Update 2023: This article was initially published in 2021. We published our new personal CRM ranking here.

2020 has been an extremely exciting year for the Personal CRM space. Many new companies started to work in this space and a few left stealth mode to expose their beautiful apps to the public.

We can expect 2021 to be the year where this industry will move from a niche product to a mainstream one. It’s hard to imagine a future in which smart consultants, agency owners and small relationship-based businesses won’t rely on software to help them manage their network.

Review process

In this article, we’ll take a look at the most popular personal relationship management apps based on a few criteria:

User reviews This will be the main criteria: are there users who love the product so much that they share it with their friends?

Powerful integrations The best personal CRMs are those that don’t require much of your time by integrating into your data in a smart way.

User experience and design No one wants to use an app that is ugly and clunky. We’ll take the user interface into account in the review.

Active team Finally, we’re also looking at the activity of the team. It’s hard to invest time into an app that is not being developed anymore.

For each selected app, we’ll share some general information as well as one thing this CRM for individuals is really good at and one thing it sucks at.

What is a Personal CRM?

In case you’re new to this space, here’s a quick refresher. We all have many contacts and depending on the industry we’re in, our contacts and network in general play a big role in our professional and personal success.

While big companies use Sales CRM apps to manage their clients and prospects, individuals don’t have such a tool to manage their professional network.

This is exactly the problem Personal CRM solutions are solving: helping you manage and grow your personal network in order to be more successful professionally.

And the winner is …

1. Clay - Be more thoughtful with people.

Clay has released its first version in late 2020 and is winning this contest thanks to the many recommendations it has received on Twitter. There are countless tweets about the merits of this relationship manager.

Compared to the rest of this listing, they have received the most public praises, hands down. Let’s have a closer look at this personal CRM from New York.

✅ What is Clay great at?

Clay is great at enriching your personal contact data. Once you connect your data, you’ll be able to find LinkedIn & Twitter information about your contacts and bring those straight into their app.

❌ What does Clay suck at?

Clay sucks at reconnecting. To actually reach out to a contact, you have to open a mailto link that takes 5s to load. They also don’t let you use templates.

General information about Clay

• Availability: Clay is available on iPhone and Web
• Pricing: Clay has a single paying plan at 20$/month

Visit their website here.

2. Nat - Find who you’re losing touch with

Nat is the only European company listed here. Founded by a Swiss entrepreneur, this bootstrapped company has been around for more than a year already and is publicly sharing its revenue on Indie Hacker.

It integrates well with the full Google Suite: Gmail, G Calendar, G Contacts.

✅ What is Nat great at?

Nat offers the best end-to-end solution for a personal CRM app: from showing you who you’re losing touch with, to showing you information about the contact and making it super easy to reconnect.

❌ What does Nat suck at?

Nat sucks at data enrichment. Don’t expect it to pull in LinkedIn or Twitter data based on an email.

General information about Nat

• Availability: Nat is available as a Web app
• Pricing: Nat starts on a free plan and customers can upgrade to a paying plan at 20$/month

Visit their website here.

3. Queue - Keep track of the people in your life

Queue is the latest player to join the personal relationship manager space. Built by a solo-founder, it is only on Apple’s IOS and works by connecting to your calendar data to automate a lot of your manual work. You set up reminders and it will only remind you about contacts you actually haven’t had a calendar meeting with.

✅ What is Queue great at?

Queue hits the right space between simplicity and automation. You still have to set up reminders about the contacts you want to stay in touch with but Queue will look at your calendar data to make sure it only reminds you about contacts you’re actually losing touch with.

❌ What does Queue suck at?

Queue sucks at note-taking. Note-taking is not a key part of the app and given that they’re only on mobile - it can be hard to write notes on small mobile keyboards.

General information about Queue

• Availability: Queue is available on iPhone only
• Pricing: Queue has a single paying plan at 8$/month with a free trial

Visit their website here.

4. Dex - Stay on top of the people that matter

Dex is a YCombinator alumni company that raised money and has already been around for a few years. It focuses on importing data from as many sources as possible. They actually built a Chrome extension that allows users to import data from sources that are totally inaccessible to other personal CRM apps such as Facebook.

✅ What is Dex great at?

Dex is great for Trello users who want Kanban boards everywhere and who use many different social networking apps. They have a Kanban board system where you move your contacts into different columns depending on the level of closeness.

❌ What does Dex suck at?

Dex sucks at automation. Using their system requires a lot of time and effort. It’s not a push-a-button-and-leave-running type of personal CRM.

General information about Dex

• Availability: Dex is available on iPhone and Web
• Pricing: Dex has both a free and a paying plan but users have to go through an onboarding call first.

Visit their website here.

5. Mogul - Stop using spreadsheets to manage your network

Mogul is the only contact management app for individuals that offers end-to-end encryption, making it a great choice for people who need total privacy. Built by a serial-entrepreneur, Mogul also has a very nice design but offers no integrations.

✅ What is Mogul great at?

Mogul is great at protecting your data. Through their end-to-end encryption, your data is as safe as it can get.

❌ What does Mogul suck at?

Mogul sucks at integrations. You have to do everything manually. If you need a solution that works in the background, then Mogul is not for you.

General information about Mogul

• Availability: Mogul is available on iPhone and Web
• Pricing: Mogul has a single paying plan with a 7-day free trial

Visit their website here.

More Personal CRMs

There are of course many more relationship management apps out there but they didn’t fit the criteria as well. If you still haven’t found the right app for you, check out the other apps that are listed below:

Covve

Covve is a smart contact management app from Cyprus, they’ve been around for multiple years already and have raised multiple rounds of funding. They focus on business card scanning and showing news articles that mention your contacts.

Visit their website here.

Folk

Folk is being built in Paris and funded by eFounders, a startup accelerator that focuses on re-inventing the way we work. They’ve been in closed beta since they launched in 2019.

Visit their website here.

Monica

Monica is probably the oldest personal CRM app that is still alive. They don’t offer any automation and focus on people who have good technical knowledge as they let you self-host your account.

Visit their website here.

ntwork

This light-weight solution was built a while back and there have been talks about a 2.0 version but nothing has yet been shipped.

Visit their website here

Sunshine

I could not finish this article without mentioning Marissa Meyer’s latest venture. The former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee entered this market a month ago with its contact management app. The promise of Sunshine is to merge duplicate contacts and give you up to date information about all your contacts.

Visit their website here