The Personal CRM is becoming more and more mainstream tool, especially in 2021. Whatever your job or industry, relationships are probably a big part of your life! With so many people and interactions happening in your life, you need a tool to remember it all.
That's where the personal CRM comes in! At the core, it helps you remember all of the people and interactions in your life. So below we are going to review the top Personal CRM apps in 2021 and outline the following for each tool
Pros
Cons
Who this is great for
Pricing
Mogul
Mogul is a Personal CRM that is focused on user privacy and design. It is great for people looking to use something better than a spreadsheet to manage their network and has a native iOS app.
Pros
Privacy - It is the most private personal CRM on the market and the only app that offers end to end encryption. If you value privacy, this is the tool to go with.
Design and Experience - It has one of the best interfaces (especially when it comes to mobile experience) on the market and good design is treated like a feature
Cons
Automation - If you need an automated solution that does the work for you, Mogul is not the tool for you. It is very centered around manual curation of your people.
Who is this great for
If you've developed your own system to remember the people in your life and the interactions you've had with them (like a spreadsheet) and want to go a step further, Mogul is a good fit for you.
Pricing
Mogul is $9.99/mo or $99.99/year and 50% for students and non-profits
Monica
Monica is one of the older Personal CRM's on the market and most notably they are open source! You are free to download the code and host it yourself (if you are somewhat technical) or even modify the code to customize it to fit your needs (if you are very technical)
Pros
Open Source Code - The fact the code is freely available is great for more technical people who want to customize the codebase
Cons
No Mobile App - As the world begins to open back up, being able to access your data on your phone will become more critical. The lack of a native mobile app does hinder the experience of using Monica
Outdated Interface - Although it gets the job done, the interface has not been updated in a very long time. Compared to other tools, it does feel a bit dated.
Who is this great for
Technical people who want total control of the platform and are willing to put in time to manage it
Pricing
Monica is $9/mo or $90/year but offers a self-hosted version if you are technical
Dex
Dex is one of the few VC backed tools (backed by YCombinator) and has a big focus on their data importing features via their chrome extension. They have a great team and are constantly working on improving the product.
Pros
Importing - If your contacts live in a lot of different sources or you are managing a lot of contacts (>5,000) then Dex is for you. They have the best importing feature among all of the tools and can even do one time imports from places like Linkedin and Facebook via their Google chrome extension
Google Chrome Extension - Their Google chrome extension allows you to view Dex info on places like Instagram and Superhuman, which is great if you are a chrome user
Cons
Data Syncing - If you came to Dex for their data importing features, you might be underwhelmed by their data syncing capabilities. You'll need to re-run the import tool manually if you want to update your contacts from places like Linkedin and Facebook
Who is this great for
If you need to import data beyond the typical iOS/Android contacts from sources like Facebook or Linkedin, Dex is made for you
Pricing
Dex is $13.50/mo or $110/year and does offer a limited free plan
Nat.app
Nat.app is a personal CRM that is focused on people who live in email (specifically Gmail users). They are bootstrapped by a small team and powered by AI.
Pros
Deep Gmail integration - Their gmail integration is the most robust on the market and arguably their biggest strength. However, it is worth noting that they do not support any other email providers.
Cons
No mobile app - At this time, there is no native mobile application available for Nat. With more and more people doing in person meetings again, this is becoming a very necessary feature in 2021.
No support for other email providers (like Outlook or iCloud) - Nat is great for Gmail users, but basically unusable if you use any other email provider.
Who is this great for
If you are a Gmail power user and conduct most of your interactions with people over email, Nat is the best tool for you. It constantly scans your emails automatically and surfaces who you should stay in touch with
Pricing
Nat.app is $30/mo while they are in beta
Airtable
Airtable is basically Excel or Google Sheets but modern and more powerful. It might be surprising that we would include this in this list, but it is actually a very good Personal CRM for those who are willing to put in the work and want to customize the experience heavily.
Pros
Extremely customizable - Given that it is basically a more powerful spreadsheet, you have the ability to customize the columns and tables very easily. If you work in a specific industry and want to make it a more industry specific tool, you can totally do this with Airtable.
Cons
Not a tailored experience - The biggest downside to Airtable as a personal CRM is that it was not built as a personal CRM specifically. It is a very generic tool and meant to cater to a large number of use cases. You can hack it to fit your needs, but the experience isn't optimal compared to the other tools that were made for the job.
Terrible mobile experience - Reading a spreadsheet isn't a great experience on a mobile device and Airtable suffers from this problem. Viewing and searching just isn't enjoyable compared to the other tools and so if you primary plan to use the tool on your phone we don't recommend using Airtable
Table Limits - There are limits to the number of rows you can have, even on the paid plans. If you pay $12/mo, you can still only have 5000 records in a single base. This means you can only log a total of 5000 people and interactions combined before needing to pay more.
Who is this great for
People that want total control of the experience and are willing to put in the time to build and manage the system
Pricing
Free up to 1,200 records (a person / interaction / etc... is one record) then $12/mo for up to 5,000 records
There are a lot of great personal CRM tools on the market with each one catering to different audiences. You can go with something like Mogul if you care about privacy and design or something like Monica if you are technical and want to host it yourself. Regardless of your use case, it doesn't hurt to sign up and give each one a try (they all have free trials anyway!).
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