Zinnia - Planner & Journal Reviews

by Timusernameistaken

I really want to love Zinnia, but the price is just pure pure greed. Before anyone says the nonsense “go to a store and buy all the materials required to bullet journal it’s cheaper” , yeah, that’s the point, it’s digital so that I DONT have to pay for all that. Plus it’s not cheaper actually.
Canva a good SaaS and is still cheaper, or free. There isn’t much you an do with this free. I’m not saying “developers shouldn’t get paid/profit off their work” either, but $120 a year is stupid and greedy. I’m not going to pay a phone app the same as my Netflix subscription 😂 maybe try an AD SUPPORTED FREE VERSION? Then charge to remove the ads

Just look at how many user GoodNotes has vs this, and you will seee just how many people you are losing because of the greed. While you can’t see exact downloads, reviews is a good way to get an idea how many more users. 141,000 reviews vs 12,000. They are #1 in App Store. Even reviews prob only accounts for 25% of actual downloads. Lower the price much much lower and you will get way more subscribers. Or keep losing out to other journal apps. Journaling getting more popular every day. Other apps will take over the market.

by Abdul Fattah Yono

When I saw Zinnia off an Instagram ad, I was so excited to try it out, as I’ve bullet-journaled for years and have been hoping to find a paperless option that would give me the same capabilities as my paperless journal. I wanted to love Zinnia and I love the idea of having online stickers and washi tape, but within five minutes of using Zinnia I could tell how glitchy it was (using the drawing tool, my lines would shift around after setting down the pencil) and immediately deleted it.

I have a couple suggestions for Zinnia that would make it more similar to a physical planner: offer an option to disable the text feature of templates (really frustrating trying to handwrite on it), offer a tool for drawing straight lines as opposed to using one of the planner templates, offer a tool to allow people to draw an area of the paper sticker they want to use (rather than just putting a rectangle on the page), maybe portrait mode can be one half of a two-page spread and landscape would allow the user to see both pages?

Yes, $40 may be cheaper than the amount someone spends on a paper journal and tools, but there’s also an opportunity cost of Zinnia, which is the frustration and time spent trying to deal with the glitches. I would love to try Zinnia again if the bugs are worked out, and I really hope they are, because Zinnia is a wonderful idea.

by Write4u2mydear

I have been saying there needs to be a bullet journal app for some time now and was so excited to learn about this app.
However, with how many glitches there are and after reading other reviews, I cannot justify paying $40 a year. I got a glitch not even 1 minute into Zinnia (Zinnia froze after trying to place a single sticker on a new journal)
After reading through other reviews, it sounds like the cost of Zinnia is a common complaint that the developers have yet to listen to. In one of their responses, they said that Zinnia is free and the subscription is in no way necessary to enjoy Zinnia , but I disagree. You can sample the features of Zinnia for free, but the free version is limited to 3 notebooks with 3 pages each. A bullet journal with 9 pages has nowhere near enough room for adding habit trackers, to do lists, journals, weekly logs, etc.
I would be willing to pay a subscription for Zinnia if it were reasonable. But for $40 a year, I can easily make several notebooks on my own.
If the price were to come down or more features were added, I would love to support an app like this. At this point, the price tag is preventing many potential users from keeping Zinnia as many cannot afford that, especially when college students make up a majority of BuJo users. Sadly, it’s just not where it needs to be IMO.

by Moushidoodles

I’ve been using Zinnia for a couple weeks now and I’m really enjoying it. I bit the bullet and bought Zinnia for the year, to be honest the free version while cool is extremely limited in the number of pages you can have which I get but it was so limited that I initially uninstalled it. Now that I have the full version I’m keeping several journals for my mental health, my personal planner, my school planner, my student meetings and my parent meetings. Two pieces of advice I would give to the developers is to include coloring pages or stickers, a little bit of a mental break activity that I think would be easy to include, it would just be the line work so the person can color in the piece, I thought this would be really cool especially with the mandalas but it didn’t work. My second piece of advice would to allow for offline access to your journals. The person might not be able to use all the stickers, but adding pages and allowing for the person to write out their thoughts while offline I think would be really nice and doable. The person can also view and add to their planners without being online, I ran into this issue when I was away from the house and needed to check my schedule, but wasn’t able to, since I didn’t have access to WiFi. I think with these additions Zinnia would be just about perfect for the needs it wants to fulfill.

by Yoyoyoyolololololo

It’s a great idea and there is a lot of awesome content! There are definitely some major improvements that are needed for it to create a truly customizable bujo, though!

