Moreover, there’s something revolutionar and efficient about this service used to take pride of place among our student dreams, along with a few other writing services that would be easily accessible for students some day. But when it comes to text-scanning writing enhancement tools, we have yet to see a good all-rounder that would be free to use. Is this one Checker solution exactly what we’ve been waiting for? Let’s find out!
1Checker Design and First Impression: Confusing
We are usually quite skeptical about any free options offered to students, because there’s often a hidden catch or a significant downside to those. The cons may range from a number of inconveniences to unauthorized use of personal information. The hidden catches are mostly limited in functionality – or inconvenience-based, compelling the users to pay for premium versions or memberships. However, 1Checker doesn’t give you any of that ‘limited checks’ or ‘consider upgrading’ stuff. As a service that was created with students in mind, 1Checker proudly states its mission is always a free provion of proofreading.
1Checker’s claim to fame is the software that has a ‘brain’ of its own, created by means of the latest research in contextual learning methodology. So we’d be excused for expecting some high-tech, edgy or funky web design, but to our great disappointment, it is nondescript and primitive.
We’d actually love to call this design minimalistic or even nostalgic, as the 1Checker website does remind us of the days when web design options were limited. But it just creates this ‘couldn’t care less’ vibe and an impression of an outdated, abandoned site.
The only elements that may be considered visually appealing are those small pictures found at the bottom of the landing page. But both of them are irrelevant and misleading though. One page inquires if we have a problem and suggests that we should seek help (is this an academic or a wellbeing service?), but displays an Error 404 message when clicked on. The other welcomes us and offers to take a tour of the site. Sure, we’d love a tour, who wouldn’t? While expecting a click-worthy result, we are taken to the FAQ section. We didn’t intend to be picky visitors, but we didn’t find that FAQ tour idea interesting or informative.
Anyway, we proceed to registration to give this service a try. There are two options to choose from: registering with an email or Facebook. Unfortunately, the sign-up trick with Facebook doesn’t work.
We don’t know what students are supposed to understand from this text, but to us, it looks more like a typical ‘It’s complicated’ status. Well, we don’t mind signing up with email, which is also easy and fast. However, it is quite surprising that the process of creating such an account doesn’t require an email verification step, which means we could paste just about anything in the email field. This makes registration pointless, but there is no way to try the 1Checker service without signing up.
1Checker Testimonials and Quality Assurances: Exaggerated
‘Pay nothing’ is a great selling point, but is the quality worth your time? In fact, the service even admits it isn’t perfect yet, and mentions that the 1Checker software and the AI technology it is powered by may still need improvement. Some 1Checker reviews by customers suggest they were happy with the results and everything ran smoothly. Others were disappointed with the 1Checker quality as well as functionality, especially when some correct words were flagged as incorrect, while the obvious errors were slipping under the radar.
Now we are going to take a few snippets of texts written by an ESL student who obviously struggles with punctuation and word choice. By running these through 1Checker, we’ll see if it can polish her writing and detect context-related errors as effectively as it promises.
We are certainly not impressed by these results, as one shouldn’t remind a view but remember or recall it, and feed the birds from one’s hands. That’s to name just a few things that could have been highlighted if the miraculous one Checker was really as cool as described. However, the matter of our greater concern is the absence of punctuation suggestions, which is also illustrated by the next sample:
The flattering thing is that according to the 1Checker report, the vocabulary is outstanding and the structure exceeds expectations. Students can probably use this service just to be praised for their writing, nothing else.
Types of Services Offered by 1Checker
The proofreading platform claims to expand its potential beyond the standard spelling, stylistic and grammar check, as it was initially aimed at picking up context-related issues and providing vocabulary enrichment suggestions. 1Checker offers a variety of download options for Windows, Mac, Windows 8, as well as Word and Outlook plugins. You can also use the online version, uploading the documents or copying and pasting your text into the online scan field. Click on the ‘Review’ will highlight your errors and display suggestions that you can choose to apply or ignore. There are also some customizable document templates available that students may find handy.
1Checker Payment Methods and Safety: Dubious
1Checker doesn’t support any payment methods as it doesn’t require payment. The proofreading service is free for all users. As for safety, there is a vague statement on the Privacy Policy page that mentions 1Checker using multi-level security measures, such as firewalls and data encryption to protect the customers’ personal information from unauthorized access. However, no details are provided as to what technologies and methods are used, or how reliable and advanced they are. Therefore, this website can’t be considered safe to use.
Pricing: Why Is 1Checker Free?
