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In April 2026 UpHabit, a personal CRM that had spent more than eight years reminding people of birthdays and when they last spoke to someone, shut down and asked its users to export their data, according to its rival ContactsPlus. When I checked in October, its website was down and its app had gone from the App Store. That's the quiet risk with a personal CRM: you hand one small company the memory of everyone you know, and it has to outlast the friendships. In March, Clay, the best-known name in the field, became Mesh, nine months after Automattic bought it. So choosing one is partly about features and partly about who'll still be around.
What is a personal CRM?
It's an address book that remembers relationships as well as numbers. CRM stands for customer relationship management, the software sales teams run on, but a personal CRM drops the deals: each person gets a record of what they told you, when you last spoke and a reminder when it's time to get back in touch. The better ones fill that in for you from your email, calendar, messages and LinkedIn, as 
DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → and Mesh do. A phone's contacts app stores the details but never nudges you.
Who actually uses one, and why?
Mostly people whose work runs on who they know. Founders, investors, MBA students and job seekers are the groups DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → writes use-case pages for, and freelancers with years of past clients fit too. The other group is people who've moved. In a University of Kansas study of 355 adults who had moved in the previous six months, Jeffrey Hall estimated it takes about 50 hours together to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend and more than 200 to make a close one (2018). Sam Roberts and Robin Dunbar's study of 251 women suggests friendships take more upkeep than family ties (Personal Relationships, 2011). In the UK, "personal crm" is searched about 110 times a month, and "dex crm" and "monica crm" about 90 each (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026).
What does it cost, and what's the catch?
Anything from nothing to $240 a year. In October 2026 a year of DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → Premium costs $144 billed annually (Dex), Mesh Pro $120, though its free plan covers 1,000 contacts (Mesh), hosted Monica $90 (Monica) and Covve Pro from £49.99 on the UK App Store. Dex, Mesh and Monica charge in US dollars, and only Monica mentions tax.
The catch is that most of what goes in is about other people. DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → transfers your data to the US and its privacy policy doesn't mention the GDPR, and Mesh says data may be stored outside your country without naming where. The more an app pulls from LinkedIn on its own, the closer it sits to LinkedIn's ban on tools that scrape profiles or download contacts.
The short answer: if you network for work, DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → is the most complete, pulling in LinkedIn, Gmail, WhatsApp and iMessage and nudging you on a schedule, from $12 a month billed annually with no free plan (October 2026). Mesh, formerly Clay, is the best free start, with 1,000 contacts before Pro at $10 a month billed annually. Monica suits anyone who wants their notes on their own server. For friends and family, your phone's contacts and a repeating reminder may be all you need. More tools are on our CRM and contacts software page.
The right pick depends on whose names you're trying to keep, so I'd like to know who readers have in mind.
Personal CRM apps side by side
Prices are the cheapest year for one person in October 2026, from each app's own pricing page or the UK App Store.
| App | Best for | Free plan | A year from | Where data lives | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → | Networking for work | 7-day trial, card needed | $144 | US | No free plan; Android app rated 3.6 |
| Mesh (formerly Clay) | Records that build themselves | Up to 1,000 contacts | Free; $120 for Pro | Not named | Card at sign-up; CSV import needs Pro |
| Monica | Privacy and self-hosting | Free if you host it | $90 hosted | Your server, or Fortrabbit | Almost no syncing; rebuild due by end of 2026 |
| Covve | Business cards on iPhone | Free app, Pro in-app | £49.99 | Encrypted on your phone | Maker now focuses on a sales scanner |
| Notion or a spreadsheet | People who like to build their own | Free | Free | Wherever you keep it | No repeating reminders in Notion |
| Phone contacts and reminders | Friends and family | Free | Free | Your Apple or Google account | Everything is typed by hand |
Can your phone do this for free?
For friends and family, largely yes. On an iPhone, Reminders can repeat on a schedule, and its When Messaging option shows a reminder "the next time you chat with this person in Messages" (Apple), which suits a note to ask about someone's new job. Google Contacts on Android added reminders for birthdays, anniversaries and custom dates in 2023, with alerts up to two weeks ahead (9to5Google), and both contacts apps have a notes field. For check-ins on a schedule, Smart Contact Reminder, an Android app by Milan Bárta, scores 4.4 from 566 reviews on Google Play (October 2026).
Plenty of people stop there. One r/automation user who gave up on proper personal CRMs because logging every interaction "started feeling like a second job" now keeps a short note per person in the Notes app, though they reckon freelancers with lots of loose professional contacts need the real thing (Reddit, May 2026).
Zvi Band, who has built three relationship CRMs, the latest called Relatable, argues that the most effective CRM is the one you actually use, and that a simple spreadsheet works for plenty of people.
Where your notes on people live now says a lot about what an app would have to replace.
