Most planners today use pens to write their notes and tasks down. Pens are very efficient writing tools as they do not require startup time. However using the wrong pen, you will definitely miss out several benefits. There are different types of pens in the market today.
To ensure you reap all the benefits of online planners, you should only use the best no bleed pens for planners.
ghost – Turn your audience into a business
If you are monetizing your writing or have ever thought about it, you are likely familiar with services such as Patreon, Substack, and Gumroad. Ghost is an alternative to those. It’s a non-profit organization building open source technology for journalism, allowing you to create a business around your writing – and much, much more. A ghost is a useful tool for any writer from individual bloggers who are just getting started, to large teams of writers and editors looking to make money off content, newsletters, memberships.ghostCategoryMonetizationPriceFrom $9/mont Starter plant to $199/month business planFoundersJohn O’Nolan and Hannah WolfeFounded2013HQRemote
Website ghost
Noisli – Your digital place for focus
If you need some background noise to be able to focus, Noisli is perfect for you. Noisli lets you choose from a range of soundtracks, such as nature or city-themed: thunder, water, waves, campfire, coffee shop, or train tracks, to name a few. You can mix several tracks at once and choose the volume for each one. That gives you the power of creating unique soundtracks of your own. The app also has a built-in timer for cutting out the soundtracks at the time of your choice.NoisliCategoryFocus toolsPriceFree with an option to unlock additional features and more users with Pro €8/month and Business €20/month plansFoundersSabine Staggl and Stefano MerloFounded2013HQBerlin, Germany
Website Noisli
Daily Prompt – Build your daily writing habit
Anyone who works with creative writing knows how important it is to write regularly. But writer’s block is real, and sometimes life and other work get in the way. Daily Prompt provides creative writing prompts to help you to kickstart your daily writing habit. It also allows you to connect with other aspiring authors and help each other grow as writers by giving and receiving feedback.
Daily PromptCategoryWriting promptsPriceFree with an option fro a €40.99/year Premium plan that unlocks features such as unrestricted number of writings per dayFounderTom NormanFounded2020HQTwyford, United KingdomWebsiteDaily Prompt
Typefully – Twitter thread maker
Typefully allows you to write & publish great tweets without distractions. Made by the team behind Mailbrew, it enables you to see a live preview of your tweet thread while you write it, save multiple drafts, schedule, and publish in a focused environment instead of Twitter’s mobile app or on desktop.
TypefullyCategorySocial mediaPriceFreeFoundersFabio Rinaldi, Fancesco Di Lorenzo, and Ali MeseFounded2013HQMilano, Italy
Website Typefully
Hemingway Editor – Make your writing bold and clear
Looking for Grammarly alternative? Hemingway Editor is a simple tool that makes your writing easier to read. It focuses on identifying common errors that lower the quality of your text. It gives you feedback in three main categories: a readability score, writing metrics, and sentence highlights. Hemingway Editor helps you avoid excess adverbs, sentences written in passive voice, and hard-to-read paragraphs. You simply copy and paste your text to the app, and as a result, you’ll get some number data along with visual cues and analysis where your text could do better.
Hemingway EditorCategoryReadability checkerPriceFree web app with an option for €19.99 one-time payment for the desktop appFoundersAdam Long and Ben LongFounded2013HQNorth Carolina, United States
Website Hemingway Editor
Pacemaker Planner – A word count planner for writers
Pacemaker Planner is a word count planner and tracker. You can tell the app whether you would like to write a certain amount every day or focus more on getting results on certain days of the week. You can view your progress in a chart, which gives you a great visual of how you’re doing. Pacemaker can also adjust itself based on your current progress.
Pacemaker PlannerCategoryReadability checkerPriceFree with an option to unlock more features with a Premium plan for $8/month or $72/yearFounderSusanna WilliamsFounded2012HQNorth Carolina, United States
Website Pacemaker Planner
iA writer – The benchmark of markdown writing apps
Meet the text editor created for the sole purpose of keeping you focused on just writing. iA Writer provides the crisp, uncluttered environment you need to write well, supported by discrete, powerful features. It is so simple that it’s easy to overlook the wealth-power it packs under the hood with features such as Content Blocks and Syntax Highlighting.
iA WriterCategoryDocument editorPriceOne time payment of $29.90FounderOliver ReichensteinFounded2010HQTokyo, Japan
Website iA Writer
Cliché Finder – Remove clichés from your writing
Worried that your writing is full of clichés? This helpful writingtool for writers enables you to find them in your text. Just paste your text in the editor, and the tool will quickly point out clichés and allow you to replace it with a specific word or phrase. It’s a handy addition to your writing toolset to make your writing more effective and unique.
Cliché FinderCategoryReadability checkerPriceFreeWebsite
Craft – Next-generation document editor
Craft is a note-taking app slash word processor that lets you handle text in blocks (a lot like Notion does). It supports bulleted lists, markdowns, pictures, sketching, PDF files, link previews, and more. Craft also lets you create pages from wiki templates and collaborate with others when working on them. Maybe the most distinct feature of Craft is its beautifully minimalistic design and user experience. Many users report that the design simply makes you want to use the app.
