Ultius

Ultius states that it has been providing academic and business writing for several years. We have been able to find customer reviews on the web that go back about four years. In preparing this review, we focused primarily on dissertation services that the company offers. We reviewed the website content and customer testimonials; we selected several samples and blog posts to read; we looked at reviews of Ultius that customers have posted on the web; and we ordered a dissertation literature review ourselves. All of these elements have been included in our Ultius review.

Website Quality

The website is well-organized, with links for writing, editing, business writing, pricing, blog and “explore.” They provide information specific to dissertations by clicking the appropriate link in the dropdown menu under “writing.” Grad students an order an entire dissertation or any chapter, with as short a deadline as eight hours. We found this odd – a full dissertation in a matter of hours?

The section in dissertations spoke to the fact that only American writers with backgrounds in writing dissertations would be used for these projects, and that the company has produced 100’s of dissertations. It went on to speak of the specific parts of a dissertation that it could produce, including abstracts, methodology, and “executive summaries.” This raised a red flag immediately, for dissertations do not have executive summaries – business plans do.

Quality of Products and Services

Once the dissertation information was provided, potential customers were directed to “samples.” Unfortunately, these samples were all basic research papers, not dissertations, or even parts of dissertations. It was therefore impossible for us to determine quality of Ultius writing for dissertations from these samples. In fact, we could not find any samples of even parts of a dissertation.

We did, however, look at comments and feedback provided on the web by customers. Only a few had ordered chapters of dissertations, and they were disappointed with the results. They had complaints about the resources being far too elementary for a dissertation (secondary sources) and source materials that were not current and relevant in literature reviews. Those who ordered other sections/chapters, such as methodology, were also not happy with the results. Methodologies were too simplistic and would not gather the data that was needed for a viable scholarly research study.

We ordered a literature review in the field of education and provided a very specific topic. Unfortunately, the review was far too simplistic and did not cite important research studies that had been completed on the topic.

Contact with Customer Support: Customer support is available by phone, chat, and email. We contacted the department by phone and live chat. We were told in both instances, that a full dissertation could be completed within 7 days or less, even when original research was involved. This is just not possible.

Our conclusion after all of this is that the Ultius writing service may not really understand what a dissertation is.

Prices and Discounts

New customers are afforded a 15% discount on their firs order, along with a promo code to insert on the order form. We were unable to locate any other discount offers on the website. When we asked customer support about longer-term discounts, we were told that we could request them for large orders.

Prices range from $16.50/page for high school work with a 60-day deadline to $72/page for Ph.D. work with an 8-hour deadline. These are high for the industry.

Extras

These are not listed specifically; however, we are assuming that the title and bibliography page at least are free, if not the table of contents and outline.

Conclusion

Ultius may do well, when it comes to other types of academic writing. The samples we reviewed were about average, with some distinct language errors that hinted of ESL writing. As far as dissertations area concerned, however, the company is promising the impossible by stating it can produce a full dissertation in just a few days. Further, it does not have the correct terminology for the types of sections/chapters that are normally in a dissertation.

We conclude that Ultius is not a good choice for dissertation work. Ultius reviews from other customers support this opinion.