Which is Cheaper: DIY Printable Planners or Pre-Printed & Assembled Planners?

If you’re part of the planner community you’ve probably had this debate before: which is cheaper? Diy printable planners that you print at home versus pre-printed and assembled planners?

Let’s do a cost comparison:

Let’s say you want your planner to have:

• 104 weekly planning pages (2 page weekly spread so 52 pages with double sided printing for each of your weekly planner pages)
• 48 monthly planning pages (2 page monthly spread so 12 pages with double sided printing for each month)
• 10 notes pages
• 10 list pages
• 10 extra pages (e.g. bucket list, goal setting, annual planning, birthdays/important dates calendar, wish list etc.)
• Front Cover
• Back Cover
• 13 Dividers (1 for each month plus miscellaneous)

= 197 pages (but let’s round up to 200 pages)

 DIY: Printing a digital planner at home:

You can purchase digital (printable) planners from numerous places on Etsy including my printables shop! (#shameless self promotion).

My printer takes 5 ink cartridges which I can purchase for $13 including shipping off eBay (buy the non-genuine ink cartridges, they cost wayyyy less than the genuine ink cartridges but I’ve found they still print at the same print quality).

I buy printer paper for $3.50 for 500 sheets.

Let’s say:

• Printing an entire planner uses one of each of my ink cartridges (so 5 ink cartridges in total)
• Half a ream of paper
• And I want 12 dividers (1 for each month plus a miscellaneous divider)

Total cost of printing at home (DIY)

= $13 for ink cartridges + $1.75 for half a ream of paper + allow $5 for laminating the front cover and 13 dividers

= $19.75

I purchased a laminating machine for $30 and laminating sheet refills were around $7 for 25 sheets (approx. $0.30 per sheet) – I bought both the machine and sheets from Kmart. This is a one-off investment and because I will be printing and making my own planner for years to come, I considered the cost worthwhile.

To have pages spiral bound usually costs around $5. If you live in Australia (like I do), Officeworks can spiral bind the pages for you. If you like in the USA, try Staples or Office Depot.

If you want to use the pages in a binder, binders usually cost around $5. Amazon has white binders or colored binders (pink, green, purple, blue etc.) – I recommend getting the clear-view ones so you can add a pretty cover to the front!

Another option is the Arc planner system. I explain why I use (and prefer) the Arc planner is this blog post.

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Printing a digital/printable planner through a print service:  

There are numerous places that offer affordable printing (online and physical stores) including:

– Officeworks (Australia)
– Office Depot (USA)
– Staples (USA)

They usually charge around $0.15 per single-sided page (in color) and $0.02 to $0.10 per single-sided page (black and white).

If you’re interested in more tutorials about making your own printables, I have an entire ecourse filled with tutorials on How to Make Printables in Photoshop.

PRINT AND SHIP WEBSITES 

Like the printables but don’t have a printer and don’t live near an office supply store? Here is a list of websites that will print the pages for you, and ship them to your door. Most of these places will also print larger than letter size or A4 if you are printing one of the enlarged calendars. Most will also do spiral binding if you would like to bind pages into a notebook, and some do notepad printing e.g. if you want to make a daily planner notepad, grocery list notepad, to do list notepad etc.

– Best Value Copy (USA only)
– Ship & Print Place (USA only)
– Vistaprint (USA, Australia & UK)
– Staples (USA)

This is not an exhaustive list – I’m sure there are many more office supply stores and online print and ship companies near you – a quick Google search should bring up plenty!

PRINT IN STORE

I have had some customers email me saying Fed Ex (USA only) and Office Depot (USA only) will not allow printables to be uploaded and printed, and that you need to go into the physical store and show them the print release form before they will print the files. Staples can also print the pages for you in store. If you’ve purchased on of mine, you can download my print release form here (it’s free just add to cart and checkout) from my online store.

FULL COLOR (from Best Value Copy)

Best Value Copy does color printing for 9c per page:

= 200 pages x $0.09

= $18

Allow $5 for laminating front and back covers

Allow another $5 for spiral binding

Total Cost = $28

 

BLACK AND WHITE (from Best Value Copy)

Best Value Copy does black and white printing for 2.5c per page:

= 200 pages x $0.025

= $5

Allow $5 for laminating front and back covers

Allow another $5 for spiral binding

Total Cost = $15

 

Shipping is free when you spend $125, otherwise it is estimated based on your location. Best Value Copy print and ship to USA addresses only. If you live in Australia like I do, I recommend Officeworks.

Printed Planners

I did a detailed comparison of 9 of the most popular printed and pre-assembled planners in this blog post. These planners usually range from $30 to $60 plus shipping (usually $10 to the USA and $20 – $40 to international locations).

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So which is cheaper?

Printable (DIY) planners are cheaper. Printing a planner at home with my own printer costs me about $20. Printing through a print and ship website costs around $15 – $30.

BUT it depends what sort of planner you want. If you want a fully customisable planner where you choose the page order, can purchase weekly, monthly or daily page layouts that suits your exact needs, where you can choose what extra pages you add e.g. meal planners, password logs, lists, as many notes pages as you like etc. then I recommend a printable planner.

The cost of print and ship websites is very affordable but if you intend to do a lot of printing at home then purchasing a printer is a worthwhile investment.

At the same time, if you really like one of the printed and pre-assembled planners and it meets all your requirements for a planner, then purchase a pre-printed and assembled planer.

Basically what I’m saying is that cost is only one factor in your decision about which planner to purchase!

I hope you found this post helpful – if there are any printing companies you use which I didn’t mention in this post please let me know in the comments below 🙂 While I print my planner pages at home I do use print companies for larger printables such as wall calendars. I shared a free 16 x 20″ annual planner which you may be interested in, in this blog post.

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Other blog posts that may interest you:

• Editable planner covers (or binder covers/notebook covers)
• How to make a personalised Erin Condren planner cover
• How to make a monogram computer wallpaper for FREE using Canva (Video Tutorial
• My 2015 planner (I’m using the same planner for 2016)