Zinnia vs Natus: decorate the page or understand the week
Zinnia vs Natus is not really a contest, because they do different jobs. Zinnia is a creative planner-journal: beautiful templates, stickers, handwriting, spreads. Natus is a journal that reads back: a First Reading built from your details, a private journal, and your week read back every Sunday. If you want a pretty planner you design yourself, Zinnia is the right tool. If you write to understand yourself, Natus is.
What Zinnia users say in their own reviews
Verbatim from public 1 and 2 star App Store reviews.
Impossible to end subscription1 star review
This may be a nice online journal, but cancelling the subscription is impossible. Still trying to cancel. Unsuccessfully. Stay away from this nefarious subscription.
Lost all my projects1 star review
I paid for this app in January and with the latest update, the app would not open. I reached out to tech support and was able to get the app to open but all my projects are gone. I lost 8 months worth of work that I am unable to get back.
Too expensive1 star review
Everything I clicked on was always a free trial and I hate it so I quit this app.
Still limited after paying2 star review
I paid the 3 month subscription and it says I can use it on all devices but even the main one I subscribed for is very limited. It isn't worth it for the features I was able to use.
Side by side
| Feature | Zinnia | Natus |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A digital planner and creative journal: templates, stickers, spreads. | A private journal plus a reading of who you are, built from your details. |
| What making an entry is like | Designing a page: layouts, handwriting, decoration. | Writing what happened, in plain words, as it comes. |
| What you get back | A beautiful archive you made. | A Sunday read-back that names what your week kept circling. |
| Where it wins | Genuinely lovely creative tools. Nothing else feels as much like a paper planner. | Different job entirely. It reads back, it does not decorate. |
| The common complaint | Hard-to-cancel subscriptions and projects lost to updates. | It is new, iPhone only, and has no creative or planner features. |
| Who it fits | Visual journalers who want to design pages. | People who write to understand what is going on with them. |
Where Zinnia still wins
If your journal is a visual thing, Zinnia has no real rival on iPhone. The templates, handwriting and page design are the best version of the digital planner idea, and for creative journalers that is the whole point.
Where people get burned
The reviews repeat two failures: subscriptions reviewers say cannot be cancelled from inside the app, and paid users losing months of projects to an update. If you build an archive in Zinnia, keep exports somewhere else.
Where Natus is different
Natus has no spreads, no stickers, no handwriting, because the product is not the page. The product is the read-back: your week, reflected against how you operate, every Sunday. If the decorating was ever procrastination from the actual reflection, you already know which one is for you.
Common questions
- Is Zinnia or Natus better for journaling?
- They answer different needs. Zinnia is for people whose journaling is creative: layouts, handwriting, decoration. Natus is for people whose journaling is reflective: writing to see your own patterns. Pick by which of those is actually you.
- Why do Zinnia reviews warn about the subscription?
- Two complaints dominate: cancellation that does not work from inside the app, and a free trial that gates nearly everything so you cannot evaluate it first. If you subscribe, do it through your Apple ID and cancel from Settings if needed.
- Does Natus have templates or handwriting?
- No, and that is deliberate. Natus is built for the part after the writing: the Sunday read-back that tells you what your week was actually about. If you want to draw your journal, Zinnia is the better tool.