This year I finally decided to buy a medium-sized Ban.do planner! Since I haven’t seen anyone else do a comparison between the Lilly Pulitzer and Ban.do ones, I thought this would be helpful to share prices, sizes, what’s inside, and which one is for you.

PRICE

I ordered the medium-sized Ban.do agenda (left) for $28 and if you order now, you can combine a 10% off code and free shipping together. The medium-sized Lilly Pulitzer agenda (right) I used was $22 last year, this year it is priced at $24.

The medium Ban.do agenda is larger than the medium Lilly Pulitzer agenda.

They are the same thickness.

In terms of size, their thickness is about the same (see pic). Ban.do comes in a small non-spiral agenda and medium and large spiral agendas. Lilly Pulitzer agendas come in small, medium, large, and jumbo. Ban.do’s small non-spiral is equivalent to Lilly Pulitzer’s medium-size agenda.

INSIDES for each section of comparison pictures, I’m going to put the Ban.do (BD) picture before the Lilly Pulitzer (LP) one

• opening the planner | right off the bat, you can see how LP tends to have a resort/vacation-related theme whereas BD is a bit more minimalistic and playful with the “secret code”

•  after the folder | BD has a place for you to put your name on your planner whereas LP doesn’t have a designated spot. The BD has 2 sheets of stickers and LP only has 1 in the one I have to show you but they now have 2 sheets this year. BD has a little letter and LP has a “wecome to PALM BEACH” part and a cute map of palm beach.

• yearly/overview calendar | BD & LP both have two-year overview calendars and a “dates to remember” type of setup, the difference between the two is that LP has a year-long monthly spread twice in the planner, in the front where there are 12 pages back of back and then each month before the weekly spreads (this may have been removed from the 2016-17 edition though) and the BD only has one of each month. 

• special | LP has a section dedicated to travel planning and an address book, BD has neither one of these but their notes section(s) make up for it.

• notes | If you use your planner to jot down notes and other random things a lot, the BD has about 5X the amount of pages dedicated to notes. BD has 2 pages of notes after every monthly overview (there are 17 months = 34 sheets/17 pages) and a section in the back with 18 more pages/9 sheets. LP has a section for notes in the front consisting of 10 pages/5 sheets.

• monthly calendar | BD has literally color-blocked a few pages that correspond with their holidays list. They are both easy spreads to glance at.

• weekly spread | BD is more bare-bones while LP has a patterned border and drawing that flows onto the page partially.

• artwork | BD gets all-girl artists for each monthly spread while LP keeps their classic look each year, according to what I’ve heard so far. If you like things to stay the same, LP is for you, if you like “artsy” changes, BD is for you.

WHICH ONE IS BEST FOR YOU?

If you’re ready for something fancier than a free school-supplied agenda but don’t have enough time to commit to decorating, the Lilly Pulitzer agenda is for you. Each page comes with a nice designed border and sometimes there are little cartoon picture drawings.

If you like planners like the Erin Condren life planner where you can design and decorate your agenda as something more than just for assignments, then the ban.do agenda is definitely for you! It doesn’t have lines so you can keep the minimalist look or create your own.

If you love the Kate Spade look but don’t want to spend as much, click this part of the sentence to see a post I wrote about the Sugar Paper Planner(s) available at target.

Let me know if this post helped you decide and any other thoughts you’d like to share!