Drop everything and answer this: Hemingway app vs. Grammarly vs. WhiteSmoke, who would win? The answer matters A LOT if you care about creating written content.
In this post, you’ll become spectators to the ultimate proofreading tool showdown.
I’ll compare their features, pricing, and overall effectiveness in helping to create 100% spotless, top-quality content.
There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in.
Hemingway App vs Grammarly vs WhiteSmoke: Overview
First of all, a quick introduction of our contenders.
About Grammarly
Grammarly is perhaps the most popular writing assistant on the internet—and for a good reason.
It is jam-packed with features that can help businesses, students, and bloggers create flawless articles.
While writing, Grammarly proactively detects spelling and grammatical errors while providing correction suggestions, which can be applied with one click.
Each suggestion also comes with a brief explanation of the mistake along with a ‘Learn more’ button. This can help your writers avoid making the same mistakes in future assignments.
Image Source: Grammarly.com
Grammarly can also check for issues that affect your content’s clarity, reader engagement, and delivery. Not to mention you can specify your goals to tailor the tool’s strictness to your brand’s voice and writing style.
Image Source: Grammarly.com
About Hemingway App
Image Source: HemingwayApp.com
The Hemingway Editor—also known as “Hemingway App”—is a popular tool that focuses on improving your content’s readability.
Right from the start, I should mention that the tool doesn’t check for spelling or grammatical mistakes. It does, however, offer unique features that businesses and writers can use to maximise reader engagement.
For one, it can help users look for hard-to-read sentences. This includes the use of passive voice, which may appear less direct and sincere.
The Hemingway App can also provide one-click suggestions for words that can be simplified or removed.
Image Source: HemingwayApp.com
What makes Hemingway Editor a pleasure to work with is its intuitiveness. Every suggestion is colour-coded while words that can be improved are brightly highlighted.
About WhiteSmoke
Image Source: WhiteSmoke.com
WhiteSmoke is a time-tested writing tool trusted by educational institutions, authors, businesses, and technical writing teams.
It is a proofreading tool, translator, and plagiarism checker rolled into one. You can use it as a browser add-on or a desktop app, which can be licensed on up to three computers.
Image Source: WhiteSmoke.com
WhiteSmoke also provides suggestions you can apply in one click. Right-clicking suggestions pulls up additional tools, like the thesaurus, web search, and a detailed explanation of the error.
Image Source: WhiteSmoke.com
Feature Comparison
The Battle of Features: Hemingway App vs Grammarly vs WhiteSmoke
Now that we've had a good look at our contenders, it’s time for the ultimate face-off.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Hemingway, Grammarly, and WhiteSmoke in terms of usability, reliability, proofreading features, and more.
Section 1: Proofreading usability
With content development in full swing, it’s important to have an automated proofreading tool that’s handy and easy to use.
First up, Grammarly offers multiple ways to use the tool—fitting different writing workflows.
If you rely on cloud-based tools in your day-to-day, using the Grammarly browser extension is the way to go. This allows the tool to proofread everything you write on Google Docs, Gmail, or even social media.
If you’d like to keep proofreading as a focused process, you can use Grammarly’s web-based editor. This grants access to a user-friendly, distraction-free writing mode for proofreading your drafts.
To use Grammarly’s web editor, you can either upload your document or paste it on a blank template.
The actual Grammarly editor can be used as a barebones word processor. But that’s not what you’re here for.
What you want is the writing assistant panel, which houses all the issues and suggestions. These are categorized under the following:
- Correctness. Find grammatical and spelling mistakes.
- Clarity. Detect issues that affect text readability.
- Engagement. Replace overused words with better alternatives.
- Delivery. Avoid text that can be misinterpreted.
You can select a specific category or click ‘All suggestions’ to highlight all potential improvements detected in your piece.
To apply suggestions, select the cards to the left of the writing assistant. From there, simply click on the correction suggestion you want to use.
Using Grammarly’s web editor, a decently written, 2,000-word article only takes roughly 5 minutes to proofread. This is thanks to the streamlined interface along with the tool’s fast and responsive performance.
I almost forgot—Grammarly has a desktop version you can install and run straight from your OS. But its usefulness pales in comparison to the Grammarly extension for Microsoft Word.
Once installed, you can enjoy Grammarly’s core features without leaving your favourite writing software.
Next up, let’s take a look at the Hemingway Editor.
Let’s just say it’s as straightforward as it gets when it comes to proofreading tools.
Simply fire it up, paste your text, and watch your draft light up with readability issues. You might be surprised at the number of issues you’ll uncover with the Hemingway Editor.
Hemingway will help you discover ways to supercharge the readability of your content. Unfortunately, it won’t spoonfeed correction suggestions that you can apply with one click.
For the majority of issues you’ll find with the Hemingway Editor, you’ll need to rewrite wordy sentences yourself.
Other than the web-based editor, the Hemingway Editor also comes with a downloadable desktop app. This is useful whenever you need to polish drafts without an internet connection.
Moving on to WhiteSmoke, the app’s interface, unfortunately, looks and feels outdated. However, it’s more than capable of helping you create 100% error-free content.
WhiteSmoke can detect a slew of issues like dangling modifiers, punctuation errors, tense inconsistencies, and sentence fragments.
All you have to do is paste your draft, click ‘Check text,’ and click on the corrections you want to apply.
There is, however, one small catch.
When using the WhiteSmoke desktop version, the grammar checker is limited to a meagre 10,000 characters. This will bog down the proofreading process of long-form content, including eBooks and comprehensive guides.
That’s it—WhiteSmoke in a nutshell.
By the way, you can use WhiteSmoke as a browser extension or a standalone desktop app. Either way, you’ll have the exact same features and support for web browsers.