Dex: the most complete personal CRM, if you'll pay
DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → is here because it pulls in more of your life than any rival I looked at. It imports from LinkedIn, Gmail, Google Calendar, WhatsApp and other messaging apps, puts every meeting, email and note with a person on one timeline, and reminds you on a cadence you set for each contact (Dex). LinkedIn connects through a sign-in window inside its desktop or phone app and refreshes about once a day while the desktop app runs (Dex). Professional adds Outlook and note taker integrations, including one that turns 
GranolaGranolaGranola is an AI notepad for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android that transcribes meetings from your device's audio, without a bot joining the call, and turns your rough notes into a Buying guide · View store → meeting notes into contacts and timeline notes (Dex); our AI note takers guide covers Granola and its rivals.
Jeff Tihonov, a CRM consultant who reviews software on his Tilley Live channel, compared Dex with Clay over two videos and kept Dex for its lists, filters and search. He found both desktop apps laggy, and Clay better at filling in birthdays. He says in the video that his Dex link is an affiliate link.
The catch: there's no free plan, and the seven-day trial needs a card. Outlook, more than one email account and the API need Professional (Dex). The Android app scores 3.6 from 284 reviews on Google Play, against 4.1 from 30 ratings on the UK App Store (October 2026). Dex hosts everything in the US (Dex).
Who it suits: founders, job seekers and freelancers who live in LinkedIn, Gmail and WhatsApp.
Less suited to: anyone who wants a free plan or UK or EU hosting.
Price: Premium is $12 a month billed annually, $16 quarterly or $20 monthly in October 2026; Professional is $20, $27 or $34 (Dex).
Mesh (formerly Clay): the best free start
Mesh is here for the most generous free plan among the apps that fill themselves in: up to 1,000 contacts from email, calendar, LinkedIn, X, Facebook and iMessage, with reconnect prompts, reminders, birthdays and job-change alerts (Mesh). It was called Clay until 26 March 2026, when it changed name because Clay.com, an unrelated sales data company, had crowded it (Mesh). Its owner since June 2025 is Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com (Crunchbase News), a bigger backer than most apps here have.
Mesh says it reads email headers rather than message bodies, and that neither it nor its AI assistant trains models on your data (Mesh). It now runs on Android as well as iPhone, Mac, Windows and the web (Mesh), and the iPhone app scores 4.2 from 75 ratings on the UK App Store (October 2026).
The catch: even the free plan asks for a card at sign-up, which starts a 14-day Pro trial, and importing a spreadsheet or CSV is a Pro feature (Mesh). It doesn't say which country holds your data.
Who it suits: people who want records that build themselves, and a free plan long enough to find out if they'll use it.
Less suited to: anyone tracking more than 1,000 people who won't pay, or who wants the lists and filters Tihonov missed.
Price: free up to 1,000 contacts; Pro is $10 a month billed annually or $20 monthly in October 2026 (Mesh).
Monica: the private one you can run yourself
Monica is here for privacy. It's open source on GitHub, free to run on your own server, and says your data is "never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train a model" (Monica). It's built for friends and family rather than networking: private notes, reminders, birthdays, gifts and money owed (Monica). Hosted Monica runs on Fortrabbit, a Berlin hosting company with EU and US regions (Monica; Fortrabbit), and Monica doesn't say which it uses.
The catch: you type almost everything yourself. Monica's pages describe vCard and CSV import but no email, calendar or LinkedIn sync, and native phone apps only after a rebuild (Monica). That rebuild, Monica v3, is due "before the end of 2026" with a migration path for existing accounts (Monica), and a notice added in September 2026 says the hosted beta and its data will be deleted at the end of December (GitHub).
Who it suits: people who want a private record of friends and family, and anyone happy running Docker.
Less suited to: networkers who want records filled in for them.
Price: free to self-host, plus your server; hosted is $90 a year or $9 a month in October 2026, with a 30-day trial and no card (Monica).
Covve: encrypted notes and a business card scanner
Covve is here for two things the others don't lead with. It scans business cards, and its App Store listing says notes and contacts are end-to-end encrypted on your device, so "even we can't unlock your data". It also reminds you to follow up and sends news about your contacts' careers. Its maker, Covve Visual Network Ltd, is registered in Cyprus (Covve). The iPhone app scores 4.5 from 115 ratings in the UK; on Google Play it's 3.6 from 958 reviews (October 2026).
The catch: Covve's website now sells Covve Scanner, a lead-capture tool for sales teams (Covve), and no longer describes the personal app, though the app was updated on 9 October 2026.
Who it suits: iPhone users who still come home from events with a pocket of cards.
Price: free to download; Pro in-app purchases run from £4.99 to £9.99 a month, or £49.99 to £89.99 a year, on the UK App Store in October 2026.
