Grammarly Premium Review: The Best Grammar Editing Software

Last Updated on 4 months by Christopher Jan Benitez

Great content starts with error-free and grammatically correct writing. But it’s hard to keep track of your writing, especially if you have other things to worry about, i.e., publishing, promoting, etc. Grammarly Premium helps you by automatically detecting writing errors that you can fix with a click of a button!

But before we begin with this review, let’s identify the things that I look for in a grammar-checking tool to measure how good it is:

  • Usability – Is it easy to use? Can it be used on different platforms or devices?
  • Proofreading – Does it spot grammar mistakes and provide the correct suggestions effectively?
  • Productivity – Does it help me improve my writing?

Also, to clarify, I am not reviewing the free version of Grammarly. Instead, I am examining the paid version of Grammarly, which is Grammarly Premium.

Now we have those things out of the way, let’s dive straight into the burning question:

What do you get with Grammarly Premium?

First, let’s focus on the available features of the Grammarly Premium tool.

grammarly premium categories - spelling errors

Insights

The Document Insights feature allows you to crunch the numbers and raw data about the article.

Depending on your goals for the article, you’ll have your hands complete with the information found here. Personally, the Readability section is the most important one here.

It shows you how easy or difficult to read your article is.

grammarly premium document insights and sentence structure

Update Goals

Choose the type of document you are writing about for the tool to edit your content accordingly. Every time you start, the General document type is chosen. If you want a specific type to be used, you can select from Academic, Business, Technical, Medical, Creative, and Casual.

For example, suppose you chose Business > Article/Blog post option. In that case, Grammarly will detect contractions (you’re, I’m, and others) and misused commas to help tighten your article so your document will capture the writing style you want.

grammarly premium set goals

You need to refine your goals to help Grammarly Premium give you a more accurate score. By targeting the right intent, audience, style, and emotion for your article, the tool can help you produce the best article better.

This is one of the best features of the tool. Grammarly Premium assists you in writing a personalized article or content based on the type of document you want to achieve. So whether it’s writing a thesis, technical document, or a personal blog post, the paid version of Grammarly has covered you!

Premium Alerts

For paid users, they can further improve their articles about these grammar and spelling variables:

  • Punctuation – Corrects missing and misused punctuation
  • Conventions – Checks spacing, capitalization, and dialect-specific spelling
  • Formality – Checks for appropriate formality level
  • Conciseness – Eliminates wordiness and redundancy
  • Clarity – Identifies confusing sentences and overlong paragraphs
  • Variety – Provides synonyms for repeated words
  • Vocabulary – Replaces weak words with more precise synonyms
grammarly check premium alerts

While the grammar and punctuation errors spotted in the premium alerts aren’t crucial, the little things affect the article’s quality. This spell checker tool makes your job much easier as a result.

Plagiarism

Turning this on lets you see if your document or the document you are editing has been plagiarized from an online source without proper attribution. Grammarly Premium’s built-in plagiarism checker scans your document and runs it through 8 billion pages online.

grammarly premium plagiarism

Once it spots a plagiarized text, its built-in Citation Generation will create the citation for you using three styles — MLA, APA, and Chicago. So even if you do not know the citation format for your paper, Grammarly has got you covered!

Human proofreader

If you’re not confident with the article and are not satisfied with how you edited it, you can ask for help from an actual proofreader.

grammarly premium review human proofreading

While this is an extra cost on top of your Premium subscription, it’s worth every penny if you want to get your article edited and maintain its readability for humans.

How to use Grammarly Premium

There are three ways that you can use this tool for your writing:

  1. Chrome Extension
  2. Browser version
  3. Native Grammarly app
  4. Microsoft Word add-on

Grammarly Chrome Extension

Once you download this extension for your Google Chrome, you can enjoy its features while browsing online. In addition, the extension will aid you in writing from your email provider, like Gmail.

Grammarly on Gmail

Upon clicking on the red dot at the bottom-right side of the window, you will open the editor within Chrome.

Grammarly on Gmail editor

The extension also works on blogging sites like WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger, as well as other sites where you can enter text.

If you prefer using Mozilla Firefox, there is also a Grammarly add-on, which works the same way as the Chrome extension.

Grammarly Online Editor

If you want to edit your article straight from Grammarly, you need to log in to your Grammarly account from the website.