Naturally, such questions are coming from students who understand that most websites offer some free stuff because they show ads or have many paid services. Keeping the good things free isn’t that easy. In other words, if the user doesn’t pay for them, someone else has to. 1Checker provides an answer in the FAQ section, stating that it offers consulting services and automated solutions for enterprises and educational institutions. Therefore, the company can keep the proofreading software free for public access and download. So we have to assume there are some paid services and business solutions developed by the 1Checker team, but there is no information that could give us an idea of what they are, and how popular or expensive they may be.
1Checker Delivery Time: Quite Fast
1Checker proofreading platform works fast, even faster than many other similar text-editing services. This is very convenient when you have a short text or just a few paragraphs or sentences to check. Still, it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever be in a situation where speed is more important than accuracy.
Unfortunately, 1Checker accuracy isn’t that impressive, while its delivery time simply depends on the size of the text. There’s another strange thing we noticed – we were constantly logged out every few minutes when using this proofreading platform. So if you decide to multitask or grab a snack, work on another text, check some messages, etc., you’ll have to log back in repeatedly. Whether that’s a glitch or a security measure, it’s quite annoying. Brief session expiration periods may be common for websites that involve handling sensitive data, but this is a weird and irrelevant thing to run into a service that doesn’t take safety seriously.
1Checker Guarantees: Limited
Although the 1Checker developers claim the team keeps working on the software upgrades and improvements, it doesn’t resort to claiming that the service functions in the experimental mode only. While such claims would justify the limited functionality and responsibility, there aren’t any. So it is only natural for the customers to expect some guarantees from the proofreading platform they upload their content to. However, 1Checker doesn’t provide any guarantees to assure it keeps all the user information confidential. Plus, it doesn’t store it or use it in any way other than for analyzing the most common mistakes flagged in the texts, with the sole purpose of improving the scanning algorithms.
1Checker Customer Support: Questionable
1Checker doesn’t have a standard customer support service or even an online contact form. There’s only an email address for any inquiries. However, it looks like the Help/Feedback button on the FAQ page may have been functional before. It is disabled now, adding to that impression of an abandoned website that we find quite discouraging.
Pros and Cons of 1Checker Proofreading Platform
Pros:
- remains free of charge for many years
- does not limit the number of checks
- can be downloaded or used as an online tool
- offers Microsoft and Outlook plugins
- does not store uploaded content in any databases
Cons:
- outdated and confusing website design
- limited functionality
- low accuracy
- no solid data protection methods or guarantees
- poor customer support
- no recent software updates
Conclusion
Unfortunately, 1Checker fails to evaluate punctuation, consistency and verb tenses, regardless of what it promises, and it also flags words that are used correctly. Despite the proud statements that more powerful and accurate versions were on the way, these didn’t make it into the service for some reason. According to the Release History section, there have been no updates since 2017. At present, 1Checker looks like an aborted project with great estimated potential but little actual significance.The creators of 1Checker must have given up on their ‘universal soldier’ as it hasn’t lived up to their dreams or anyone else’s expectations. The idea of creating an efficient and free tool was awesome, but something hasn’t worked out as planned. So it will probably take a few more years for the AI algorithms to become fluent in Natural Language Processing. We were certainly eager to believe we had this at our fingertips. Just not yet, but we are looking forward to the day when it becomes possible.
FAQ
What is 1Checker?
1Checker is a free online platform that offers proofreading and writing enhancement services, suggesting an innovative approach to standard grammar and spell checks based on AI algorithms.
Is 1Checker legit?
1Checker is legit, just as most proofreading services and similar text-scanning websites. However, it doesn’t offer sufficient quality results – that’s why few users are satisfied with 1Checker services.
How much does 1Checker cost?
1Checker is free and claims it will always be free, but the quality and accuracy of its results are poor, so it is not the best choice for proofreading.
Is 1Checker scam?
1Checker is not a scam, and it does not require any payments or pushing you into using paid services.
Is 1Checker safe?
The 1Checker website doesn’t feature any SSL encryption or specify any other methods and technologies used for customer data protection, so it can’t be deemed safe to use. According to the 1Checker Privacy Policy, sinceperfect ‘security’ is nonexistent on the Internet, the service can’t offer any guarantees to the user.
Are there 1Checker discounts?
Since 1Checker is a free service, it does not feature any special offers or discounts.
Chief Editor
William Hill
William has been working in the essay writing industry for the last decade, helping high school and college students to find perfect writing companies that meet their needs. He is fond of content creation, web writing, and everything linked to digital marketing.
