Digital Writing Tool
QuillBot Premium: 6 Writing Tools in 1 Subscription
An AI writing assistant app for $50/year.
Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links. So I may receive a commission if you click through and purchase at no additional cost to you. However, this does not affect my review of the product.
In case you're unfamiliar, QuillBot is an AI writing web app founded in December 2017. It was originally designed as a full-sentence thesaurus that helps students and professionals write efficiently.
And that was how I found out about QuillBot in the first place! Its free, easy-to-use paraphraser has served me very well. Besides that, the free version also offers a basic Grammar Checker, a Summarizer, and Citation Generator.
However, QuillBot Premium has become such an eye-catcher at first glance due to its enhanced multiple tools in one paid subscription:
- Paraphraser
- Grammar Checker
- Plagiarism Checker
- Co-Writer
- Summarizer
- Citation Generator
That's six writing tools bundled up in one web app! Not to mention the reasonable subscription fee compared to other established paid writing applications.
But of course, there are reservations. Will it be as good as the ones you're using now? Is it worth the money as your first AI writing assistant app?
So in this post, I'd like to share my thoughts on QuillBot Premium as a freelance writer who mainly writes blog posts. Hopefully, this review will help you decide if it is for you.
Paraphraser
A QuillBot feature I've been using a lot. You know this already if you've read my post on Chrome Extensions for digital writers.
The free version only offers 125 words in the paraphraser, whereas premium users get to rephrase unlimited words.
Moreover, there are seven modes and four levels of synonyms available in the premium version.
- Standard (available in the free version)
- Fluency (available in the free version)
- Formal
- Simple
- Creative
- Expand
- Shorten
I honestly didn't find the free version lacking that much since I never used the exact sentence suggested. I've only used it to spark ideas for better-sounding phrases. However, it could be pretty time-consuming, especially if you're in a time crunch.
So if you're a freelance writer sweating and hustling on multiple projects or publishing heavily researched posts regularly, the extra five modes are a godsend!
QuillBot premium also comes with unlimited Freeze words. Okay, I kind of lost you there, right? What the heck is a Freeze word?
See that snowflake icon? That's a Freeze words function. It's used to retain the words you want to keep in the rephrased sentence.
To do so, you just need to highlight the words and click "Freeze". Then, the word or phrase will turn blue.
To remove it, you can just click on the blue word and click "Unfreeze". You can also click the Snowflake icon to check or delete your Freeze words.
Compared to the paid subscription, you only get one Freeze word or phrase in the free version every time you paraphrase.
Another function available in the paraphraser is Synonyms. You have up to four levels for premium users and three levels for the free version. But I mostly only use two levels, as the higher you set it, the less accurate it will be.
Grammar Checker
What differentiates the free version from the premium one is the Advanced Grammar Rewrite feature.
As you can see below, the QuillBot Premium Grammar Checker offers different types of texts to improve the flow of complicated sentences.
Also, like many grammar checkers, it suggests alternative words to make your sentences easier to read.
This is crucial as many of us tend to forget that the average US adult readability level alone is 8th grade.
You can check the reading level by clicking the statistics icon on the right side of your screen. Doing so will also reveal other necessary data about your writing.
QuillBot uses the Flesch Reading Ease Score, which rates the readability between 1 and 100. So, scoring between 70 and 80 is equal to the 8th-grade level.
I noticed that this grammar checker spruces up writing quite well for students and corporate purposes. But it doesn't go as well for blogs and fiction writing. This is mainly because it lacks the setting to tailor writing suggestions based on your audience.
Perhaps a hack to this is using the seven paraphrasing modes and "Freeze" the words you want to keep.
Plagiarism Checker
According to QuillBot:
Our Plagiarism Checker will scan 20 pages per month and understand over 100 different languages. Just sayin’.
This feature is only available to premium users. Also, the number of pages is not equivalent to the standard page numbers in your word processing software.
For example, I uploaded a 6-page Word document to the QuillBot Plagiarism Checker, and it used up to 10 subscription pages. TEN!