Once you log in, you can start with a new document, edit existing ones you have uploaded or saved, or export the articles kept in the app to your hard drive.

Grammarly dashboard

When you click on the document icon to write a new post, you will be directed to a minimalist text editor.

grammarly premium editor blank

This is a great place to write your article and focus on the content without being distracted by the different features of your usual word processor.

If you have an existing article that you want to edit with spelling errors and such, you can upload it and spot spelling mistakes automatically.

If links and images are featured in your article, they will not show on the Grammarly editor. However, you can reaccess them when you download the article after editing it.

When editing the article, click on the “Correct with Assistant” button on the top-right green button of the screen.

Once you’ve fixed the article, download the file, and you will see that the changes will appear as comments from Grammarly.

wps writer
I use WPS Writer as my word processor.

If you are an editor, you may want to keep the comments so your writer can see the changes made in the article. For professional writers and bloggers, you can delete all the comments at once from your word processor and send the post to your client or blog.

Native Grammarly Desktop app

You can download the native app for Windows if you prefer running Grammarly Premium as a separate program. The program takes up approximately 46MB of your hard drive, has the same UI, and feels like the browser version.

Microsoft Office add-on

You can edit your articles using the paid version of Grammarly straight from Microsoft Word. Then, you only need to download the add-on file from the site.

Unfortunately, I have not tried Grammarly on Microsoft Word because I use WPS Writer as my word processor. More on this later.

Google Docs

You’re in for a treat if you write your articles on Google Docs. Grammarly now supports editing straight from the writing tool.

grammarly premium using gdocs

The problematic words and phrases are underlined in red. Hover your mouse to see the suggestions and make the corrections.

Currently, the Google Docs feature of Grammarly is still in beta, which explains the limited options available. Over time, however, we may see improvements until it fully integrates with the software. I’m just happy that the feature now exists since I’m a heavy Google Docs user.

Grammarly Business

If you have more than three writers on your team (including yourself) and want to ensure that all writers enjoy the benefits provided by Grammarly, then the Business plan is for you.

grammarly business

Using Grammarly Business allows you to create a tone profile and style guide that will be implemented across all members. This way, all written content by your team will be uniform, creating consistency that clients look up among writing teams.

Prices start at $15/month per member. It decreases to $14.5/month for 10-49 members and $12.5/month for 50-149 members.

Is Grammarly Premium worth the price?

Grammarly Premium is a paid writing software that you can buy for the following plans:

Premium Plans - Grammarly
  • Monthly – $29.95 (billed again after a month)
  • Quarterly – $19.98/ month (billed as one payment of USD 59.95 for four months)
  • Annually – $11.66/ month (billed as one payment of USD 139.95, good for one year)

If you think the features I discussed above will be helpful for you, then Grammarly Premium is definitely worth the price!

Personally, the Grammarly’s cost is well worth every cent because it establishes grammar rules for me to follow, resulting in me writing consistent articles and posts for my clients.

However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

It’s best to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using this tool based on what we’ve discussed.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Helpful for non-native English writers
  • Saves time in checking your posts
  • Makes editing a breeze

Cons

  • Vocabulary enhancement suggestions are inconsistent
  • Add-on not available to other word processors

Now that we have the main features, let’s take a quick look at using Grammarly Premium to improve your writing.

PRO: Helpful for non-native English writers

While I pride myself on providing great content in English as a non-native speaker, there are still spelling errors that slip through the cracks.

The mistakes may not be as crucial considering the meat of the content, but I take pride in my job. So every error is a chink in my armor.

With Grammarly Premium, I can correct my mistakes and provide clients with impeccable content writing services.

PRO: Saves time in checking your posts

If you are a freelance writer, the last thing you want to do is review the article you just finished writing for mistakes.

Before doing this, you may need to step out and take a breather or sleep on it to have a fresh and well-rested set of eyes that can spot errors.

However, imagine the hours and days you wasted by taking a break or sleeping on the article when you could have sent the report to your client or site for review.

Therefore, instead of running through your post again, Grammarly Premium will spot possible errors for you as you write your post. Then, you can click on the most appropriate suggestions or edit accordingly.

Grammarly screenshot of Passive Voice error - Why I Go Gaga for Grammarly Premium
You can hover over the tool’s word or phrase in question and see the possible error you may have committed.

