Every worthwhile AI writing tool is now good enough that the choice barely matters, and any article ranking them by feature was out of date the month after it was published. What does not go out of date is how to pick: take one piece of writing you do every week, run it through two of them with the same brief, and keep whichever you edit less.
Why will this article not give you a ranked list with prices?
Because a ranked list is the least useful and fastest-rotting thing we could publish. These products ship changes monthly, reprice their tiers, and swap the underlying models. A page that told you last quarter's winner at last quarter's price is worse than one that tells you how to decide, because it invites you to trust a stale answer.
Check the provider's own pricing page for the current figure. That is not a dodge — it is the only advice that stays correct.
What are the categories, and what is each actually for?
| Category | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| General assistants | Drafting, restructuring, tone-matching, summarising | Priced per person, per month — five people is five subscriptions |
| SEO writing tools | Briefs, outlines, competitor gap analysis | Optimising for a formula produces text nobody wants to read |
| Grammar and style checkers | The last pass before publishing | They flatten voice if you accept every suggestion |
| Bulk content generators | Very little, honestly | This is what Google's scaled-content-abuse guidance targets |
| A business AI system | Writing that has to happen without you | A different purchase — priced per business, not per seat |
How should a South African business choose?
Four things that actually differ, in the order they will bite you:
- Does it write in your English? Most of these default to American spelling and American idiom. If you publish in South African English, check how much you are correcting on every draft — that is your real cost.
- Are you paying in dollars? Nearly all of them price in USD, so your monthly cost moves with the rand. Budget for the bad months, not the good ones.
- How many seats do you actually need? Per-person pricing is fine for two people and expensive for ten.
- Does it need to know your business? This is the question that decides whether a writing tool is even the right category.
When is a writing tool the wrong purchase entirely?
When the work has to happen while you are not there. A subscription helps you write faster — you paste in the context, you read the output, you decide. It does not answer the customer who arrived on your website at 21:40 and left because nobody did, it does not know your prices, and it does not write into your calendar.
That is a different product with a different shape: trained on your own content, connected to your systems, and priced for the business rather than the seat. Our Website Chatbot starts at R299 a month for the whole business, and the point is not that it writes better — it is that it is there when you are not.
What about AI-written content and Google?
Google does not penalise content for being AI-assisted; it penalises content made primarily to rank rather than to help, which is a statement about intent and not about authorship. The practical test has not changed: could a reader who knows the subject tell it was written by somebody who also knows it? Our piece on AI content and Google rankings goes through what actually gets sites into trouble.
Do not choose on a feature table. Take one real task, run it through two tools with the same brief, and keep the one whose output you edit less. That takes an afternoon and beats a week of reading comparisons.
What is the shortest version?
Pick one general assistant, pay for one seat, and use it for drafting and structuring. Supply the facts, the prices and the local knowledge yourself, because that is the half no tool has. And keep the question of writing faster separate from the question of work happening without you — they look similar and they are not the same purchase.