In this Grammarly history overivew, we cover Grammarly's story starting with its inception in 2009.

Grammarly was founded in July 2009 by Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn, and Dmytro Lider. The software program itself is furnished by Grammarly, Inc. and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Grammarly also has offices in Vancouver, New York City, and Kyiv.

The company released its initial software program as a paid subscription product and an online editor. The goal was to help students with their writing, helping people learn the basic building blocks of the English language.

A success, Grammarly's investors attracted the attention of experienced businessman, Brad Hoover in 2011. He became CEO. Hoover helped the initial founders distill the program into a framework that guided everything they did moving forward. He says the company has been profitable almost “since inception”.

Grammarly eventually grew to include a browser extension that could correct basic spelling and grammar issues. The browser extension was released in 2015, leading to an explosion in the average number of daily users. Today, the company employs approximately 90 employees, some of whom are based in San Francisco.

Grammarly History Timeline

In 2009, Grammarly was founded.

In 2010, Grammarly released its editor.

In 2011, current CEO Brad Hoover joined Grammarly.

In 2013, Grammarly was named on the Inc 500 list. It also released a Microsoft Office add-in.

In 2014, Grammarly was a Crunchie finalist.

In 2015, Grammarly released many of its popular extensions for browsers like Chrome.

In 2016, Grammarly began acquiring mainstream recognition for its grammar checker capabilities. It was featured by many publications including Lifehacker and PC World.

In 2017, Grammarly completed its first funding round for $110 million. That same year, it released its virtual mobile keyboard on Android and iOS, receiving praise from many reviewers.

In 2018, Grammarly released a version directly compatible with Google Docs. Instead of copying and pasting their documents into a separate window, users have access to an optimized version of Grammarly for Google Docs. It also began offering Grammarly discounts for users.

In 2019, Grammarly completed a $90 million seed round with investors, securing its tech unicorn status. It also released a tone detector. This feature enables users to optimize their articles, blog posts and emails for an intended audience i.e. formal, casual etc. The company also increased its spending on YouTube advertising. Grammarly also announced plans for a business version of its grammar checker.

In 2020, Grammarly released a business version of its software, and a version for iPad. This version supports a custom style guide and extended collaboration. It also rolled out an advanced AI writing assistant that automatically corrects your writing with a click.

The company released advanced editing tools and a sidebar for Google Docs users. The company also invested in Docugami's seed round. Docugami provides AI software for creating documents to businesses.

Grammarly also provided support for Microsoft Word and Outlook. Techradar also listed it as one of the best Mac apps for home workers.

In 2021, Grammarly switched to a work from home model for its employees. It also reported that 30,000 teams are using Grammarly Business.

The company released a software developer kit or SDK beta that enables developer to embed automated text editing into any web app. Rob Brazier, head of product at Grammarly told Techcrunch:

“Literally in just a couple lines of HTML, [developers] can add Grammarly’s assistance to their application, and they get a native Grammarly experiences available to all of their users without the users needing to install or register Grammarly,” Brazier told me.

Grammarly Valuation Today

Grammarly has raised over $200 million in funding to date. According to a Techcruch report, Grammarly raised over $90 million during its second round of funding, in 2019. With over 20 million users, that placed the company at a valuation of approximately one billion dollars.

Three years is a long time in the SaaS world. Its userbase and feature set has widely grown since then. For example, the company has rolled out Grammarly Business as well as an AI-powered writing assistant. It has also invested heavily in paid advertising.

Today, according to PrivCo and some Crunchbase statistics, the valuation of Grammarly sits somewhere between one and ten billion dollars.

Grammarly Availability

Grammarly has expanded its capabilities during the past few years as a freemium program, offering services on multiple operating systems. Since its initial release, Grammarly has expanded to include Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and World Wide Web operating systems such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

While users can still paste documents directly into the Grammarly text box window by visiting the Grammarly site directly, the program has grown to include automatic detection of text boxes, allowing users to optimize their documents without having to paste their work into the Grammarly text box.

