Erin Condren vs. Happy Planner – which planner brings me a happy life?

Hello my stationery friend, 🙂

I hope you had a lovely Easter and a few days off too. I had four days off with Mr. Stationary and my little pug girl. We tried to relax and didn’t stress ourselves even with the world outside still being crazy.

As the title gives you a little sneak, I would like to compare these two planners. I know there are a lot of people outside who love both planners and the other part is just pro either Happy Planner (HP) or pro Erin Condren (EC). As you might know, I am not afraid to try out new things and so I bought both. Mr. Stationery asked if it is really necessary. „Well, of course“ was my reaction. 😂

So some quick facts I organised in a chart for you:

	Erin Condren	Happy Planner
product	Deluxe Monthly Planner	Happy Planner Classic Pastel Dreams
dimensions	7 x 9 and 8.5 x 11 in	9.75 x 8.55 x 1.32 in
weight	933g	564g
months	12 (started in September 2019)	12 (started in January 2020)
layout	vertical	horizontal
price (without shipping)	59,27 Euro	24,05 Euro
customized?	yes	no
where did I order?	on Erin Condren	on Amazon, because I saved a lot of shipping costs
Accessories?	yes	yes

What do they have in common?

On every divider is a motivational or positive quote. Both planners have a bright and colourful concept. Every month starts with a page where you have a goal section and there is a place for notes. Then you find the monthly overview with a small space for notes. Really awesome is that there are important bank holidays printed into both of them. The following pages are the weeklies for the month. Even on every weekly spread you have some space for notes or to dos for the week. The days are seperated in little boxes.

Here are some pictures of my two planners. The first diashow shows Erin Condren and the second one shows the Happy Planner:

What is different?

At first I would say it is the paper in general. The paper of EC is a little bit thicker than the paper of the HP. Both papers are high quality and normal pens, highlighters or brush pens don’t bleed through the pages. The colour of the paper is different too. The HP paper is brighter than the Erin Condren paper. The EC planner has a extra page with free space where you can put some trackers or planning a huge event. That is pretty cool. The first page where you can write down important things for the month is a little bit different. EC has space for birthdays which HP hasn’t, but they call it important days. EC included the bank holidays in every weekly and you can see a little overview of the month.

Furthermore, at the time when I ordered each of the planners, I only had the EC customized. There were lots of different options to choose from and it was fun to create it the way I wanted it. However, for HP I cannot say whether it was customizable because I ordered it through Amazon because shipping was much cheaper through Amazon than via their own website – which is quite a pity I think. Due to that, I did without customization.

Both are ring planners but each interpreted ring planner in their own way. EC is really bulky and huge. It is quite stable and it stays in its form. On the other side HP has the rings which you can change in seize and colour which is a really lovely idea. My HP seems thin and wonkier than EC next to it. I am a fan of bookmarks but neither EC nor HP has one.

Interesting, though, is that you can customize your planner on both websites. If you aren’t sure which planner is the right one for you, Erin Condren has a solution for you. You can answer some questions and they show you the perfect match for you. On the Happy Planner website I was overwhelmed and felt a little bit lost by so many wonderful planners. One of the coolest things about the Happy Planner is that you can change the styles of the pages as much as you like. You can add more note pages, blank pages, or other styles – just as you like.

Now we are coming to the biggest part: Accessories! Is there a planner buddy who doesn’t like the perfect matching stickers, washi tapes or envelops with their planner?

Oh gosh, I can sit there for hours just scrolling through the huge amount of stationery goodies which both websites have. What can I say, I bought stickers. I personally like most the quote sticker for both planner systems. But I think that the variety for Happy Planner is bigger than that for Erin Condren – based on what I saw on their respective websites.

Which team are you? Team Erin? Team Happy? Or do you like both?

I learned one important thing for me and I never realised it before so deeply like at this point. I need a blank page. I’d like to decide for myself where I put this box and how much space I need for the days etc.

I was really curious about this experiment and I would do it again. It wasn’t a failure though, but I found out that I am a planner girl who doesn’t like planners with already printed boxes. 😉

The best part are the communities around such planer systems like those discussed above: People often share their spreads, they like them, they discuss the stationery goodies and everybody can feel the positive vibes. ❤️

Wisdom of day: Sometimes you try something and you will learn more about yourself as well as your style than you would ever imagine.

Love to you all, stay stafe,
Chrissi