PurpleTrail Planner Review

Can you believe Back to School season is right around the corner? I feel like every year back to school season starts earlier and earlier. I swear my Target started putting out back-to-school stuff even before kids were out of school!

While my toddler’s still a little too young to really get into the back-to-school shopping, I do admit I love looking at all the backpacks, school supplies, and planners. It brings me back to my school days and memories of the excitement of doing back-to-school shopping.

One of my favorite parts of back-to-school shopping was picking out my planner. Every year I’d pick out a new one, and I think that early experience gave me the planner bug! Planners have been a big part of my life and continue to be. I’m old school and still love writing down my to-dos, meal plans, lists, etc. so planners really appeal to me.

With Baby #2 soon to arrive, I’ve been on a hunt for a postpartum planner – not only one that could track my health and fitness, but also one that could help me keep track of the baby. I was so excited when PurpleTrail reached out and invited me to try out one of their custom planners! In this review, I’ll share with you my experience in creating my own fitness planner, the design process, and my experience with the finished planner.

Disclosure: PurpleTrail provided me with a free custom planner but all opinions are my own.

What is PurpleTrail?

PurpleTrail is an online company that specializes in affordable planners, personalized cards, gifts, and stationery. Everything they make is completely customized by you! They walk you through the easy design process so you can create exactly what you want.

Planner Design Process

When I logged onto Purple Trail‘s website, it brought me to a page where I could choose which type of planner I wanted to make. They had a ton of options like:

• Everyday Planners
• Mom Planners
• Fitness Planners
• Meal Planners
• Teacher Planners
• Student Planners
• Homeschool Planners
• Content Planners
• Business Planners (like hairstylist planners, real estate planners, etc.)
• Wedding Planners
• Mom-to-be Planners
• and more!

I knew I wanted the main goal of my planner to be fitness-focused so I decided to choose the Fitness Planner theme. Once I selected my planner’s main theme, I was brought to a page where I could select the cover.

There were quite a few options to choose from – from motivational phrases to cute designs. I decided to keep mine simple and went with the Abstract Nature Pattern. Once I selected the cover design, I was able to start customizing!

Planner Size and Cover Design

The first step of customizing my planner was designing my cover. After selecting my cover design, I was able to choose between which size planner I wanted (my options were 6×8″ or 8.5×11″) and what type of cover I wanted: synthetic, laminate, or hardcover.

I decided to go with an 8.5×11″ planner because I have large handwriting so need all the space I can get 🙂

For covers, I went back and forth between getting a synthetic or hardcover but ultimately decided to do the synthetic. While I like how durable hardcovers can be, sometimes with planners, it can be tough to open the planner completely, especially on the first few pages.

There was also an option to customize the cover to add images, artwork, personalize with your name, and more. I decided to keep mine simple and stuck with just the artwork.

Inside Page Options

The next step to designing your planner was deciding how the inside pages should look. The design tool had me decide if I wanted the pages to be in color or black and white (I like that when you click on each of these options the sample pages are updated so you could actually see how all the pages would look). I decided to go with the color theme – I couldn’t select which colors went with which months, but I liked the preset ones PurpleTrail provided so that wasn’t a big deal to me.

After selecting the page color, the design tool lets me choose which month I wanted my planner to begin and how long to make my planner. I absolutely loved this feature because initially, I was nervous the planner would default to either an academic calendar or a traditional calendar. I want my planner to be something I can use postpartum, so wanted to have it start in September or October.

I decided to be ambitious and have my planner start in September (come on Baby!) and decided just to do 12 months so the planner didn’t get too bulky. They did have options to make the planner as short as 6 months all the way out to 18 months.

Extra Planner Add-ons and Planner Stickers

Now that my planner was basically complete, it was time to add on different add ons and stickers!

Add-Ons

There were a ton of Planner add-ons to choose from! There were typical page add-ons like password trackers, to-do lists, and then there were full sections like habit trackers, nutrition planners, party planners, etc.

I originally thought about adding in the nutrition part but realized the info in there was somewhat similar to what I already had in my fitness planner. I decided to do the habit tracker and baby tracker and keepsake.

Both of these add-ons I selected were entire sections that would be added to my planner. The Habit tracker was 24 pages of habit trackers and the baby tracker was 20 pages – with the front being important info, dates, logs, and the end a monthly keepsake tracker that goes up to 12 months.

Stickers

PurpleTrail also has stickers you can add-on to decorate your planner. Most of the sticker sets looked more geared towards the Everyday Planners so I decided to skip picking any out. I might go back and order the llama ones later though because they looked so cute.

Extras

There was also an option to add a folder to the planner which I decided to do. After I clicked next, there were extra add-ons like pens, bookmarks, personalized notebooks but I decided to hold off on adding those for now.

PurpleTrail Planner Review

After I was done customizing my planner, I was able to check out with my custom planner. The price of the planners varies depending on the customizations made, and with all the ones that I did my planner ended up being about $50. This is a little less than I’ve paid in the past for planners like the Erin Condren one, so I was extremely happy to see that my customized planner was so affordable.

Once I checked out I got an e-mail confirmation of my order and after about a day or two, I got a notification that my planner was created and shipped! The shipping was super fast and I ended up getting my planner in less than a week of ordering.

When my planner arrived, I fell in love with it instantly! The colors looked exactly like the ones I saw on my computer screen and it was exactly what I wanted!

The only downside was the add-ons were added to the back of the planner, instead of being mixed in. This isn’t a huge deal but it would’ve been nice to have my habit planner pages mixed into the regular monthly sections, instead of in the back on its own.

Overall, I really love my PurpleTrail planner. I liked how easy the design process was and that the finished product looked exactly like what I had designed. I was also really impressed with the quality and loved how fast the planner arrived!

Related Post: Erin Condren Softbound Planner Review

PurpleTrail vs Happy Planner Fitness Edition

In the past, I had used a Happy Planner Fitness Edition I picked up from Michael’s to track my workouts, and I much prefer the PurpleTrail version. The Happy Planner tends to be more generic (not surprisingly) and basic.

The PurpleTrail Fitness Planner is way more detailed and I prefer the overall layout of the pages. The pages have a section for me to write in my workouts (or even to-dos, daily plans, etc.), a section for meal planning, water tracking as well as measurements. I also like that I was able to add on extra trackers like my habit tracker.

Where to Buy a PurpleTrail Planner

PurpleTrail Planners can be purchased directly through their website here.

PurpleTrail Promo Code

Use the code GET15OFF to get 15% off your purchase! Click here to order!

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a new planner, I highly recommend checking out PurpleTrail. The planners are high quality and can be completely customized to whatever type of planner you want. It’s also really impressive with how customizable these planners are they’re also super affordable!

Ready to order? Click Here to Order Your Custom Planner!