Typing.com is a free typing platform that gives you quick and easy choices, a great budget option for those who need to learn type skills quickly and without denting your wallet. Typing.com, as the name suggests, is an online platform that gives lessons and activities in typing skills. The website uses Google Classroom to deliver classes, so you’ll need a google account in order to access the classes, however everything is offered for free and the benefit of Google Classrooms is a simple interface to declutter the whole process. Available to students, teachers, schools, and home-schoolers Typing.com is open to anyone, the basic package is totally free, though you’ll be subject to ads on the page. This alone grants it a spot on our round-up of the best typing software. We've also added it to our list of the best typing software for kids but, realistically, it's more suited to older students.
A great feature of Typing.com is the multilingual function. If you’re students are ready to learn Spanish, then there are plenty of activities for you to reinforce the learning experience with typing skills. No word yet if additional languages will be added in the future.
Typing.com: How it works
Using a personal Gmail account you sign in for free, choosing the option of teacher, student, or homeschooler. From there you’ll be taken to an easy to navigate webpage, with a handy tutorial. You’ll learn how to move around the site and be asked to fill out additional information, so you have access to the best parts of the Typing.com format. Once you’ve created a class, and added students, you can go to Google Classroom and access the lesson on hand. Overall, we found the website one of the easiest to navigate with clear links and everything decently explained. The programme themselves suffer a little from the gibberish they make students type. Other platforms on our typing guide, use familiar sentences or topic related schoolwork to teach typing skills, but Typing.com still relies on nonsensical sentences and letter clusters to teach – it can take longer to learn as you’re forever typing unfamiliar words.
The programme gives frequent certificates for completing each step, and engages learners with games, practice activities and eventually timed quizzes so you can keep track of everyone’s progress easily.
Typing.com: Cost
Typing.com is a free platform for everyone. The student site, which can be accessed from the main site doesn’t require students to sign up themselves, they can access a set number of typing activities for free without putting in a word of personal information, however without a designated account you won’t be able to save any progress.
The premium option on offer will give you an ad free experience, as well a quicker response time for customer support, as premium members get priority. The premium membership can cost upwards of $7.99. This cost covers one student for one year. You add additional students at extra cost for up to ten years, and for 30 students, for one year it's $104.99.
Typing.com: Customer support and User reviews
Typing.com has two support options for customer issues. There are three support boards for every kind of member that posts designated articles on common questions and issues, these FAQ’s are given their own step by step resolution pages already set out for you, weather you’re a student, or an educator, that way you can solve your own problems quickly and effectively without waiting for a customer service worker to get back to you.
If your issue is a little more complicated then you can send a message to the support team using a designated form online, and they will try to offer advice and solutions to everything from bug fixes to account upgrades.
Currently Typing.com does not have a live chat function, and this does hinder the speed at which you can get your issue resolved.
Whilst reviews themselves are pretty mixed, the community of Typing.com users give an average of 4/5 stars. Mostly there is praise for the clarity of the website, and its ease of use for a range of customers. “It is great to have a free typing tool that takes away all the bells and whistles”.
Should you try Typing.com
Typing.com is worth a shot, for sure. The interface is easy to use, and with a range of lessons available for free you aren’t set to lose anything by trying it out. The free option does have a limited number of lessons and activities that other software will beat, but that’s only if you’re willing to buy. As a free platform there isn’t much to dislike.
If you're looking to teach younger students to type, then we think they'll likely find Typing.com a bit dry. Try something like Mavis Beacon Keyboarding Kidz or Mickey's Typing Adventure instead (for younger kids).