There is no option to build your own layouts, and not even an option to draw a straight black line. I had to make a work-around of using some washi tape because it’s the only straight line option that you can change the length AND width of. I wanted six black boxes on one page, but making these boxes with the washi tape work-around creates a huge lag on the page. The washi tape does not even come in black. Zinnia does have plain black box and rectangle stickers, but you cannot manipulate the shape of a sticker or the width of the lines.

There are a lot of good layouts and templates in Zinnia , but it is extremely limited and would be so improved if you could personalize your own layouts easily! And also if there wasn’t a huge lag when you fill a page with a lot of hand drawn content!

by GeometryHERO

I absolutely love love love Zinnia so much... the fact that you can customize it, add cute designs, use pre-designed templates, and that it's so much like a real journal are so amazing!! The reason I'm giving three stars is because unless you pay you only get 3 pages to write on which highly impacts its functionality. I understand developers do need to make money somehow but when it's affecting the functionality and destroying the purpose, there's really no point in having Zinnia .

Of course I'm just one customer and not a professional in any way but what I would recommend is keep the basics free (unlimited pages, page color, font size and several basic fonts) but add in extras like cute covers, cute fonts, more stickers, etc. that people can buy if they wish to do so. This way it's still usable for those who just want to use the journal but can be made into something far more complex and cute for those willing to pay a bit of money.

Good luck and keep up your amazing work!! I personally am going to delete Zinnia and may check it out later (if I'm more financially stable lol), but I wish you the best!!

by Tori516

I am writing this nearly in tears. I started using Zinnia a couple weeks ago as a place to keep record of my personal thoughts and art projects. I was absolutely in love with it. Sadly something terrible has happened. I recently transferred everything to a new iPad Pro and there was no issue, but I went a few days without opening Zinnia and suddenly I did today and EVERYTHING is gone. All of it. I keep getting a pop-up saying to make sure iCloud sync is turned on for Zinnia , which IT IS, and tried reinstalling Zinnia to restore my journals but to no avail. I don’t know what to do. I’m hoping I can restore them from a backup otherwise I am just heartbroken over this. Zinnia was so wonderful and I cannot believe everything I made with it has just disappeared like this :( perhaps this is a recent bug that should be looked into. I don’t really expect a response or anything, but I want to warn others to be careful with iCloud settings or risk losing it all like I did. Starting over seems very daunting & upsetting right now.

by 39572848194027592)19284728038

I use Zinnia on an every day basis, it’s amazing and really organized. Just one thing I hate are the in-app purchases. I get that the people who created Zinnia need money for it and I totally understand that, but instead of getting our hopes up and then making us pay for more than half of everything in Zinnia , why don’t you just make Zinnia itself money or somethin. It gets exhausting downloading apps because it says its free and then not being able to use barely anything in it cause it’s money. Just my opinion. Other than that, there are several things that aren’t money and Zinnia works great! You can easily make incredibly things with this without paying for the “premium” or whatever. I mostly use this for daily planners and stuff like that. But a lot of the stickers require the premium access if you want to use them, which I don’t think is worth it honestly. Still an amazing app and definitely recommend

