly — regardless of what you’re writing or why.

• Also check out our roundup of the best plagiarism checkers

Grammarly's free plan lets you test out this writing tool for yourself (Image credit: Grammarly)

Plans and pricing

Grammarly has three plans — Free, Premium, and Business. While these plans have a lot in common, it’s important to know the differences.

The free plan allows for “basic writing suggestions”. This helps catch spelling, grammar and punctuation issues. For the average, or basic user, this will be a great option.

The premium plan is designed for “style, tone, and clarity improvements for writing at work and school”. This includes everything the free tier has and adds seven extra features: Clarity-focused sentence rewrites, tone adjustments, plagiarism detection, word choice, formality level, fluency, and additional advanced suggestions.

The business plan is designed for teams and their “professional and clear communication”. The business plan has everything in premium and also includes a style guide, snippets, brand tones, analytics dashboard, priority email support, account roles and permissions, and SAML SSO.

The team management tools that are enabled in the business plan are phenomenal for actually working in a team. The business level of Grammarly allows for account roles and permission support. This lets organization’s take their teamwork to the next level. Some other things that are enabled include helpful features such as style guides, snippets, brand tones, and analytics dashboards.

Check your grammar, spelling, punctuation and more with Grammarly's free grammar checker (Image credit: Grammarly)

Features

Correctness

The correctness feature includes the ability to check for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and more. This feature is in all three plans and is the core feature in Grammarly. Knowing that you have an automatic second read through of your writing can be huge. Getting to trust that your words and grammar are accurate relieves a lot of stress regardless of what project or text you’re working on at the time.

Clarity

Clarity helps bring all of the now correct words and work together. The paid tiers allow for sentence rewrites and formatting help, while the free tier only checks for conciseness. This feature brings the correct words from step one and forms them together correctly.

Engagement

This feature is solely in the paid tiers and is one of the more robust tools. This tool allows for the checking of compelling vocabulary and lively sentence variety.

Delivery

This tool allows for tone detection in all three tiers. beyond that, all features are paid options. They include confident writing, politeness, formality level, and inclusive language. 

Grammarly can help improve your writing across a variety of different apps and services thanks to its numerous integrations (Image credit: Grammarly)

Interface and in use

Grammarly has made sure that anyone and everyone can use their software. There are desktop apps, Microsoft Office integrations, keyboards for mobile devices, and more. If you have a smart device, it could have Grammarly. 

The Grammarly Keyboard is available for smartphones and tablets (Image credit: Grammarly)

I utilize the mobile app occasionally but what I find myself using most often is the keyboard integration on my iPad Pro. 

Type on a physical keyboard and see suggestions on the Grammarly Keyboard (Image credit: Grammarly)

This keyboard integration allows me to type on my hardware keyboard, and have suggestions on the bottom bar of my iPad Pro’s screen. Then, after I finish a section or an entire piece I am working on, I can choose to have Grammarly check my text for errors.

Grammarly gives your writing an overall score based on its correctness, clarity, engagement and delivery (Image credit: Grammarly)

The most understated value of this application is that instead of just simply changing the text, Grammarly helps you improve your writing ability. For each change, Grammarly explains why the change is suggested so you can learn for next time. This has helped me slowly become better at writing, and, ironically, needing Grammarly less.

Support

Paid Grammarly users have priority email support and can send the company questions directly. This translates to confidence while relying on Grammarly for help because you know there is support available if an issue arises.

Grammarly's searchable help center can even help free users find answers to common questions or issues (Image credit: Grammarly)

In addition to the support for paid members, there are a plethora of free support offerings on Grammarly’s website. For instance, there is a help center with a ton of tips and tricks to make the most out of using the service.

Final verdict

Grammarly is a tool that is so easy and simple that anyone reading this should download it. It can run in the background via the keyboard and can help in scenarios you never even thought of. 

For those in school, this can be a simple add on for Microsoft Office, and then any document you type can be error free. Or, perhaps you download it on your phone and it helps you sound intelligent to your friends and peers in a way that may leave them shocked.

For those in the workforce, regardless of your position, email is designed to be a bit more formal. You can use Grammarly to make sure you sound professional when writing and sending emails to your colleagues.

Even if you’re not a student or a business user, you can still try out Grammarly on almost any of your devices to improve your writing.

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