There are more and more customisable planner companies these days, 2 of my all time favorites are Golden Coil and Agendio.

Read more: 5 Planner Companies that will make a completely custom planner for you

Golden Coil’s website proclaims to be ‘the most customisable planner in the world.’ I think this is a very heavy exaggeration (and disagree with the claim), but they do offer a good customisable planner.

Agendio is the first customisable planner company I found that offered you the ability to customise everything including having some ability to design some of the pages (e.g. column widths, page titles etc.), choosing where extra pages are placed in the planner etc.

If you’re trying to choose between the two, I hope this post helps your decision-making!

Information in this post is current as of 2020.

Golden Coil versus Agendio: Which custom personalised planner is best?

Covers

Agendio

After I wrote that Agendio’s covers weren’t very nice in this review, they emailed saying they were aware they didn’t offer many cover options and were working on improving. Since then they’ve released a second cover option: hardcover with hidden wire binding… but there aren’t many more pattern covers in the coil bound style since that first review.

I’ve ordered planners in both cover versions and much prefer the coil bound, lay flat option.

Golden Coil

Golden Coil focuses more on the linen covers with just 1 solid colour, as well as some hardcovers with patterns (that I think are nicer than Agendio’s). They offer one cover type only: hardcover. It does feel more sturdy and luxurious than Agendio’s covers, but it makes the planner heavier (and expensive to ship).

Linen covers costs $2 extra (base cost for the planner $64) so I just opted for pattern cover.

Read more: Golden Coil Planner Review

Cover Winner: Golden Coil

I don’t know what it is about custom planner companies – they focus so much on the inside which is great but don’t forget the outside too! If I’m going to look at the cover for a year I want it to be pretty! And then you can usually only choose from pre-done color combinations in very limited patterns. Both planner companies should improve on this.

If I had to pick one, I’d say Golden Coil.

Binding Options

Agendio

Agendio offers 2 types of binding: coil bound and wire bound (the wire bound is concealed within the hardcover).

You can choose unpunched pages if you want to punch the pages yourself and add them to a discbound planner, or 3 hole punch them into a binder (they do offer ring bound punching too).

Golden Coil

Golden coil offer wire binding only. The pages lay flat.

Binding winner: Agendio

Weekly & Daily Spread options

Both companies offer so many weekly and daily layouts you’ll have a hard time choosing!

Agendio

Agendio allows you to choose from many base layouts and then customise even further to suit your needs. You can change things like: color, line spacing, line style (dashed, solid or dotted), font, heading text (e.g. to do this week, weekly goals or whatever other text you like), dates formatting, recurring tasks to appear on the page (e.g. if you do the same thing on the first Sunday of the month, weekly etc).

You can also send them a photo of a sketch or submit suggestions for layout ideas.

This is the first weekly planner I ordered from Agendio

You can choose to have a 4 page weekly spread too. I opted to add these 2 pages to the spread. I was able to choose the weekly habits, start day of the week for the habit tracker, circles instead of square checkboxes etc.

One of the more unique layouts I’ve also created with Agendio:

Custom Agendio Vertical Weekly Planner Review 

Golden Coil

Golden coil offer a variety of layouts (vertical, horizontal, horizontal 1 page weekly + notes) as well as many daily options. However you cannot customise the designs further.

This is the layout I ordered from Golden Coil

Page layouts Winner: Agendio

Monthly Calendar

Both companies allow you to enter important dates (birthdays, anniversaries or anything else you like) which they’ll automatically print on the calendars for you.

Agendio

Agendio offers both list style and the more common boxes for each day layout. I prefer a list style format. You can choose to skip the monthly calendar if you prefer.

Golden Coil

I couldn’t see an option to choose the monthly calendar format when I placed my order (I think it’s included by default). What arrived was the traditional box format (at least there are no split boxes – they add a 6th row instead).

Monthly calendar winner: Agendio

Extra Pages

Both companies offer plenty of add on pages, it really depends what you need as to what company is ‘best’. Both companies let you choose the location of the add on pages within the planner.

Agendio

Agendio has about the same amount of add on pages than Golden Coil but you can customise them. I’m talking column widths, you choose heading text etc.

Some of the extra pages they offer:

There’s also goals, reflection, objectives, life balance, goal achievement, review and goal tracker pages.