Notion or a spreadsheet: free, flexible and silent
A spreadsheet or a Notion database works if you'll open it. Notion's free plan has no block limit for one person (Notion), and Notion keeps a gallery of free personal CRM templates. What's missing is the nudge: Notion can remind you on a date, but repeating reminders are still "on the roadmap" (Notion). heyalbert's walkthrough shows how far a Notion setup for friends can go, with a birthday planner, events, notes after each catch-up and a gift budget.
The catch shows up in a March 2026 r/Notion thread, where the poster had built a Notion CRM four times and dropped it each time: adding someone new took too long, and a reminder to "reach out to mike" came with no context. One reply said what helped was a rough list of names with one line each, and reminders reworded to "ask about their move to ___".
The rest: ContactsPlus, folk, Cloze
ContactsPlus has a free plan for one account and 1,000 contacts, with follow-up reminders and notes and no card; Premium is $9.99 a month billed annually. 
folkfolk CRMfolk is a CRM for small teams that sell through relationships. It gathers contacts and conversations from LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook and WhatsApp into shared lists and pipelines, witBuying guide · View store →, at folk.app, is a CRM for small teams with a LinkedIn extension and reminders, from $24 a member a month billed annually; it's a sales tool at heart, and our guide to the best CRM for a small business covers it beside the team CRMs. Cloze still sells Pro to individuals at $17 a month billed annually, but now describes itself as software for estate agency brokerages.
Is it legal to keep notes on people in the UK?
For your own friends and family, yes, and data protection law largely stays out of it. UK GDPR doesn't apply to processing "in the course of a purely personal or household activity" (Article 2), and the GDPR's recital 18 names "the holding of addresses" and social networking as examples (legislation.gov.uk). The ICO's own examples are "writing to friends and family or taking pictures for your own enjoyment" (ICO).
It changes when the notes are for work. The exemption needs "no connection to a professional or commercial activity" (ICO), so a freelancer's notes on clients or a founder's on investors come under UK GDPR, and the people in them can ask for copies of what's held about them, which organisations usually answer within a month (ICO). I'd write every work note as if the person might one day read it.
The app maker is covered either way: recital 18 says the rules still apply to those "which provide the means" for personal use. Where they keep it varies. DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → is in the US, Mesh doesn't say, Covve is an EU company that encrypts notes on your phone, and a self-hosted Monica sits wherever you put it.
Will syncing LinkedIn get you into trouble?
It might, and that's LinkedIn's call rather than the app's. LinkedIn's user agreement bars software, "browser plugins and add-ons" used "to scrape or copy" profiles, and bots used to "add or download contacts". Its help centre says members using such tools risk "having their accounts restricted or shut down" (LinkedIn). Neither DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → nor Mesh says LinkedIn has approved its sync, and Dex's help page doesn't mention LinkedIn's terms (Dex).
The low-risk route is LinkedIn's own export. Under Settings & Privacy, Data privacy and Get a copy of your data, LinkedIn emails a download that includes your connections, with email addresses only for people who allow it (LinkedIn). Its connections file can then go into Dex, Monica or Mesh Pro as a spreadsheet import.
Questions people ask
Is there a free personal CRM?
Yes. Mesh is free for up to 1,000 contacts, ContactsPlus for 1,000 on one account, Monica if you host it yourself, and your phone's contacts and reminders cost nothing.
What happened to Clay, the personal CRM?
It became Mesh on 26 March 2026, at me.sh, after Automattic bought it in June 2025 (Mesh). It isn't Clay.com, the sales data tool most "Clay alternatives" pages are about.
Can I use Notion as a personal CRM?
Yes, with one of Notion's free templates, but Notion can't yet repeat a reminder, so the keep-in-touch nudge has to come from somewhere else (Notion).
Is there a good personal CRM for Android?
DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store →, Mesh and Covve all have Android apps, though Dex and Covve score 3.6 on Google Play; Smart Contact Reminder, built for Android, scores 4.4 (October 2026).
Is Dex free?
No. DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → has a seven-day trial that needs a card, then costs from $12 a month billed annually in October 2026 (Dex).
Is Monica CRM free?
The software is free to host yourself; hosted Monica costs $90 a year in October 2026 (Monica).
So which personal CRM should you use?
For friends and family, your phone's own reminders are the place to begin, and a Notion page or Monica can come later if the habit sticks. If you network for work and will pay, DexDexDex is a personal CRM that gathers the people you know from LinkedIn, email, calendar, WhatsApp and iMessage into one contact list, with notes, timelines and keep-in-touch reminder1 current offer · View store → does the most. If you want records that build themselves for nothing, Mesh's free plan is the one to try first. Whichever you pick, UpHabit's ending makes the case for exporting a copy now and then.
More apps are on our CRM and contacts software page. Our guide to the best to-do list apps gives the follow-ups a home, and when a reminder says it's been too long, thinking-of-you gifts can say what a text can't.
