WhiteSmoke Review: Is This Tool Really Worth It in 2025?

WhiteSmoke Review 2024: Does This Grammar Checker Measure Up?

In the digital age, the written word is how we communicate with the world. From emails to social media posts to reports and articles, we‘re putting our thoughts out there all day long. And like it or not, the quality of our writing shapes how we‘re perceived.

A study by Grammarly and Harris Poll found that 82% of recruiters are "likely" or "very likely" to be influenced by typos and grammatical errors when evaluating candidates. And in a survey by Tidio, 97% of respondents said poor grammar is a credibility killer when it comes to online content.

The message is clear: if you want to be taken seriously, you need to put your best foot forward in your writing. That‘s where grammar checkers come in. They‘re like a digital safety net, catching mistakes that could cost you big time.

One contender in this space is WhiteSmoke. Founded in 2002, this Israel-based company offers a suite of writing tools, including a grammar checker, plagiarism detector, and translator. But how does it perform in practice? Is it a reliable tool for leveling up your writing? I put WhiteSmoke to the test to find out.

Putting WhiteSmoke‘s Grammar Checking to the Test

The core feature of any grammar checker is its ability to accurately flag spelling and grammar errors. To evaluate WhiteSmoke‘s performance, I ran several writing samples through its web and desktop apps, and compared the results to those from Grammarly and ProWritingAid.

The verdict? WhiteSmoke is hit-or-miss. It caught some obvious mistakes, like misspellings of "errow" (error) and "welle" (well). It also flagged a few legitimate grammar issues, such as using "less" instead of "fewer" when referring to countable nouns.

However, WhiteSmoke missed a troubling number of errors that its competitors caught. For example, it overlooked agreement issues like "The group of students are" instead of "is." It failed to flag missing words in sentences like "I went the store." And it missed some blatant contextual spelling mistakes, like using "rain" instead of "reign."

Even more concerning, WhiteSmoke sometimes suggested corrections that would introduce errors. For instance, it wanted to change "You can also type directly in the WhiteSmoke interface" to "You can also type directly at the WhiteSmoke interface," which is ungrammatical.

In contrast, Grammarly and ProWritingAid consistently caught more of the intentional errors in my writing samples, and their suggestions almost always led to a genuine improvement. WhiteSmoke lagged noticeably behind in both accuracy and helpfulness.

Here‘s how the three grammar checkers fared in catching errors in a 500-word writing sample:

Grammar Checker	Errors Caught	False Flags	Accuracy
Grammarly	18	1	94.7%
ProWritingAid	16	2	88.9%
WhiteSmoke	11	4	73.3%

As you can see, WhiteSmoke caught notably fewer errors than the competition, while also throwing more false positives. That accuracy gap could make a real difference in the quality of your final draft.

User Experience Falls Short

Grammar checking performance aside, WhiteSmoke also disappoints when it comes to user experience. The interface feels clunky and dated compared to the sleek, modern designs of apps like Grammarly.

On desktop, WhiteSmoke offers dedicated Mac and Windows apps. The Windows version seems to be the most up-to-date, while the Mac app looks like it hasn‘t been redesigned in years. Both are relatively bare-bones, with no formatting options or ability to save and export your work. It‘s a stark contrast to Grammarly‘s desktop app, which seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Word and retains your formatting.

The web app is similarly lackluster. The layout is basic and unintuitive, making it harder than it should be to navigate between the different sections for grammar checking, plagiarism detection, and translation.

But the real kicker is that WhiteSmoke doesn‘t offer any browser extensions. That means there‘s no way to check your writing directly on websites like Gmail, WordPress, or Twitter. With Grammarly and ProWritingAid, you can install a plugin and get real-time grammar suggestions anywhere you write online. WhiteSmoke requires the clumsy extra step of copying your text into their web app, checking it, then pasting it back into your online editor.

In an age where we do so much writing directly in web browsers, this lack of integration is a major weakness. It‘s simply not as seamless to use WhiteSmoke in your daily workflow.

Plagiarism Checker Misses the Mark

For anyone who writes for school or work, plagiarism detection is a must-have feature. Passing off someone else‘s words as your own, even accidentally, can carry severe consequences. Most premium grammar checkers bundle plagiarism detection to help catch any inadvertent copying before it becomes a problem.

WhiteSmoke does offer a plagiarism checker as part of its suite of tools. However, my experience with it was underwhelming, to say the least.

First off, the plagiarism checker was extremely slow. Even with a short writing sample of a few hundred words, it often took several minutes to deliver results. I tried running a 2,000-word article through, and after two hours it still hadn‘t finished scanning. I eventually gave up. In comparison, Grammarly and ProWritingAid both returned plagiarism results within seconds, even for long documents.

The plagiarism checker was also wildly inaccurate, throwing a slew of false positives. It flagged common turns of phrase like "at the end of the day" and "in my opinion" as likely plagiarism, even though these aren‘t the kind of copied passages that would raise red flags.

With so many non-issues clogging up the report, identifying any real instances of plagiarism felt like finding a needle in a haystack. The tool seems more likely to induce panic than provide peace of mind.

WhiteSmoke‘s plagiarism checker also appears to have trouble with longer documents. On the desktop app, it caps out at scanning 10,000 characters at a time, or roughly 1,500 words. For reference, the average college essay is 1,500-5,000 words, while long-form articles and blog posts often clock in at 2,000+ words. Having to manually split a long document into multiple chunks for scanning is a huge inconvenience. Grammarly and ProWritingAid can both handle full-length documents with ease.