Golden Coil

Golden coil has a great variety of add on pages however they come as they are, you can’t customise them like you can in Agendio.

• Calendar – Annual overview, monthly calendars
• Food – Variety of meal planning layouts, recipe pages, kitchen conversions
• Health – Mood tracker, measurement tracker, baby chart (feeding, diaper etc.)
• Projects – Project planning, storyboard, social media, homework planner, freelance finances (invoicing tracker)
• Lifestyle – goals, budget, home care, travel, event planning, bucket list, reading, online orders, holiday crafting, password tracker
• Standard – To do, spreadsheet (like a workflow chart / student attendance or grades tracker), staff (music lines),  fillable list, dot, graph, lined, blank

My favorite add on page from Golden Coil

Add on pages winner: Tie

Customisation Features

There are too many features to list for each company. For full details see my reviews: Agendio and Golden Coil.

Here are some of the best customisation features (in my opinion):

Agendio allows you to customise

• When the planner starts
• Add recurring tasks (e.g. you set the frequency to monthly and they’ll print that routine task on every monthly spread)
• Add friend’s and family birthdays, public holidays
• Placement of the extra pages (add to the monthly spread, the front of the planner or the end of the planner)
• Ability to tweak the base layouts (at no extra cost)
• Full color printing – either the same color for the entire planner or different colors for each month (costs extra), or just black and white
• Perforated page corners (paid extra)
• Tabs cost $10 extra

Golden Coil allows you to customise:

• When the planner starts
• Upload a file of your contacts and add friend’s and family birthdays, public holidays
• Placement of the extra pages (add to the monthly spread, the front of the planner or the end of the planner)
• Many cover designs to choose from

I couldn’t find an option to add tabs to my Golden Coil planner.

Both companies don’t seem to include monthly dividers (the weekly spreads are printed directly on the back side of the monthly calendar pages).

Customisation Winner: Agendio

Page Size

This is obviously very much up to personal preference so there’s really no right or wrong, however Agendio offers more sizes to choose from.

Agendio

3 size options:

Golden Coil

Offers one size only at the moment (approx 7.5″ wide x 9.75″ high). I find this size is a bit too long (most planners these days are around 7″ wide x 9″ high).

Page Size Winner: Agendio (more options)

Price

Neither of these planners come cheap – you’re paying for full customisation! There is no set price for a planner – it depends on the cover you choose, how many inside pages, if you’re buying a daily or weekly planner etc. Since there are so many variables I’ll just tell you what I ordered and how much it cost to give you an idea.

Agendio

The base cost is shown in the screenshot above (varies depending on the page size). Extra pages cost 50c for 2 pages.

Total cost for my 12 month planner without too many extras was $59 USD (medium page size in color printing).

Golden Coil

From the Golden Coil website: Our planners and notebooks range in price from $62.00 – $79.60 (shipping/tax not included), depending on the number of pages inserted. Each planner or notebook starts at a base price of $62.00/$64.00 (Patterned cover vs. Linen/Leather/Designer cover) for 86 pages. Each additional page up to 242 pages is an additional $0.10.

This is what I ordered and this is how much it cost.

I started with a pattern cover $62

6 month planner = 86 planner pages

• Within the page limit = $62

12 month planner = 130 planner pages

• $62 for the first 82 pages
• Add $4.80 for the extra 48 pages to reach 130
• = $66.80

So if you want to keep it ‘cheap’, do a quarterly planner to test it out rather than buying a whole year.

When I was experimenting with the cost of a day to a page planner – the cost went up to $77 for 6 months.

Mine came to $53.55 for a 6 month planner (including a 15% off coupon for Black Friday) plus shipping. $10 shipping to the USA…. and $43 to Australia. All up this planner cost me $96.55! The price isn’t too bad if you’re in the USA but to get it to Australia… it’s far too expensive.

Price Winner: Agendio (cheaper)

Note that my 6 month Golden Coil planner cost more than a 12 month Agendio Planner (and I chose extra pages for both).

