iOS App Case Study · Digital planners
BES Digital Planners: Turning a Shopify PDF Planner Into an iPad App
The planner customers already bought, in an app built for it, with Apple Pencil and cloud sync.
BES Digital Planners at a glance
BES Digital Planners is the free iPhone and iPad app for By Evette Santos planners. Customers who buy a planner on Shopify sign in with their order email, and the app loads their planners with Apple Pencil writing, stickers, and cloud sync across devices, even offline. Pinstripe Business Services built it and shipped it to the App Store in September 2026.
- Client
- By Evette Santos
- Platform
- iPad and iPhone (iOS 17+), plus the web
- Category
- Books, Lifestyle
- Price
- Free on the App Store; planners sold on Shopify
- Launched
- September 2026
- Built with
- React, Capacitor, Supabase, Shopify, Cloudflare R2
Inside the app on iPad
What the client needed
By Evette Santos sells hand-designed planners on Shopify. Customers received a large PDF with hundreds of pages, and then had to find a separate annotation app, import the file, and hope it kept up across devices.
The goal was to keep the planner design exactly as drawn, and make it keep working after the sale: writing that saves itself, syncs between iPad and iPhone, and never asks the customer to manage a file.
What we built
A purchase on Shopify now grants access in the app. The customer signs in with the email from their order and their planners appear on a shelf. There is nothing to import.
Each planner renders page by page from the original artwork, with editable fields placed on the page for dates, notes, habits, and checklists. On top of that sits a full writing layer: Apple Pencil pen and highlighter with pressure and tilt, palm rejection, shapes, lasso, stickers, photos, voice memos, and text boxes.
Everything autosaves about a second after you stop writing and syncs across devices. Planners are copied to the device, so writing works with no signal and uploads when the connection returns. When two devices change the same thing, the app shows both and lets the customer choose.
Key features of BES Digital Planners
Shopify purchase unlocks the app
Sign in with the order email and every planner you own is on your shelf. No files to import.
Apple Pencil, done properly
Pressure and tilt, palm rejection, highlighter, shapes, lasso, and a left-handed toolbar option.
Autosave and cloud sync
No save button. Write on the iPad and the iPhone catches up in seconds.
Works offline
Planners live on the device. Keep writing without signal; changes upload when you reconnect.
Stickers, photos, and voice memos
Drag stickers onto the page, crop photos in place, and record audio straight onto a spread.
Private by design
Face ID lock, two-step sign-in, photos and voice memos kept on the device, and in-app account deletion.
What other businesses can take from it
If you sell a digital product, the question is not whether you need an app. It is what your product should keep doing after the sale that a file cannot. Here, that was saving, syncing, and staying organized for a full year.
The design customers paid for was treated as fixed. The app adds what paper and PDF cannot do and changes nothing else, which is why existing customers could move over without relearning their planner.
Read more: From Shopify PDF to Cloud Planner: Building a Digital Planner That Syncs
BES Digital Planners FAQ
Have an app idea for your business?
We took BES Digital Planners from idea to the App Store. Tell us what your customers need your product to do, and we will tell you honestly whether an app is the right answer, what it takes, and what it costs.
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