Dex

What is Dex and who is it for?

Dex is a personal CRM: a contact book that remembers your relationships for you. It pulls the people you know from more than 15 sources, merges duplicates and keeps a timeline of every meeting, email and message with each person.

The maker, Dana HQ Inc., says more than 30,000 people use it, and aims it at founders tracking investors, MBA students building a network, consultants managing clients and anyone who wants to stay in touch with friends and contacts. It is not a sales CRM: there are no deal pipelines, and Dex itself tells people who need a team sales tool to look at HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive.

How much does Dex cost in the UK?

Dex costs from $12 a month on annual billing, $16 a month quarterly or $20 a month paid monthly for Premium. Prices are in US dollars, and the pricing page does not mention VAT.

• Premium: $20 monthly, $16 quarterly or $12 annually, LinkedIn sync up to 2,500 connections, 10 research credits a month
• Professional: $34 monthly, $27 quarterly or $20 annually, LinkedIn sync up to 9,000 connections, mail merge, Outlook, API and Zapier
• Team: $40 per user a month, billed monthly and arranged with sales, adds CRM integrations and SAML single sign-on

Premium and Professional start with a 7-day free trial. A card is needed to start it, and you are not charged until it ends.

Is Dex worth paying for?

Dex is worth it if you meet a lot of people and lose track of them, especially on LinkedIn. Keep-in-touch reminders, birthday prompts and pre-meeting briefs are the features reviewers mention most.

The weak spot is the Android app. Google Play reviewers describe it as buggy, with one saying the website and Chrome extension work well while the Android app is close to unusable, and its Google Play score of 3.6 sits well below the 4.4 on the App Store and 4.8 for the Chrome extension. If you mostly use Android, the trial is the time to check it.

Is Dex safe for your contacts and messages?

Dex hosts its servers and databases with providers certified to SOC 2 and ISO 27001, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and does not sell data or show ads. Its servers are in the US rather than the UK or EU, which matters if your organisation requires UK or EU data hosting.

The maker says you can export or delete your data at any time. One Trustpilot reviewer complained that links to their connections were not removed after cancelling, so it is worth deleting your data explicitly when you leave rather than only cancelling.

Dex vs Copper: which is better?

Dex is for one person's network; Copper is a team CRM for selling and delivering work. They overlap less than the word CRM suggests.

Copper runs inside Gmail and Google Calendar and gives a business shared pipelines, projects, email automation and reporting, priced per seat from $23 a month on annual billing. Dex costs from $12 a month on annual billing and focuses on remembering people: LinkedIn job changes, birthdays, notes and reminders to reach out. A freelancer or founder managing their own relationships will get more from Dex; a small agency tracking clients and deals is better served by Copper.

How do you get Dex cheaper?

Annual billing is the biggest saving, cutting Premium from $20 to $12 a month and Professional from $34 to $20, which the maker describes as up to 40% off.

Students get 50% off for a year with a school email, and MBA students get 50% off for two years. Non-profits are asked to contact Dex support. If you only need contact syncing and reminders, Premium covers them; Professional is only needed for mail merge, Outlook, multiple email accounts or API access.