All in all, WhiteSmoke‘s plagiarism checker feels more like a tacked-on afterthought than a genuine value-add. It‘s too slow, too limited in scope, and too inaccurate to be relied upon for such a high-stakes issue as plagiarism. If checking originality is a priority for you, I‘d advise choosing a service that makes it a core competency.

Some Bright Spots

WhiteSmoke does have a few redeeming qualities. Its built-in dictionary and thesaurus are surprisingly robust and well-implemented. Whenever you click a word in your document, a handy sidebar appears with definitions, example sentences, and synonyms. It‘s great for finding just the right turn of phrase or double-checking how a word is used in context.

The thesaurus feature is a standout. It suggests relevant, properly-matched synonyms that you can swap in with a single click. It even offers "enrichment" suggestions, identifying related adjectives and adverbs you can add to punch up your descriptions. No more cycling through a bland series of "very + adjective" constructions.

Of course, no thesaurus is perfect, and WhiteSmoke‘s does occasionally serve up some awkward or irrelevant suggestions. But I found it genuinely helpful for honing my word choices and finding more evocative phrasing, more so than the synonym hints in other grammar checkers I‘ve used.

WhiteSmoke also deserves some credit for the simplicity of its interface. While I‘m not a fan of the dated design, the one-click correction functionality is intuitive. Some other grammar checkers make you hover for suggestions or click through multiple menus. WhiteSmoke puts its suggestions front-and-center, so you can speedily make a decision and move on.

Pricing and Value

WhiteSmoke is a premium, subscription-based service. It starts at $59.95 per year for the web-only Essential version, or $79.95 per year for Premium, which adds access to the desktop apps.

On the plus side, this is cheaper than the market-leading Grammarly Premium, which runs $139.95 per year. But I‘d argue that Grammarly justifies its higher price tag with significantly better grammar-checking accuracy, a cleaner interface, and valuable extras like tone detection.

ProWritingAid, another popular alternative, is price-competitive with WhiteSmoke, ranging from $70-$100 per year depending on your subscription length. And in my book, it delivers a lot more bang for your buck in terms of catching errors and offering in-depth feedback.

One notable downside to WhiteSmoke‘s pricing: there‘s no free version or free trial period. Grammarly and ProWritingAid both offer limited free plans that you can use indefinitely, or generous trial periods for their premium versions. This lets you test drive the product before committing hard-earned cash. With WhiteSmoke, you have to pay upfront for a year just to try it out, which feels like an unnecessarily big ask.

WhiteSmoke does offer a 7-day money-back guarantee – but I had to dig through the fine print on their website to even find mention of this policy. They don‘t exactly promote it front-and-center.

Looking Ahead: Can WhiteSmoke Catch Up?

WhiteSmoke has been in the grammar-checking game for a long time, but it feels like the product hasn‘t kept pace with the competition. With its underwhelming accuracy, clunky interface, and missing features like a browser extension, it‘s hard to justify choosing WhiteSmoke over alternatives like Grammarly or ProWritingAid.

That said, I don‘t think all hope is lost. WhiteSmoke has some promising foundational elements, like the strong thesaurus and unobtrusive correction workflow. With some refinement, those could be real selling points.

But to be a top contender in 2024 and beyond, WhiteSmoke needs a substantial overhaul. Here are some of the key areas for improvement:

• Significantly level up the grammar- and spell-checking engine to catch more errors and give more reliable suggestions. This is the backbone of the product and it needs to be rock-solid.
• Modernize the user interface on both web and desktop apps. Focus on a clean, intuitive design that makes it effortless to navigate and use all the features.
• Develop browser extensions so users can seamlessly proof their writing wherever they work online. This is table stakes for a modern grammar checker.
• Quicken and sharpen the plagiarism checker so it can efficiently scan full documents with minimal false positives. Explore bundling other writing aids like a readability score or tone detection.
• Consider adding a free plan or generous trial period. Make it as easy as possible for potential customers to experience the product‘s value before they buy.

The good news is that WhiteSmoke is rolling out a major update to its Windows desktop app in the near future, with a Mac version slated to follow. The company claims this will bring "next-level correction technology." But without more specifics on what‘s changing, it‘s hard to get too excited. I remain optimistic, but I‘ll believe it when I see it.

Bottom Line
As it stands now, it‘s hard for me to enthusiastically recommend WhiteSmoke. While it has some appealing elements, like the excellent thesaurus, it lags behind competitors in overall usability and effectiveness.

For a few dollars more, Grammarly delivers a much more polished, powerful, and user-friendly experience. ProWritingAid is in the same price ballpark and provides way more actionable feedback. And both offer free plans or trials so you can kick the tires before forking over your credit card.

If WhiteSmoke can close the gap with its upcoming product overhaul, it could be worth a second look. But for now, there are simply better options on the market for ensuring your writing is accurate and error-free.

Methodology
To thoroughly test WhiteSmoke for this review, I used the following process:

• Signed up for the Desktop Premium annual plan ($79.95/year) which includes access to the web, Windows, and Mac versions.
• Ran 5 writing samples of varying lengths through each version, noting types of errors caught, missed, and falsely flagged. Compared results to Grammarly Premium and ProWritingAid Premium.
• Tested plagiarism checker with writing samples containing intentional and accidental plagiarism. Evaluated speed, accuracy, and ability to handle longer documents.
• Used WhiteSmoke to draft and proof articles over the course of a week, judging overall user experience of interface and workflow.
• Referenced App Store reviews, Better Business Bureau complaints, and expert blogs to gauge common customer feedback and issues.

The opinions expressed in this article are my own, based on hands-on testing. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase through the links on this page. Learn more about how we conduct reviews at SoftwareHow.