The Latest Grammarly Features

Grammarly has also worked to sharpen its support on sites with a variety of writing styles, such as casual work on Google Docs or writing targeted to business professionals on LinkedIn. There is also an add-in option for Microsoft Office, available on Microsoft Word for Windows and Mac.

In addition, there is a Grammarly Editor available online with desktop applications, allowing users to steer away from any distracting tabs. You still need to use the internet to access the desktop application. The application provides alerts when you need to change with your writing, offering automated suggestions as you go.

Grammarly has also released a Grammarly Keyboard for Android and iPhone users, along with an integrated editor and keyboard experience for the iPad

The Differences Between Grammarly Free And Grammarly Premium

The focuses of Grammarly have always been engagement, clarity, correctness, and delivery. This includes the free and premium plans. Components of the free plan include:

• The free plan offers an automated spell-checker.
• The program offers rewrites for conciseness.
• Grammarly free provides help with sentence structure assistance.
• The free version catches punctuation issues.

Grammarly Premium includes all of the features above with a number of other benefits. Premium plan components include:

• The premium plan provides automatic sentence rewrites.
• Grammarly premium offers assistance with vocabulary suggestions.
• The premium version comes with access to an automated plagiarism checker.

The plagiarism detection program automatically checks the internet for anything that resembles the work being written. Then, the overall assignment is given a percentage value that corresponds to the amount of work that closely resembles other pages found on the internet. That way, writers can correct these issues before they get penalized for plagiarism on publication.

Grammarly premium costs $29.95 per month or $59.95 per quarter. The Grammarly business plan is priced differently depending on the size of the company. Many educational institutions take advantage of Grammarly as well.

Who Should Use Grammarly

There are several types of writers who should use Grammarly. A few examples of people who should use Grammarly include:

• If you are a student looking for help catching spelling, grammar, and punctuation issues in your writing, Grammarly can automate this process for you.
• Students and professional writers who are looking to avoid plagiarizing someone else’s work should take advantage of the premium plagiarism checker offered by Grammarly.
• Business professionals should use the Grammarly Business plan to keep their emails and messages concise, professional, and stylistically correct.
• Anyone who is looking for an automated grammar checker that is easy to use should take advantage of Grammarly’s intuitive features and services. 

Just about every writer can benefit from Grammarly; however, the premium version can be expensive, which is why it is helpful to check out a few Grammarly alternatives.

What Are a Few Examples of Grammarly Alternatives?

There are several examples of Grammarly alternatives that could be helpful. A few examples include:

• ProWritingAid is a grammar checker, plagiarism checker, and style checker that provides a wide array of tools that are similar to Grammarly. This is an editor that can help you improve your writing and English skills. The software program mimics a personal writing coach that works well in Google Docs and other platforms. ProWritingAid provides an in-depth report that can analyze your writing. The tool also comes with a thesaurus that can suggest synonyms, helping you avoid repetition.
• WhiteSmoke is another writing tool that detects mistakes that can help you improve your writing. This is an in-depth program that provides context for every error correction suggestion. The layout was recently redesigned to improve the user experience. This tool also takes advantage of natural language processing and artificial intelligence to ensure you are performing flawless writing every time. The tool comes with a grammar checker, spell checker, and translation tool.
• Sapling is another AI grammar checker and writing assistant that has been designed for larger corporations. It works well as a browser extension on Google Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and integrates flawlessly with platforms such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and Gmail. The program also learns your style over time, meaning that its grammar detection and suggestions get better as you use the program.

You should consider a few of these automated grammar checkers as well. Everyone has slightly different needs, so you should compare the benefits and drawbacks of each option so that you can find the one that works best for you. All of these tools can help you improve your writing in different ways.

Grammarly History: The Final Word

Grammarly was launched in 2009 and has grown significantly since its initial release. It has become one of the industry leaders in automated grammar, plagiarism, spelling, and stylistic software programs. While users can still paste their work directly into the Grammarly portal, there are extensions and programs available on numerous platforms for multiple operating systems.

While Grammarly started as a paid subscription, there is now a free version that automatically checks grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The premium version provides stylistic pointers, rewrite suggestions, and access to a plagiarism checker.

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