by Lov3llia

I love Zinnia. I started with monthly subscription. Then, yearly subscription. What I love about Zinnia: 1. It has a lot of stickers. 2. It has the size option for EACH page of the journal. So I can use portrait or spread, etc. in the SAME journal. 3. It has lock feature for the object. So that it stays there. 4. I can rearrange the pages. 5. Various fonts. 6. I can customize my journal cover. I’m the fancy type. 7. Can save the page as pdf or image. 8. Privacy lock passcode. I realized that there are few features that I wish, I think other people might have wished for in Zinnia: 1. Passlock for each journal. More privacy when I unlock Zinnia . 2. Page number. Easily go to which page I want. Instead of checking each page. There’s a way of doing that with sticker though. 3. The alignment feature, so that i know it’s really in the centre. This helps people with ocd. 4. More fonts. 5. Resizing image or sticker like making it slimmer or fatter. Free resizing… for the horizontal vertical. I’m not sure how to explain this. 6. The copypaste thing is annoying. If i touched any object, immediately it is copied… which I don’t like. Because happened that i had copy something but then was overlapped by i dont want to copy. N I didn’t remember what the texts are. The copypaste issue please get rid of it.

by Fluteladyknits

I love this journal. I have many different journals; my daily journal, Bible journal, recipe book, music practice log, even a book of things my 93 year old father has told me that I don’t want to forget, like family stories etc.
There are endless ways to use Zinnia. I did leave for awhile about a year ago and was using GoodNotes, but came back to this.
There’s a feature many of us have asked for for a long time, that we are still waiting on. So this is why I dropped one star. We would like a tool that allows us to draw a line or circle or square and hold it to straighten out the line drawn. Once we get that feature I will give Zinnia 5 ⭐️ ! The only other thing I’d like to see is less of the teenage cutsie stickers, and more adult stickers. The representation of spiritual is lacking too. One Christian sticker package of crosses, but the rest of the spiritual section is magic/wicken, mandalas, and new age. What about the major religions, Christianity, Jewish, Muslim etc.? Zinnia is clearly made by someone without a faith or very new age. That’s fine but think of the rest of us. And when I say Christianity I don’t mean Santa and the Easter bunny. Those are not Christian.

by Heather Cooey

This is a great app, with lots of functionality and style, but I REALLY wish you could change the layout view. It would be awesome if you could choose to view it like a book, with turning pages, that would make it truly feel like a real journal. I’m not a huge fan of the thumbnail setup it has currently. Plus, when you expand one of the thumbnails, it’s essentially one big landscape page. I want the option of viewing just one side of that page so I can write on a page at a time. As it stands, I have to zoom in and that’s just kind of annoying for a journaling app. Also would be nice to have the option of moving the toolbar to the top of the page. It’s counter-intuitive to rest your hand on the screen and start writing then have to reach down at the very bottom when you want to select a different tool or adjust the current tool. All the other writing apps I use have the tool bar at the top and it’s way more efficient. Aside from the aforementioned dislikes, Zinnia is pretty awesome and has several different ways to personalize your journal the way you want.

by Cassie219

I absolutely love Zinnia. It allows for so much creativity and is very cost efficient compared to annual planners and journals. this app gives unlimited space and has infinite uses. The one thing I would like to see is a way to set reminders that go along with certain calendar items. For example, a push notification reminding me of my dr. Appointment this week. Another idea is some of the templates where you can create lists or has places to check mark, I would love to see some of those allow you to click on the button and it check it for you. My final suggestion is when you go to type a new entry on a page you have already created, allow it to remember the last font settings for that page. I’m constantly having to reset my fonts b/c I used different ones on a different journal or page. I know there are still updates and improvements being made and overall I am very happy with Zinnia. I actually recently bought an iPad and one main reason was journaling. I loved it on my phone but it just wasn’t big enough.

Thanks for a great app!

by Dec. 21, 2019

I would like to start off be saying that this app is a very unique app and has more than a lot of potential to be even more great than other journaling apps, but I think it still has a long way to go. When I first got this app not that long ago, I was very exited because I had never seen any other app like it! But after I had read over the intro journal guide thing and I started on my own journal I came across my first problem, this app only allows people with the free version to have 3 journals, all with only up to 3 pages. I’m fine with only having 3 journals, but 3 pages? I don’t know, maybe I’m being dramatic but I’d be more fond of 4 or 5 pages instead. Also, I’m sure that more than enough people have wrote reviews on this exact thing, but just the more reason to stress it, others don’t have enough money or are saving up for something more important (no offense) like a car or something so they can’t get the this app Premium subscription thing. I also might add that there are plenty of glitches in the this app app & it could have a lot more templates, themes, etc.

