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On its 10th Anniversary, Grammarly Looks Way Beyond Grammar (fastcompany.com)
The service that began by checking prose for glaring mistakes increasingly wants to help its nearly 20 million daily users do more than simply avoid errors. From a report: Plenty of technology companies give away stickers of the sort their fans can slap on the back of a laptop. But the ones available for the taking in the reception area at Grammarly's San Francisco office are distinctly its own -- willfully low-key and thoughtful rather than brash and boastful. Being low-key and thoughtful is a logical tone for a company that is in the business of helping people fine-tune their written words, whether they're meant for a business document, school paper, or social media post. That is what Grammarly has been doing for a decade, since its founding on April 1, 2009, under its soon-abandoned original name of Sentenceworks. But it's also how it wants to run its business, which -- rather than moving fast and breaking things -- waited six years before offering a free version and another two before taking on outside funding.
[...] Grammarly is celebrating its 10th birthday by announcing that it's on the cusp of reaching 20 million daily active users, including both users of the free version and those who pay $30 a month (or $140 a year) for Grammarly Premium or $15 per user per month for Grammarly Business. That's up from 15 million last October and just 1 million at the end of 2015, the year it introduced its free version. The company is an uncommonly effective direct marketer; even if you've never tried its service yourself, there's a pretty good chance you've been exposed to it on YouTube. And even if you hit the "Skip Ad" button as fast as you could, enough viewers have paid attention that YouTube rated Grammarly's spot as the most effective "TrueView for Action" ad of 2018, based on reach, clicks, and engagement.
[...] Grammarly is celebrating its 10th birthday by announcing that it's on the cusp of reaching 20 million daily active users, including both users of the free version and those who pay $30 a month (or $140 a year) for Grammarly Premium or $15 per user per month for Grammarly Business. That's up from 15 million last October and just 1 million at the end of 2015, the year it introduced its free version. The company is an uncommonly effective direct marketer; even if you've never tried its service yourself, there's a pretty good chance you've been exposed to it on YouTube. And even if you hit the "Skip Ad" button as fast as you could, enough viewers have paid attention that YouTube rated Grammarly's spot as the most effective "TrueView for Action" ad of 2018, based on reach, clicks, and engagement.
It works better than Word, and also it has a plugin to work anywhere you type (in the browser, in text documents, on your iPhone, on Android). It's really obsessive about commas, and it gets confused by more complex sentences.
The primary target is ESL speakers (including Indian and German and Chinese), who feel unconfident with their grammar. As one user/employee told me, "I feel uncomfortable when I don't use it, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong." This probably results in a better experience for those who read the emails, as well. If you're a native speaker, you'll find the spellcheck UI rather nice, you'll be flattered by the weekly emails telling you how good your English is, and you'll be annoyed when occasionally it corrects your English incorrectly.
Overall its grammar correction is rather good.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
YouTube is damn near full of them, to the point that I can't understand how they afford to be.
Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole but it "works" because random people ask me about it. I tell them to try the software out before they pay for it. Nobody pays for it.