About Natively
The story behind the tool
Stepan Mikhailyuk
Founder & Developer
For over 10 years, I've been working in tech and communicating with colleagues around the world, mostly through text. Russian is my native language, and while I communicate in English daily, I never fully mastered it. I often find myself struggling to write clear, concise responses.
I also have mild dyslexia, which causes me to swap letters without noticing unless I read character by character. One day, while reviewing my old Slack messages from 2-3 years ago, I was shocked by how many obvious mistakes I had made. Then I checked my recent messages — same story. I still make the same small errors, even though I know the rules.
The Problem with Existing Tools
I've tried many paid and free tools. Most of them highlight every mistake, expecting me to fix them one by one — word by word, sentence by sentence. That's great for learning, but when I'm quickly replying in a chat, I just want my text to be correct and natural-sounding.
ChatGPT actually handles this well, but it requires constant tab-switching, copy-pasting back and forth. It's distracting. Plus, it's conversational — sometimes it asks questions, and you accidentally copy those along with your corrected text.
Tools like Grammarly focus on grammar checking, not on making text sound native. While recent versions added text rewriting, the results weren't always what I needed — and the subscription costs $12/month.
Why I Built Natively
I wanted to solve all these problems: fix text with one click, right where I type it. No copy-pasting, no tab-switching, no iterative corrections. Just natural, native-sounding text.
I used Natively myself for several months to improve my messages in Slack, Jira, Gmail — even Russian texts (I make typos and miss commas there too). When I realized how much it helped me, I decided to share it with others.
There are millions of people worldwide who communicate in a foreign language for work. Natively makes their communication easier.
Pricing Philosophy
The free version of Natively works well for its core function. The only limitation is that AI-powered text analysis requires large language models, which cost money to run. Unlike simple grammar checks that can run instantly on any old laptop, making text sound native requires real computational power.
That's why I can't offer unlimited free usage. But I've made the prices 2-3x lower than competitors. As more users join, I'll be able to offer even better rates.