by MyQueenZhavia

Zinnia is honestly so worth it. There are so many options. There are plenty and TONS of stickers, paper, colors to choose from, templates, dividers and so on. I love how much you can customize you very own journal. You can even write in them with your finger or Apple Pencil. The possibilities are endless. I think this is really great considering most of its free. However, I don’t mind as much with the journals themselves, but I wish you could at least make 5 or 6 pages rather than 3 without paying. Also I think the calligraphy and watercolor brush could be improved. The brushes are not too much of a problem to me though. I really recommend Zinnia to people that want to have paperless journals or bullet journals. It even comes with trackers of all sorts and much more to help those people who bullet journal. Once again the only downside is you can only add 3 pages (which includes the ‘left and right’ sides of the page as 1). I would just use as many pages as I can and then reuse them 🤷🏻‍♀️. Overall there could be some improvements, but great app!

by Melana :)

I’ve had Zinnia for barely a week and i can say that it’s amazing! But it has a few flaws. It crashes all the time and is really laggy. IF i want to put down or take away a sticker it crashes. Or if i want to add text, it lags. I wish that the creators would fix this problem. And other thing is that 40$ per year is a bit much for unlimited journal space. I would let the people who don’t have premium make ONE journal with unlimited space. But other than that Zinnia is amazing. There is a wide verity of stickers, and the templates are amazing. Ive always tried to journal, but Zinnia makes it more fun than what it would be in real life. It keeps things organized, and i can print it out for further use. It’s hard to make a full, 100 page journal like in real life without premium, but I’ve found ways around it, and i deal with the crashing and the lags because Zinnia is amazing. I would recommend it if you would deal with the crashing and the lagging.

by Ihatecoloralive

At first, I wasn’t too fond of the price but after getting the free trial to have full access, it’s very much worth it. For those complaining about the price, the amount of work that went into Zinnia must have been extensive. You’ll have access to all the templates, stickers, it’s customizable, I love it. Factor in the cost of stickers, pages, journals, pens, highlighters, clips, stamps, etc for physical bullet journals then this makes more sense and is cheaper. It takes seconds to make a page and looks great. For someone who has diagnosed OCD, I’ve thrown away whole journals because of one mistake and this solved everything. I can change themes, they have prebuilt journals or templates, I can make multiple journals for work, personal life, fitness, etc all in one app. I love the themes too. My favorite is the Amy Tangerine because I’m an artist but they have a lot of themes.

by MikayIaDawn

Such a beautiful app! It has already helped me start over 12 journals for almost every aspect of my life and in such a clean way. It has eased my anxiety levels beyond compare to regular paper as I know I’m not consuming and dumping as much. Not to much though, scanning something handmade, a photo, then importing to Zinnia is SO fun! Scrapbooking! Everything!

As for the pricing, don’t let it get to you. The subscription per year is SO worth it if you were to buy using, buying, painting and working in multiple notebooks. $3.33/month for a new notebook with unlimited pages and resources is an exactly perfect price point I’m happy to pay.

The only one minor question I have is if it’d be possible to manually organize the journals in the first landing page. I would prefer to see them lined up with each corresponding notebook and it’s kind of confusing as when to where my journal is when I need it. I take an extra second of being anxious to find it. Hope it’s possible! Amazing app! So thankful to have found it!

by PikakaC

As someone who loves to bujo and adores the beautiful, artsy bujo layouts others created but isn't artistic enough to creat her own, I love this app.

I've tried bujo a few times before but failed. Having to start everything from scratch was too much for me. More over, a wrong color or even just a wrong stroke could ruin the whole page. I found myself spending too much time building the layout instead of focusing on the content.

This is where this app comes in handy. It has pretty much everything one would ever need in their bujo - various templates, brushes, stickers, symbols, washi tapes, backgrounds, letterings and more. I can play with different components to create visually appealing layouts without having to draw every single stroke on my own. Of course, you can also start from scratch in this app if you wish.