CraftCategoryDocument editorPriceFree with an option for a Professional plan that costs $4.99 billed monthly or $44.99 billed annuallyFounderBalint OroszFounded2019HQBudapest, HungaryWebsite
ContentPro – Optimize your content
Do you find yourself spending hours and hours on research for the topics you want to write about? ContentPro, created by Automata, finds articles from other companies on the same topic to help you optimize your writing. Their Chrome extension compares whatever you’ve started to write on Google Docs to their content library to see what industry leaders and competitors say about it.ContentProCategoryResearchPriceFree with an option to unlock more features with a $15/month Premium planFounderAndrew FraineFounded2010HQCambridge, United StatesWebsite
The Planners Collective Ultimate Digital Planner
We like the versatility of Planners Collective’s 2021/2022 planner, which is compatible with iOS, Android, and Microsoft devices, including tablets, smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers. The two-year dated planner offers four layouts so you can choose the format that fits best for your lifestyle, as well as an index and daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly pages.
Organization enthusiasts will also love the variety of cover pages (there are 15 options), and dozens of templates for lists, tracking, and note-taking; just a few examples include a gratitude journal, an emergency contacts page, a vision board, meal planners, and trackers for bills, expenses, bills, fitness and wellness, passwords, sleep, mood, and more. Those who prefer to add colorful visuals to their planner will appreciate the over 650 digital stickers and “sticky” notes.
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Buy: The Planners Collective Digital Planner at $11
My Daily Planners 2021/2022 Digital Planner
Available for iPads (including Pro) and Mac computers, this 2021/2022 portrait planner features a minimalist, professional-looking design with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly pages and a handy index. (It’s also available in landscape format.) Daily pages give you space for planning your schedule from 6 a.m. to midnight, plus room to jot down the day’s priorities, to-do list, and miscellaneous notes.
Weekly pages include to-do lists and sections for goals and notes, and you have the option to start your weeks on Sunday or Monday. You’ll also get pages for budget tracking, project planning, and meeting notes, plus six project folders to further customize your planner. It’s compatible with GoodNotes, Notability, Noteshelf, and other PDF annotation apps for iOS.
Fluently – Write fluently in any language
Fluently is a distraction-free online text editor with a multilingual translator, a grammar-checker, and a thesaurus built-in. You can use it to create a document in a foreign language while writing in your mother tongue. The translator works side-by-side with the actual editor, so it’s easy to see the end result in real-time. There’s an integration with the LanguageTool grammar checker, which supports 42 languages. The thesaurus supports synonyms for 21 languages.
FluentlyCategoryDocument editor and translatorPriceAnnual (72€), quarterly (27€) and monthly (12€) plansFounderMilber FerreiraFounded2020HQBeverwijk, Netherlands
Website Fluently
gSweets – Superpowers for Google Docs
gSweets is a productivity tool for writers working in Google Docs. It brings slash commands that many already use in their workflow in other apps to Google docs. If you are so used to working with Google’s word processor that trying alternative document editors has a high switching cost, gSweets is something that can save you time and keep you in a state of flow when writing with a simple Chrome extension.
gSweetsCategoryProducitivity tools for writersPriceFreeFoundersJeremy Kovac and Christoph KnesFounded2020HQRemote
Website gSweets
Flowrite – The new way to write on the web
Flowrite is an AI writing tool that turns short bullet points into ready-to-send emails, messages, and posts. It’s the fastest writing experience ever and an entirely new way to write: Instruct with a few words, click, and witness the text write itself. Flowrite works where you work, adapts to your daily tasks, and personal style. Designed for the most productive, powered by the latest advancements in AI, it’s the best writing tool for those whose work depends on communicating effectively.
FlowriteCategoryAI writingPriceTBDFoundersAaro Isosaari and Karolus SariolaFounded2020HQHelsinki, Finland Website Flowrite
Ulysses – The ultimate writing app
Ulysses is the tool of choice for long-form writing. It has loads of features but still allows writers to focus by keeping the number of bells and whistles on the screen to a minimum. The key features include a library for arranging your work, filters to find specific pieces of text quickly, and a goal tracker to keep you on track. Ulysses also features a distraction-free typewriter mode, bookmarks, and outlining functions.
UlyssesCategoryDocument editorPriceAnnual (49.99€) and monthly (5.99€) plansFoundersMarcus Fehn and Max SeelemannFounded2011HQLeipzig, Germany
Website Ulysses
Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule – Write better headlines
A must-try for creating captivating headlines. Just type in your headline, and the app will give you suggestions on how to improve. You’ll get a score on a scale of 0-100 and get recommendations on how you’re using common, uncommon, emotional, and powerful words. Especially the last two categories of words are important because readers are more engaged when they feel an emotional connection to your headline. Upgrading to a premium plan unlocks some advanced features like SEO score, full version history, and word banks.
Headline AnalyzerCategoryDocument editorPriceFree with an option for more headlines with $9, $29 and $49/month plansFounderGarrett MoonFounded2013HQBismark, United States
Website Headline Analyzer
Cold Turkey – The toughest website blocker
Cold Turkey allows you to focus by only letting you use the current document you’re working on. It restricts or blocks you from visiting certain websites for a predetermined period. Actually, you can block off the entire internet if you want to.
Cold TurkeyCategoryFocus toolPriceFree with an option to unlock more features with Pro plan for €35 one-time paymentFounderFelix BelzileFounded2010HQOntario, Canada
Website Cold Turkey
Conclusion
“What brand of pen should I use in my planner?” I’ve been asked this question so many times. Who knew planners and pens could go together so well? As long as you have the right tools, that is. When it comes to putting ink on paper, there are some scenarios that call for certain pens over others. Below are some of my favorite writing utensils for planners.