A Zety alternative, described honestly

You can write a whole resume on Zety for free and watch it take shape on screen. When you click download, you are asked to pay. That is the model, and it works because by then you have done the work and the file is the only thing standing between you and applying.

We do the same thing. Writing and previewing here costs nothing; exporting the PDF needs a plan. Any page that attacks Zety for this while running the same funnel is not worth your attention, so we are saying it first.

The first difference is the amount. Ours is $3 for a week or $5 for a month — and if you expect to touch your resume again in a year or two, $29 once and never again. A one-off option is the part the big builders do not offer, because recurring revenue is the point of their pricing.

The second is what happens when you stop paying attention. A subscription bought in a hurry during a job search renews on a cycle you are not thinking about any more, usually after you have found a job and forgotten the account exists. That is not a trick unique to Zety — it is how every subscription works — but a resume is a tool you need for a few weeks, which makes recurring billing a poor fit for what you are actually buying.

The third is the refund. Ours is seven days, on request, without a reason. Ask by email and the money goes back. We put that in writing because it is the cheapest possible way to prove the product is worth paying for — if it is not, we would rather you took the money back than told people we were a waste of it.

If you want to choose between dozens of designs, Zety has them and we have one. If you want your resume stored in an account you can open from another computer, it does that and we deliberately do not — our draft lives in your browser, which is private but also means clearing your browser data clears the draft.

It also writes suggested bullet points for you from a library by job title. Some people find that genuinely unblocking. We do not do it, because a resume assembled from phrases thousands of other applicants also used is a resume that reads like a template.

Whichever you pick, check the format before you send it anywhere. A resume can look immaculate and still arrive scrambled, because the first thing reading it is usually a parser rather than a person, and the two see very different documents.

Our resume checker reads a PDF in your browser and shows you the text a tracking system keeps. It is free, it works on a file from any builder including Zety’s, and it does not ask for an email address. If your current resume passes, you do not need to buy anything from anyone.