Also, Grammarly Premium boasts of spotting 250 grammatical mistakes in a document. I’m not completely sure what those mistakes are, as no list on their website reveals this (and rightfully so). However, the grammatical mistakes are organized under five categories:

  • Contextual Spelling
  • Grammar
  • Punctuation
  • Sentence Structure
  • Style

PRO: Makes editing a breeze

If you are an editor, Grammarly Premium will spot the errors for you! Better yet, you can upload the written work on Grammarly and download a detailed report of the writer’s errors and their cumulative score.

Use the score as the basis for grading their writing performance.

grammarly premium report
If you’re an editor, you can manage the article they submit to show it to them. Click on Document Insights and scroll down to see the Download button. You can get a PDF file of the insights and share it with your article.

This is perfect if you have yet to set editorial guidelines in place for your writers to follow. While you are working on that, Grammarly will serve as a more than capable guidelines system for computing the readability of the articles using different factors.

If you want to edit the article using Grammarly, all you need to do is hover over the suggestions in green and click on them to apply the changes.

You will not have to type out the suggestions; you can edit the article by clicking on them.

You can undo the change and revert to the old word or phrase if you mistakenly clicked on the suggestion.

If you are editing content based on style, the tool lets you choose the kind of style for your article so it can spot errors based on the style you chose to provide you with better suggestions.

Of course, I do not suggest you rely solely on Grammarly Premium to edit articles. You still need to check and see if the suggestions are acceptable to a human reader. But more on that later.

CON: Vocabulary enhancement suggestions are inconsistent

The vocabulary enhancements feature is a hit or miss. It suggests synonyms for overused words and phrases. As a result, the feature offers some awkward suggestions at times.

'Campaign' is synonymous to 'drive.' But in the context of this article about marketing by Neil Patel, a drive is not an appropriate replacement.
‘Campaign’ is synonymous to ‘drive.’ But in the context of this article about marketing by Neil Patel, a drive is not an appropriate replacement.

I understand that the enhancements are suggestions for a reason — you do not have to follow them if you do not feel that they provide a better alternative for the overused word or phrase. However, this is also why you still need to edit the article your way instead of completely relying on Grammarly Premium for spotting and correcting the errors.

CON: Add-on not available to other word processors

Grammarly Premium is available to Microsoft Word only as an add-on. However, if you prefer using a different word processor like WPS Writer or Open Office, you won’t be able to enjoy Grammarly Premium as much.

While this issue may be a minor quibble, this could drive other writers away from using Grammarly Premium.

Grammarly Review: Verdict

Video summary created using InVideo.

So, what do I think of this version of Grammarly? using the criteria mentioned earlier, below is an abridged version of the review about this editing tool:

KEY POINTS

  • Usability

    Extremely easy to use; you can edit the document by clicking on the suggestions without typing a word. Available on different platforms; you can install it on your hard drive or log in on your browser. Has MS Word and Google Docs add-ons, two of the most used word processors available.
  • Proofreading

    Comprehensive list of spelling and grammar errors; you can be sure that almost all of your mistakes will be spotted by the paid version of Grammarly. Iffy vocabulary enhancements: the tool suggests decent alternatives to overused words and phrases. Most of the time, it is best to keep them instead of using synonyms that don’t fit the article’s context.
  • Title

    ConteMakes writing faster; the tool helps spot grammatical errors as you blaze through the article, so you do not have to run through the article after you finish. It takes off pressure from editors; the tool allows editors to download a report of the article to be returned to writers and lets editors make changes to the articles with just a click of a button. Affordable: Grammarly Premium helps me improve my writing so much that I can attract and keep more clients than before when I was not using the tool yet. The ROI for using Grammarly Premium is much higher than its asking price, especially if you buy an annual subscription of $139.95.
OVERALL RATING

Grammarly Premium Review: Verdict

  • USABILITY
  • PROOFREADING
  • PRODUCTIVITY

Conclusion

Grammar checker tools don’t get any better than Grammarly Premium. It’s the perfect software for serious writers, editors, and bloggers to improve their writing. It’s one of the content writing tools I can’t do without in my business!
Try Grammarly’s free version to help clean up basic grammar and punctuation mistakes. But if you want
more advanced suggestions to help you close more clients with your writing, the Premium version is the way to go.
4.8/5