$40 per year seems expensive at first, but considering how much I've spent on pens, paints, washi tapes and stickers before, $40 is not crazy. In fact, many people who are into artsy bujo spend more than $40 per year just on the bujo notebook itself. As long as the team continues to add to Zinnia , I'm fine with the ongoing cost.

Lastly, a few suggestions to the team: add straight lines; add bookmarks; add a dark mode; allow users to reposition the dots or lines in the page template so they align with the backgrounds and symbols users have created.

by Shelle L.A.

I see a lot of people having issues with glitches and granted I’m using Zinnia in a brand new iPad Pro... but it has been perfect for me!!! Not one glitch, runs perfect every time and I am LOVING IT. I’m always buying journals, writing in them a couple of times and giving up. But there is so many fun little ways to decorate my page each day that it keeps me engaged. I’m really looking forward to starting more books for different purposes budgets, food, happy thoughts.... the possibilities are endless :) I had some doubts about paying $40 but I am totally enjoying it and glad I paid it. And when I opened Zinnia today there was whole new set of decorations! I was really excited. I did notice that my favorite little calendar was gone today. It was horizontal across the top of the page and was convenient but I’ll make due without. I Also wish I could choose the direction of each page e.g. landscape OR portrait (this might be possible and I just don’t know how to do this) but honestly all in all a really great app!

by SheDrivesZ

I have been searching for YEARS and YEARS for a Journal / Diary that has tons of features and the ability to personalize it with everything from A - Z. I can’t believe I found it! this app nailed it! I couldn’t be happier and I look forward to writing in it everyday:) The possibilities are endless regarding creativity and personalizing each page how you wish. I knew immediately that “This Is The One” and I purchased the whole year without a second thought. Absolutely beyond words how much I enjoy every aspect of Zinnia:) Thank you soooo much developers:))))

There are some areas for improvement which I know they will address in future updates. I would love to have the ability to import my own clipart. I would like to have the option to type in my journal in a regular format without using text boxes to type in to and to relocate my journal entries like in a regular Diary/Journal. That’s all I can think of for now:))

by Kitsuug

Zinnia has so much potential to be the best journaling app out there. The customization is just off the charts. It is gorgeous and really helpful for any level of creativity. The tips are great and show you a hands on approach to get good with Zinnia quickly

Just two big problems. I made a journal and after a week of use, it just vanished. Every time I click, it says the journal doesn’t exist. Imagine putting hours of effort into your tracking system just for it to be erased! I’m completely furious. The whole point of a journal is to keep a system and if it deletes, you’ve lost all your data! I cannot believe I was going to pay such an high price for this. It is so much more expensive than similar apps. Most with less customization, but free. I understand they are more customizable, but it’s still way too expensive to ask for a digital journal. I deleted my app. I won’t be back unless the issues are fixed and I can afford it, because who can do any sort of planning on 3 pages?

by Lindstar

So far it’s been just ok. I paid for a year and am not seeing the value yet. The text boxes each have to be edited individually though Zinnia will remember your font choice, size and color be damned. Selecting elements is frustrating to the point I tossed my iPad across the bed today. This is normal for Zinnia. I don’t see the reason for layers to be so badly managed in an app that encourages layering and being creative with elements. Not well thought out. Resizing and adjusting components don’t always snap to pixel. Meaning tapping inches away can have a varied effect on the element. Sometimes it will resize it, sometimes it’ll rotate it, sometimes it will move it. Moving it is what that’s supposed to do. The styles need to be expanded. The library seems extensive until you realize you don’t like any of the elements. Needs more basic elements. Had to use washi tape to turn down the contrast on a background. Workarounds aside, Zinnia could use some improvements to be worth the yearly price.

by MsJQ5

Let me start by saying I genuinely love Zinnia. Between the versatility and the customization potential, this is the perfect app for the elaborate bullet journal-er looking to go green. It combines analog design with digital neatness.

I think, though, that even the best things have some room for improvement. Things I’d love to see include:

1. Customizable shapes (backgrounds and colors of shapes.) For instance, even with the wealth of stickers and templates available, there is no way to create your own shapes with a filled color. It would be nice to have the ability to not just draw outlines and letters, but also filled shapes — or at least have the option of inserting shapes with customizable backgrounds.

