Have you ever been editing your content to find that the words are running together in your head? Authors and editors alike analyze and re-read texts repeatedly to weed out mistakes, and after time your brain can become overwhelmed. Reading the text aloud to see how the words flow is a tactic many people in these fields utilize. Speechify makes it possible for you to hear your writing aloud rather than reading it yourself, which makes it simpler for your mind to focus on seeing errors that are directly in front of you.
What Speechify is
Speechify is a multi-platform program using artificial intelligence (AI) voices to translate text into speech. The HD voices are one of the best features Speechify has to offer. From a distance, you can easily hear the voices, and you can alter the voice to suit your requirements. You can alter the reading’s pitch, tone, loudness, speed, and more. Instead of having to read the grammatical and readability errors yourself, you simply hear them. The ability to highlight the text while it is being read to you is another noteworthy feature. You can follow along with the text while highlighting the areas that require further attention as well as take notes within the software. Speechify also supports many languages. If you’d like, you can even translate across languages. The best part about Speechify is that it is a free program. There are premium features, but you can try them out for free first to see if you like them before deciding to pay for everything.
Competitors
Natural Reader and Murf are two large competitors for Speechify. With Natural Reader, you can turn written content from websites, ebooks, Word and PDF documents, and other types of written text into speech. There are 56 voices currently available in nine different languages, including American English, British English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. Natural Reader has a free plan as well.
Murf is Speechify’s largest competitor if you are looking for a tool to assist with your proofreading. Murf is not free, but it has a wide range of plans available. There are three different pricing options: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. A full set of AI tools are included with Murf. If you don’t think you have the correct tone or accent for a piece of audio content but would prefer not to use a voice actor, there is even a Voice Changer tool that allows you to record something before it is changed into an AI-generated voice. Time Syncing, Grammar Assistant, and Voice Editing are additional capabilities. Having a grammar-assisting tool within the software is what makes Murf such a threat to Speechify. Although, as an author or editor just looking to have your work read back to you, this may not be worth spending money on when there are free applications.
What Makes Speechify More Useful to Authors and Editors
There are many text-to-speech applications on the market. What sets Speechify apart is its free plan. They offer a 3-day free trial of everything they offer. Moreover, the highlighting and note-taking features within Speechify are ideal features for editing. With free grammar assisting tools such as Grammarly available, the need for a grammar assistant within a text-to-speech application is not necessarily needed. As an author or editor, all you need is Speechify’s free plan to significantly improve the quality of your work. Hearing the way the words flow and being able to point out mistakes that way can make all the difference. The note-taking and highlighting tools are certainly useful and make the premium plan worth it, but besides that, the voices are the only other thing that might entice you to purchase the premium plan. They have a wide array of voices available. Celebrity voices are mimicked on Speechify as well, which can be incredibly entertaining. However, for editing what sets Speechify apart is the fact that authors and editors get everything they need out of it for free.
Downsides to Speechify
You would assume that by purchasing the premium plan you would have unlimited access to all of the features Speechify has to offer. With premium voices, speechify has a cap of 150,000 words each month. You can only hear the typical voices after you reach that limit. If you are an author or editor who already does not necessarily need the premium option but bought it for the voice options, this could be potentially frustrating. Also, with the standard version, the user experience may be hampered by the pushy ads intended to persuade you to upgrade to the premium plan.
Overall Assessment
Speechify is simple to use and a great tool for revision. Yet aggressive advertising can be irritating for users of any app, and this one is no exception. The note-taking and highlighting features on the premium plan are quite helpful, and the voice options might be amusing. Although those tools can be useful, they aren’t absolutely necessary for text editing. So, overall, as an author or editor using this to weed out mistakes in your work, the free plan gives you what you need, a second voice reading your work back to you.