Writer.com Review – Is it Better Than Grammarly?

Today we’ll be talking about Writer (Writer.com), a new AI writing tool.

In this post, we’ll cover what it is, why it’s better than Grammarly, what are its main features and how to use it.

Let’s start!

What is Writer.com?

Writer is an AI writing tool that’s just starting but already has high-profile customers like Twitter and Pinterest. Previously known as Qordoba, it was founded last year and has now changed its name to Writer. The company raised $21 million in Series A round to keep on growing and improving its service.

Writer isn’t like the other AI writing software we talked about. Unlike Shortly or Smart Copy, Writer’s real-time assistant doesn’t write for you but gives you insight into your writing copy and converts complex writing into plain language. And if you create a template, it also automates boring tasks for you thanks to its Snippets feature.

They also use an AI system that understands context and content, which is similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3 -the one most AI writing tools use- but independently developed.

Why Writer.com is better than Grammarly

If you’ve ever used Grammarly, you won’t have problems using Writer. The tool is a lot like Grammarly but with much more advanced features. Writer will show you a list of suggestions on the right side of your screen and you can accept them or delete them.

Writer has a saying that I like a lot: “Your brand voice is more than just Grammar”. That’s why even if you don’t want to use an AI to write for you if you want to achieve consistency in brand voice, writing style, terminology, and grammar, tools like Grammarly aren’t enough. You need Writer.

Writer highlights text that can be improved. You’ll see its suggestions in green and you just need to click them to apply them to your text immediately. You can disable Writer from specific sites where you don’t need it.

Moreover, its analytical engine is four times faster than Grammarly!

Create a free account on Writer.com

Who is it for

Writer.com is for everyone that writes or is in charge of a writers team. So whether you’re a student, a content designer, an editor, a support agent, a teacher, or a project manager, you need this tool. Let’s take a look at its features so you understand why:

Writer.com features

General features

• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Clean interface.
• Seamless integration with Chrome, Word, Google Docs, and more. Get the Chrome extension here.
• Plain language converter. Keep your content brief and clear with more sentences in the active voice and less jargon.
• Great security. Writer.com will never track you across the web or use your content for existing and future services.
• Customer support via email. At first, they took about an hour to reply to me, and then more than six hours. They also have a blog where they cover any doubts that you might have and free resources like the book “Yes, you can write!” by Bryan Collins.

Advanced features

Customize suggestions

I really appreciate that Writer.com lets you customize any suggestion. They understand that there’s no such thing as black-and-white grammar. If you’re a linguistics nerd like me, you can read more about it in this post of theirs.

To put it in concrete terms, if you aren’t a fan of the Oxford comma, for example, you can toggle off the option or select “don’t use” so Writer will never bother you with Ayn Rand and God again.

Autocorrect

The same functionality you love on your phone, available in the work and school apps you use daily. Type the words the same as you would in any chat app -gotta, tmrw, etc- and Writer will automatically change them to fit a more buttoned-up version of yourself.

Plagiarism checker

Use it online for free or install it for Chrome, Docs or Word. Mainly, students and instructors that want to make sure papers show the correct use of sources use this tool. However, plagiarism exists in all fields, so the tool is also excellent for journalists, copywriters and businesses.

The plagiarism checker does a good job telling when content is unoriginal; however, it isn’t the best at identifying which is the source. For example, here I copied the text from a news page and Writer couldn’t determine which page the piece was exactly from.

Snippets

Don’t waste time on repetitive tasks. Create short or long templates to reuse at any time. To create the snippet, type the shortcut you’ll use to insert the text when writing. I had some problems with this feature. I edited my Snippet, but when I wanted to use it and write the shortcut in the app, nothing happened. Then I tried the same thing, but on Google Docs and it worked fantastically.

I’d say that’s definitely a problem here because, in this screenshot, the instructions are also misplaced.

Team features

Terminology

This is perfect for teams. You can tell Writer what words your team should avoid and organize the terms with tags, filters and more, to get a perfectly neat terminology list. Writer.com lets you download any of the terms you add here as well as the snippets.

Styleguide

An important feature for any business with a lot of writers. Set editorial style rules so everyone’s on the same page. This includes community managers, too! Even if they don’t use Writer, they can benefit from this feature.

“Healthy communication” feature

Tog on the gender-inclusive noun and pronouns option to be respectful to everyone. That’s right, Writer is an AI writing tool as modern as it gets, and it helps you adapt to social changes.

Build your own rules

If Writer is missing a content rule, just build your own! Use their flexible rules builder to write your own rule. For example: “Never use the first person in product content”.

Reporting and analytics

Through beautiful graphics, learn where people make more mistakes, who’s taking your suggestions, and which Snippets are most popular. Even better: get all these insights while keeping what your users write private to them. Because privacy is always the priority.

Phone, video and email support 24/7.

Pricing

• Free: basic suggestions, anywhere you write.
• Pro: $11 per month. Includes snippets, clarity and writing style configuration.
• Team: $18 per month. Access to quality reports and analytics, multiplayer mode, and terminology management.
• Enterprise: custom. Set up multiple teams with separate writing guidance.

If you want a taste of Writer’s Pro plan or Team features, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial.

How to use Writer.com

1. Sign up first!. You can use your Google Account or your email.

2. Select what you’ll be using Writer for.

3. Once you confirm your email, go to the dashboard and click “New Doc” to start writing.

4. Check out your grade level: Writer will give you a number from 0 to 14. The higher the number, the harder the readability. According to the tool, a score of 14 or more is better understood by people with high literacy. So keep in mind your audience when seeing the score. You’ll also view useful information such as how much time it takes to read your post, average sentence length and word count.

5. To improve your readability level, see Writer’s suggestions. If you don’t understand its suggestions, you can always click on “learn more” and read a brief and very educational explanation of it.

6. Create a Snippet. Go to the dashboard and select “Snippets” > ”New Snippet”. Write the text you want to automatically insert and create a shortcut. You can also add a tag for better organization.

7. Go to docs and write the shortcut where you’d want to insert the text.

8. Now that you’re familiar with Writer, try one of its plugins like their Chrome extension. Once you install it, you’ll see the same features as in the app everywhere you go!

A work in progress

Currently, Writer only supports the English language, which is a pity. But the good news is, as it’s a new company, it’s still growing and new features are coming in the future. Hopefully, that involves more languages.

This also means Writer is open to hearing feature suggestions.

Verdict

Writer is an essential tool for anyone that writes in English. Thanks to its AI technology, it helps you perfect your grammar on your own terms, save time from repetitive tasks and adapt to new and more inclusive language guidelines.

What’s more: new changes are expected and its developers are open to suggestions, so it seems Writer will keep creating amazing features.

So, yes, this post is your sign to go try Writer. Whether you’re on your own or working with your team, the tool certainly doesn’t disappoint!