2. the ability to crop stickers and templates. Sometimes, you want part of a template but not the whole thing and being able to crop would be awesome.

3. More options for playing with stickers and templates like adjusting their translucency and flipping to a mirror image.

4. Some more stamp-like effects, which are just a style I e often used in my paper journals.

Again, in spite of these wishes, I do highly recommend Zinnia. If you are someone who spends tons of money on a good quality blank journal and endless decorating supplies, the $40/ year, while still steep, can balance out — though I’d be less inclined to pay more than that without way more options.

by Mr2baby

Let me start off by saying that I love Zinnia. The versatility of a digital page has taken away my fear of committing stickers/text/ink to a physical, blank page. I cannot even tell you how many incomplete journals I have, or my desire to purchase more, my desire for a sense of content organization never being met.

The designs are gorgeous and I cannot wait until more artists can contribute. The online community has pitched some great ideas that I can’t wait to see integrated. In my one week free trial I used Zinnia for several hours most days and I’m not going to be the first to say that there are bugs. However, it’s clear to see that the developers are listening to the comments. I’m sure they’re combing through bug reports just as thoroughly, as evident in the 4 updates since the release not 1 month ago.

I will not complain about the price - despite my frustrations when using Zinnia sometimes. The bugs are little things that are annoying, but not annoying enough for me to remember or to stop using Zinnia . Since I have easily spent hundreds of dollars in stationary I can see the great appeal and potential of this digital version that lacks nothing in design. I will continue on with the $9.99/month version until I’m less frustrated but I believe I will be committing to the year soon enough.

Good work guys!

by Clankin

After only a few minutes of playing with Zinnia, I was completely hooked! There’s so much potential here, and I’ve been waiting for a journaling app like this for what seems like forever. Yes, at times, it can be a little glitchy, and yes, the handwriting could be more streamlined, but the developers are releasing regular updates and listening to their users, which I deeply respected enough to go ahead and purchase a subscription. Even with the free version, you still get access to pretty much everything, but I really wanted to have unlimited pages and hour lanes while supporting these amazing developers. As someone who has admired bullet journals for a while now, I have struggled with finding the time, resources, and money to develop my hobby (especially as someone who prefers a digital experience). this app has EVERYTHING—even washi tape! I’m blown away. Literally this time last year I was dreaming of an app just like this. Please keep up the amazing work, adding new features, and showcasing talented artists!

by HollMae

UPDATE:
I have now been using the paid version for 3 months. It is worth every dang penny. To those of you think it’s too expensive, perhaps you should change your thought process. This is meant to be a fully immersive journaling app. If you were to go out and purchase multiple bullet journals, craft paper, pens, paint brushes, washi tape, stamps, stickers, etc., you’d be in for far more than $40 every year. Oh and they add new content every month. It is clear that the developers put in a lot of work and are constantly making it better. They deserve to get paid.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
If you are looking for the perfect journaling app that gives you a truly blank canvas to work with, this is it!

This is the greatest creative journaling app I have ever used. It gives me real freedom to design every single page however I want. The developers listen to the users and add highly sought after features. This is already an incredible app but it will just keep getting better and better with every update.

BTW this review is based solely on the free version. I will be purchasing the full membership today with zero hesitation! $40 per year is well worth it, especially if you consider how much you would spend trying to create a physical journal with this many options.

by Purpalily

I love art and bullet journaling, but don’t do it regularly because of the time commitment and cost of buying stencils, stamps, Washi tape, markers, etc. Zinnia cuts out all of that and just helps you create cute and creative journal spreads on the fly. The pro version is less than $50 a year and for me that’s totally worth it since you could easily spend that on materials for a physical journal in one shopping trip!

I only gave it 4 stars because I think there are some features that would make this program really fantastic including changing the colors of stickers, lettering guides, the ability to modify stickers and custom or prearranged color palettes. I think if these features were added, this would be my all time favorite app next to procreate. I particularly like that I can add my own artwork or saved images.

Keep up the great work!