But you can always buy more pages if 20 pages aren't enough.
Yeah, I know. Having to buy extra pages instead of getting unlimited full access is a bummer.
But I have to say, the result of the plagiarism scanner kind of blew me away! You can actually view your text and the source of the plagiarized phrase side by side for more precise comparison.
To clarify, the image above is an earlier draft of a published piece on Medium. That's why the data shows a 79.5 percent match.
The different shades of red highlights indicate the severity of a plagiarized text.
You can simply click on any of the highlights in your content, and the color will turn yellow to make it convenient to trace plagiarized phrases in the original source.
Besides that, if you need to revise, you can always search for your old scans in the Scan History. That way, you can save your subscription pages.
Summarizer
You can summarize up to 6000 words for premium users, whereas the free version only allows 1200 words.
Depending on your preference, you can choose to summarize as Key Sentence (bullet points) or Paragraph. You can also adjust the summary length up to 4 levels. 1 being the shortest and 4 the longest.
So I adjusted the summary length to level 2 and summarized a 1963-word article, which was condensed into 236 words in Paragraph format.
I never really find the need to summarize my blog posts. But perhaps you can use it to summarize articles to share on social media or as meta descriptions.
Citation Generator
Who here memorizes all the formats of the primarily used citation styles?
Definitely not me, that's for sure!
I'm sure many of you know that citing sources when writing a blog post isn't as complex as writing a college report. Phew!
But I've seen a few websites that require writers to list citations by the end of an article in APA or MLA format. There must be more, but I haven't encountered that many. This is mainly to prevent readers from leaving a webpage too soon.
If that's the case for you or your clients, then this fully free feature would really come in handy!
QuillBot claimed that experts and PhDs had confirmed the accuracy of their Citation Generator. They also ensure that all formats are up-to-date.
You can easily cite an online source by copy-pasting the link, picking the citation style of your choice, and clicking "Save Citation".
Quick and easy.
Of course, you can also cite books and journals.
Co-Writer
This is a word processing feature. So you can write the drafts of your blog posts or articles and save them in the web app.
On top of that, instead of copy-pasting or uploading documents, you can instantly use Paraphraser, Summarizer, and Citation Generator when using Co-Writer.
Also, you can add some notes and do your research directly on Co-Writer as you write your article.
The articles you search for via Research are in text form only. So any type of image is not visible directly from Co-Writer.
But that wouldn't be very much of an issue since you can always click a link to bring you directly to the original webpage.
In addition to that, instead of typing, you can save time by dictating your writing. It's similar to Google Docs Voice Typing. Provided you have clear pronunciation and an external microphone.
But the slight drawback is I can't dictate punctuation marks. Whenever I did it, the word "period" or "comma" would appear instead.
Lastly, Co-Writer also included Suggest Text, an AI to construct the next sentence based on what you’ve previously written.
Extensions
So you prefer writing on Google Docs or Word instead? Then you can always download the QuillBot Word Extension and Chrome Extension.
Final Thoughts
Out of all the features available on QuillBot, the best one for me would still be the Paraphaser, while the others have their plus and minuses.
But to be fair, since QuillBot was initially made as a paraphraser, they had more time to develop it compared to the other features.
Therefore, they would most likely continue to improve each writing tool to benefit a variety of writers.
Now, let's lay out the primary pros and cons.
Pros:
1. Very affordable for the various features in one subscription.
2. Plagiarism Checker is very thorough and convenient to use.
3. Enhanced paraphrasing features.
4. Paraphraser and Summarizer are time-savers for heavily researched articles.
5. Co-Writer would be handy if you prefer to write and save everything in one application.
Cons:
1. You can only use it online.
2. The 20 subscription pages for Plagiarism Checker aren't equivalent to word processors' standard number of pages.
3. Grammar checker is more tailored for students and business purposes.
4. Besides Chrome, the extension isn't available for other web browsers.
So what do you think? Is QuillBot Premium for you?
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