Hi friends,
My Grammarly subscription is about to expire. I’m curious about whether any of the competing apps are worthy of consideration. Does anyone here use one they really like and recommend? I noticed ProWritingAid on SetApp, so I’m especially interested in that one.
I have found Grammarly to be very valuable but my renewal price is much higher than my initial cost, so I feel it’s my fiduciary responsibility to check out other options.
I use Prowriteingaid when I write on my Mac. It helps catch errors. But I use it as I’m reluctant to subscribe to Grammarly.
Sorry not much of a review. Prowritingaid does not seem to be updated frequently. I have a feeling Grammarly might be a better app but not enough to pay for it.
I used to subscribe to Grammarly but switched to ProWritingAid about a year ago. I use it mainly for checking academic papers and I have had no issues whatsoever. I have SetApp and don’t feel any need to spend more on Grammarly, I find it to be just as good.
I do a lot of editing of papers written in MS Word, using the Review mode. Grammarly will not work with the review mode in Word, so I have never subscribed. I’d be interested in something that has that ability.
Like @Rob_Polding I left Grammarly last year and switched to ProWritingAid. I got a lifetime deal on it. It seems to work okay compared to Grammarly, however, there isn’t a plugin for Safari, so I have to remember to switch to Chrome or Brave to use it. It helps quite a bit. There isn’t any way to use it on iOS and the Mac App just feels like a browser window app. Grammarly was too expensive for me, but ProWritingAid seems like a good replacement.
I have 25 term papers to grade this weekend, so I will test out the plagiarism tool then.
Hope that helps.
How well does ProWritingAid work in the browser on iOS? One of my frustrations with Grammarly is how difficult it is to work with on my iPad when using the external keyboard. I usually end up resorting to iCab.
It actually works quite well in the PWA website editor in Safari on iOS, almost like on the Mac. I actually hadn’t tried it until you asked. Learned something new.
This thread could not have come at a better time for me! My Grammarly premium subscription renews on April 29 - they offered me half price as I cancelled ahead of time, and I took the bait, but the ship hasn’t sailed yet.
ProWritingAid being part of SetApp definitely sweetens the deal, that’s for sure…
Decisions, decisions…
Schools often have site licenses to TurnItIn or SafeAssign, which are the biggest products in that category. If you haven’t checked you might look into whether it’s available to you.
My limited experience is that Grammarly and PWA have their pros and cons. I used Grammarly for a year. I liked it because it would work right in Chrome while I was editing my newsletter. But the cost is substantial. It automatically renewed on me for a year and I asked to get credited. (I should’ve realized that it would do that.).
I then found out about PWA which I used a few times because it is part of Setapp. It picked up different things than Grammarly (neither good or bad, just different it seemed). I didn’t like the workflow as I thought it was only on the Mac in it’s own app. Now, I find out it can work on iOS but possibly in a browser?
But a couple of weeks ago, Grammarly had a huge sale. $50 for the year because it was their 10th anniversary. I couldn’t pass that up. So I’ve got it for another year and we’ll see after that.
I use grammarly, for now, but the iOS experience is less than ideal. Has anyone tried to set up any shortcuts or other automations with either G or PWA? I know PWA has an accessible API. Anyone try to set up a drafts-PWA-drafts round trip?
I’ve only trialed PWA but subscribed to Grammarly a few days after that since there was a 56% off sale. One of the hassle on using it on iOS with external keyboard is the need to remove the keyboard to make it work. But I like using Grammarly better on Safari desktop mode where I can use a much more advance version of Grammarly. I just hope they develop a separate app on iOS for writing/editing.
Maybe this is more for lawyers, but WordRake (https://www.wordrake.com/) has been excellent for editing my writing. I bought it for Word, but I think it also works as a plugin on Outlook.
https://languagetool.org might be an alternative to consider. It started as an open source project and has recently expanded to offer premium extras. I find the free version very useful already and am considering trying out the paid version. Did anyone try it out and can compare it to other solutions, such as mentioned G and PWA?
Thanks checking them out. Mac and iOS app in Beta and it’s 108 dollars a year for two people which is doable for the me and the wife.
Aaaaaand it just alerted me my grammar on this post is horrendous. I apologize folks. English is my first language…tsk tsk.