The Paper

The easiest way to judge paper is by doing a pen test, so here are the pen tests from each of my review posts:

Agendio

The paper of the planner is so smooth and nice to write on. I tried various balllpoint, gel, fine tip and marker tip pens – there was some ghosting on the back side of the page. I also did some highlighter and stamp swatches. The highlighters also had some ghosting and, as always, the MAMBI stamps bled through the page 🙁

My all time favorite pens, the Pilot Frixion erasable worked well 🙂

The Agendio website states their daily is printed on 90 GSM paper (as would be too thick otherwise). The weekly are printed on 105 GSM paper. This is quite thin. Most planners are usually 120 GSM thick. I find anything less than 140 GSM thick will usually have some ghosting or bleed through.

Golden Coil

The paper is thick and instead of smooth has a textured feel. As such there is some resistance when writing – all pens write ok on the paper but ballpoint pens glide across the paper smoother than fine tip pens.

Only the MAMBI stamps bled through the page (as always). There was no bleed through for any of the pens but there was heavy ghosting which I was surprised by as the paper feels thick.

I forgot to erase the Frixion pen before taking these photos. It does erase but due to the textured paper there’s some smudging – it feels like you’re ripping through the paper a bit when you erase. I don’t recommend using the Frixion pens in this planner.

 

The Golden Coil website states their paper is 80# Mohawk paper.

Paper Winner: Tie

Page Limits

Agendio

There are far too many customisation options (page size, daily, weekly months only, 4 page weekly) etc. to choose from to have just 1 number I can tell you that is the maximum number of pages allowed.

Golden Coil

Page limit winner: Tie

Countries they ship to

Both companies are USA based and for whatever reason I don’t understand, some USA planner companies don’t even ship internationally! These 2 companies do, but only to certain countries.

Agendio

Their website states they ship to these countries: USA, Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the UK.

Golden Coil

At the time of writing this, Golden Coil ship to:

• United States
• Australia
• Canada
• UK
• Malaysia
• Taiwan
• Israel
• Germany
• France

Shipping CountriesWinner: Agendio

Shipping Cost

Shipping will vary depending on what cover you choose (hardcover is more expensive to ship), as well as how many add on pages you select. Here are the prices (in USD) I paid for you to use as a guide. 

Agendio

Their website states $9 fixed price shipping to the USA and Canada. Shipping to other destinations depends on all the add ons, cover etc. but expect to pay between $15 and $50.

Golden Coil

For the 6 month hardcover planner I made with Golden Coil it said $10 shipping to the USA…. and $43 to Australia!!

Shipping Cost Winner: Agendio

Time to create the planner

This may or may not matter to you. For me, i don’t mind it taking a long time to make a planner if it means I get to customise and it takes longer because there are so many options to choose from.

Agendio

I spent a good few hours making my first custom Agendio planner going through all the customisable options and adding extra pages.

Golden Coil

Including taking screenshots and making notes for my review in this post, it took 1 hour. Without doing that would probably take 30 min which is quite quick for a completely custom planner.

Time to create planner winner: Golden Coil (quicker)

Processing and shipping times

Agendio

Their website states shipping time varies depending on the time of year. For the USA and Canada, expect to receive your planner between 1 and 4 weeks of ordering.

International shipping is tracked via USPS and usually takes 2 to 5 weeks.

Both times I’ve placed an order with Agendio (around Black Friday sales time), the planner arrived here in Australia within that timeframe.

Golden Coil

Their website states orders ship between 5 and 6 business days. Mine took a little longer than that as I ordered during Black Friday sales.

Processing times winner: Tie

Pros & Cons

There are too many pros and cons of each planner to list here. I’ve done detailed lists in my review posts for each planner which I recommend you have a read of before making your final decision.

My Golden Coil Planner Review in this post.

My Agendio planner review in this post.

Final Verdict

Overall, I think the Agendio Planner (referral link) is better BUT this is largely based on my personal preference – both companies have nice planners!

The reason I prefer Agendio is that there are more page layout options to choose from and you can customise the layouts of those pages, add your own headings, even choose line spacing. The covers definitely need improvement but I prefer coil bound with the clear plastic cover that Agendio offers (lighter than Golden Coil’s hardcover). There are much more options to create the exact layout you need e.g. a 4 page weekly spread.

Agendio’s paper is also bright white and smooth to write on, unlike Golden Coil’s yellow-ish paper.

More custom planner reviews

• Creating a custom recipe book with Plum Paper
• 5 Planner Companies that will make a completely custom planner for you
• Personal Planner Review (affordable, completely customisable weekly planner)

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