The program suite was developed by the British linguist Mike Scott at the University of Liverpool and released as version 1.0 in 1996.
It was based on MicroConcord co-developed by Mike Scott and Tim Johns, published by Oxford University Press in 1993.
WordSmith is a download-only product which is registered by entering a code costing 50 pounds sterling for a single user license.
The core areas of the software package includes three modules: Each of the modules offers a number of other features in relation to the text corpus or text being analysed.
WordSmith Tools is - along with several other software products similar in nature - an internationally popular program for the work based on corpus-linguistic methodology.