Personal CRM

A personal CRM is for keeping track of friends, family, mentors, and colleagues across years — birthdays, last contact, where they live, what you talked about. Distinct from sales CRM (crm). For self-hosted Monica see selfhost-personal. For contact / address-book / vCard sync see calendars (CalDAV/CardDAV).

Self-host / OSS

• ★ Monica — free OSS self-hostable + hosted paid plan; the standard personal CRM. Track relatives, friends, debts, gifts, journals per contact, reminders. See selfhost-personal for the self-host pitch.
• Huggin / Memori — niche/older OSS attempts; less active.

Hosted paid

• ★ Clay (clay.earth) — paid + limited free; AI-driven contact enrichment; pulls from email + LinkedIn + iMessage to build relationship timelines automatically.
• Dex (getdex.com) — paid + free; iOS/Mac/Web; manual + light auto; LinkedIn import; reminders. The "polished pretty" personal CRM.
• UpHabit — paid + free; reminder-first; iOS/Android/Web; pairs nicely with Apple Contacts.
• Cloze — paid; pulls all email + calendar + LinkedIn into a relationship timeline; pricier; powerful.
• Covve — paid + free; OCR business-card scanning; iOS/Android.
• Notion CRM templates — free with Notion; many templates exist; pair with prod-note-taking-consumer.
• Airtable / Coda templates — same idea; structured-data-flavour.

Mobile-first

• Dex — iOS / Android / Web.
• UpHabit — iOS / Android.
• Covve — iOS / Android with card-scan.
• Karma — paid; iOS-leaning; minimal.

What a personal CRM tracks (vs business CRM)

• People — name, photo, contact info, social handles.
• Relationships — spouse / kids / coworker / mentor; family-tree-style.
• Last contact — auto-pulled from email/calendar in modern apps.
• Reminders to reach out — "ping every 3 months."
• Notes per contact — last conversation, gift ideas, anniversary.
• Important dates — birthdays, anniversaries; integrate with prod-calendar-apps.
• Debts / loans / shared expenses — Monica handles this.

vs sales CRM (crm) which tracks: deals, stages, pipelines, account-revenue.

Privacy considerations

• ★ A personal CRM is one of the most-private data sets you'll ever build. Names + relationships + private notes about people. Self-hosting Monica or using Apple Notes with a CRM template are the most private options.
• Hosted apps that auto-import from Gmail / iMessage (Clay / Cloze) require granting deep permissions — read the privacy policy carefully.
• Backup the database. A 5-year Monica DB is irreplaceable.

Apple Contacts as a foundation

• macOS / iOS Contacts — free, built-in; supports custom fields ("relationship", "anniversary", "kids' names"); syncs over iCloud.
• CardDAV — open standard; self-host via Baikal/Radicale. See calendars.
• Cardo / Cardhop — paid Mac contact UI on top of the system contacts DB; smarter search.
• For light personal-CRM needs, custom fields + the Birthdays calendar may be enough.

Pricing reality check

• Monica self-hosted is free; Monica hosted ~$10/mo.
• Dex ~$12/mo or ~$120/yr.
• Clay ~$20/mo for the full AI features; limited free.
• UpHabit Pro ~$5/mo.
• Cloze ~$15–$30/mo.
• Notion / Apple Contacts approach is free if you're willing to roll your own.

Patterns that actually work

• ★ Keep it small. A personal CRM that tracks 30 important people you actually maintain is better than 500 contacts you ignore.
• Reminder cadence per relationship type — quarterly for close friends, annually for old colleagues; the cadence is the whole point.
• Add context to every "last met" — without notes the data is useless five years later.
• Don't import LinkedIn wholesale — most apps let you, but it floods the CRM with noise.
• Pair with prod-calendar-apps for birthdays / anniversaries auto-on-the-calendar.

Pick this if…

• Self-host privacy-first: Monica.
• Pretty hosted iOS-first: Dex.
• AI auto-build from your inbox: Clay or Cloze.
• Reminder-only minimal: UpHabit.
• You already live in Notion: a Notion CRM template — see prod-note-taking-consumer.
• Apple-native, free, light: Apple Contacts custom fields + Cardhop.