Looking at our contenders above, Grammarly wins as the most usable grammar checker in the market.
Let’s face it: none of the tools above are hard to use. Grammarly, however, is the only grammar tool that can be integrated with whatever you work with.
It can be MS Word, Google Docs, social media posts, or any online editor that runs on your browser.
The winner in terms of usability is Grammarly.
Section 2: Reliability
Being able to work seamlessly with word processors is a nice touch.
The question is, how accurate is the proofreading tool in detecting grammatical mistakes, misspellings, and sentence structure issues?
First off, Grammarly is widely regarded as very reliable in detecting mistakes. And it’s not because it vastly outclasses the other two.
The difference-maker is, Grammarly lets you build a personal dictionary that can help you develop and complement your writing style.
Here’s how it works: whenever the Grammarly app detects a potential spelling error, just click ‘Add to dictionary.’
Of course, Grammarly’s proofreading features aren’t perfect, particularly if you’re using a new Grammarly account. But as it gets familiar with your personal dictionary and goals, it becomes the most perfect writing assistant that money can buy.
The Hemingway Editor, however, is more commonly used as a book writing software for aspiring authors.
It can’t help professional writers detect spelling and grammar errors. But its readability score and vocabulary enhancement features can help them hone their writing skills.
Limited features aside, the Hemingway Editor will show you room for improvement when other tools—even Grammarly—find nothing. The downside is, that most of the issues it detects could be related to the writer’s personal preference.
WhiteSmoke, on the other hand, is a reputable grammar and plagiarism checker for organisations. If you’re a B2B SEO agency, magazine company, or anything that involves written content creation, WhiteSmoke is a good investment.
As far as reliability goes, it’s on the same playing field as Grammarly—minus the customisability aspect.
Again, Grammarly wins another point for reliability.
Section 3: Portability
I know what you’re thinking.
“What does portability have to do with grammar checkers?”
Picture this: your editor or proofreader is at home. But there’s an urgent post that needs to go live ASAP.
Your editor then whips out their iPad and launches the tablet version of Grammarly. This allows them to finish up the proofreading process on the bus or train home.
Of course, portable grammar checkers are also useful when writing emails or social media posts. That means your writing can be error-free no matter where you are or what you’re doing.
WhiteSmoke also has a tablet and smartphone version of their grammar checker. The only difference is, Grammarly’s mobile version categorically performs better and looks more intuitive.
Sadly, the Hemingway App doesn’t have a mobile app at all. But you can still use the tool via your mobile browser to create short and crisp sentences.
This round goes to Grammarly.
Section 4: Extra features
Next, let’s go a little deeper and explore what these proofreading tools have under the hood.
Allow me to start with my favourite Grammarly feature: goals.
Grammarly allows you to personalise the proofreading experience by specifying your content’s audience, formality, domain, and intent.
- Audience. Are you writing for experts, knowledgeable individuals, or just online readers in general?
- Formality. Do you use colloquialisms, or would you rather write formally?
- Domain. Are you writing for academics, business, emails, or creative projects?
- Intent. Are you writing to inform, tell a story, or convince readers to buy something?
Setting Grammarly goals before you begin writing is a great way to boost content engagement.
If you’re not impressed yet, Grammarly has a mini content tracking feature baked into the editor.
By clicking your content score, you’ll see a detailed report of metrics tied to quality signals. This includes the average length of sentences, word count, word variety, and so on.
This will allow you to fine-tune your content according to the sentence structure and tone you’re after. Furthermore, the tool compares your performance with other Grammarly users to help improve your writing and grammar skills.
In addition to ironing out writing errors, Grammarly also doubles as a plagiarism software—comparing your draft to billions of pages across the web. And if all else fails, you can request the assistance of an expert to polish your writing.
Moving on to the Hemingway App.
Other than alerts to help you with grammar and sentence structure issues, there really isn’t much to talk about. There is, however, the “write” mode, which you can use as a minimalist substitute to word processing programs.
Finally, it’s time for WhiteSmoke’s extra features.
Despite its age, WhiteSmoke features integrations with Microsoft Office and Gmail. This makes it extra convenient for professional writers who rely on those platforms for their daily tasks.
WhiteSmoke also has a built-in translation tool you can use if you’re planning to publish multilingual content. However, it’s not as dependable as hiring a professional translator.
Yes—Grammarly wins this one.
Section 5: Pricing Packages: Hemingway App vs Grammarly vs WhiteSmoke
Before we end this comparison, let’s take a look at the pricing options of all three editing tools:
Grammarly
Grammarly has a free version that comes with all core features. You can check your content’s correctness, use the browser extension, and install the Microsoft Word add-on without spending a single cent.
The Grammarly Premium version, however, unlocks everything the platform has to offer. This starts at $12 per month.
If you’d like to purchase Grammarly Premium for three users, the Business plan costs $12.50 per member per month.
Hemingway App
The Hemingway App has a free version you can use indefinitely through your web browser. If you wish to use it offline, you can purchase the desktop app for a one-time payment of $19.99.
WhiteSmoke
WhiteSmoke doesn’t offer a free version, but its paid subscription costs less than Grammarly.
The “Web” version costs $5.00 per month, whereas the desktop version costs $6.66 per month.
The “Business” plan starts at $11.50 per month. This comes with extra benefits like phone support and installation for up to three computers.
Who Wins? Hemingway App vs Grammarly vs WhiteSmoke
You probably already know this by now.
Grammarly gets a resounding win in every category. Not to mention it’s the most cost-effective platform listed above, especially considering how they didn’t skimp on the free version.
You can click here to get Grammarly Premium and start producing flawless content. Let me know about your experience in the comments below!
