My mom used to keep track of her contacts in an address book. She carried it in her purse and was diligent about adding new names, addresses, and phone numbers as she met people. Of course, this was back when an address book combined with a giant phone book got you pretty much everything you needed.
Now your contacts live all over the place, and it can be a chore to manage. I personally have five Gmail accounts, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and my iPhone. What I really wanted—and needed—was a consolidated view of all my contacts. That’s when I turned to a personal CRM.
Table of contents:
What is a personal CRM?
Lots of businesses use CRM (customer relationship management) software to keep track of clients, prospects, customers, vendors, partners, and anyone else they work with. It’s a place to store contact info and also notes about interactions across an organization. The best CRMs will also sync with email, so you can see a history of conversations—that way, anyone can jump in at any time.
A personal CRM is similar, but it’s designed for individuals, not companies. Personal CRMs will pull contact info from all of your connected accounts into a single app.
While a personal CRM makes a lot of sense for professionals, it’s also great for maintaining personal relationships. It can help you celebrate birthdays, ensure you regularly touch base with friends, and make sure you remember important upcoming events for the people around you.
Whether personal or professional, it’s about nurturing relationships.
Features to look for in a personal CRM
At a bare minimum, a personal CRM should consolidate contacts from all of your email, calendar, and social media accounts. Ideally, the CRM can also pull in contacts from your mobile phone, if you have the contacts stored on the phone itself. Some accounts (like Gmail and Google Calendar) will stay in constant sync with the personal CRM. Others might be a one-time import.
In many cases, a personal CRM will even enrich your imported contacts with profile pictures, employer information, and interests—whatever is publicly available. In some cases, the CRM will try to “match” a phone contact with a LinkedIn contact and pull back the related profile information.
But beyond establishing your contacts, there are a few features that really let a CRM do the heavy lifting for you.
Tags or groups
A personal CRM should give you the option to group your contacts together or tag them in a way that makes sense to you. That way, you can pull up a list of people in the same category.
I have a lot of groups. Twenty-two to be exact, and always adding more. I have groups for companies I’ve worked for, industries, virtual chats I’ve held, family, friends, and a bunch more.
Contact updates
Did you miss the LinkedIn announcement that one of your contacts got a new job? A personal CRM can pull in updates from social profiles, showing you the old headline and the new one.
Related contacts
I have a hard time remembering how people are connected, especially if it’s been a while. And it’s helpful context to know that Person X used to work with Person Y or introduced me to Person Z.
You can add notes to your personal CRM and link connections, usually with an @ mention. Once you add the note, both contacts will show the connection.
AI can help here, too. In Clay, for example, you can ask the AI a question, like “Who lives in San Francisco?” or “Who is interested in painting?” or “Who works in the marketing industry?” Clay’s AI will sift through all the details of your contacts and return the relevant ones.
Notes or activities
While personal CRMs are really good at linking your email and calendar activity, this often only tells part of the story. What if you had an exchange via a DM? Or a phone call? Or met for lunch? A personal CRM should allow you to add notes (with dates), so you have a full timeline of interactions.
Dex, for example, allows you to select an activity type, such as SMS or meals, or even create custom interactions.
Reconnect cadence
Not every contact needs constant follow-up. A personal CRM should allow you to set a cadence for reconnecting with your contacts, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly. You should also be able to set reminders to follow up on a specific date in the future.
Some CRMs even suggest reconnect cadences to you. Clay has an “automatic” reconnect cadence that uses AI to suggest reconnecting with your contacts.
The best personal CRM apps
A personal CRM should integrate with your email and social media as baseline functionality. Beyond that, the CRM you choose will depend on the additional features and integrations you find helpful—and, of course, the price.
Here are some of the most popular CRMs that work well for personal (or hybrid personal/professional) use. Keep reading for more details on each one.
|
Best for |
Standout feature |
Pricing |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Clay |
A free personal CRM |
Integrates with iMessage |
Free for 1,000 contacts; from $10/month (billed annually) |
|
Dex |
Integration with Superhuman |
Seamless integration with Superhuman |
From $12/month |
|
Mogul |
Privacy |
Only CRM with end-to-end encryption |
Free with some limitations; from $9.99/month |
|
Relatable |
Organizing contacts into groups |
Customizable “spheres” for contact categorization |
$44/month |
|
folk |
Service solopreneurs needing a pipeline feature |
One-click contact detail enrichment |
From $25/person/month (billed monthly) |
|
Streak |
A CRM that lives within Gmail |
Gmail-based pipeline organization with mail merge |
$49/month (billed annually) |
Clay
Pricing: Free for 1,000 contacts; from $10/month (billed annually)
Best for: A free personal CRM
Clay has a beautiful interface, AI-powered search across your network of contacts, and an integration with iMessage, which is huge for iPhone diehards. But the best part is the robust free plan for up to 1,000 contacts—and it’s an affordable upgrade form there. And when you connect Clay to Zapier, you open up a world of automation possibilities, so you can focus on your more strategic work.
Dex
Pricing: From $12/month
Best for: Integration with Superhuman
In addition to all the standard integrations (Gmail, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.), Dex also integrates with Superhuman, letting you open Dex from within Superhuman so you can see your related notes and reminders. And you can unlock even more integration options through Zapier, so you can connect Dex to all the other apps you use.
Mogul
Pricing: Free with some limitations; from $9.99/month
Best for: End-to-end encryption
Mogul touts its data privacy, claiming that its the only tool of its kind that offers end-to-end encryption. Mogul also offers itself as an easy alternative to homegrown systems like a spreadsheet, Airtable, or Notion.
Relatable
Pricing: $44/month
Best for: Organizing contacts into groups
Not sure where to get started with categorizing your contacts? Relatable makes it very simple with “spheres” like “People I Love” or “Current Clients” (you can customize the descriptions). And if you’re into gamification, you can join a leaderboard that gives you points based on your network activity. To get even more out of Relatable, connect it to Zapier to automate all your CRM workflows.
folk
Pricing: From $25/person/month (billed monthly)
Best for: Service solopreneurs that need a pipeline feature
If you need to keep track of deals you’re managing, you’ll need a more robust CRM, ideally one with a pipeline. folk (yes, lowercase f) fits the bill. It can be used as a “true” CRM, but it’s also great as a personal CRM. My favorite feature: you can find contact details with a single click. For example, if you’re on a LinkedIn contact, you can click Enrich, and folk will add information like the contact’s email address and job title. And you can do even more with folk when you automate it with Zapier.
Streak
Pricing: $49/month (billed annually)
Best for: A CRM that lives within Gmail
If you want to avoid switching between apps, Streak lives within Gmail. You organize your pipeline by adding different labels to your email, and you can use a mail merge feature to email multiple contacts. Streak also has a more traditional pipeline CRM, so it will work as you scale—and you can automate it with Zapier.
Build your own personal CRM
While I’m a huge fan of apps, I recognize that a personal CRM might not be the right fit for everyone. Maybe you don’t want to pay for another subscription, or maybe you need more customization than any app offers. Or maybe you’d just prefer to stay within the tools you’re already using.
Many people build their own CRMs using tools like a spreadsheet, Notion, or Airtable. These tools won’t have built-in contact integration with email and social platforms, for example, but you can add some automation with Zapier to add new contacts to your homegrown CRM based on your emails, for example.
Here are a few templates you can use to build your own personal CRM:
In each of these cases, you can customize your CRM however you like, and use Zapier to automate it.
Should you use a personal CRM?
I’d say most people would benefit from a personal CRM. But you have to be willing to use it by making notes about your contacts or following through on the reconnect cadence. It can work simply as a centralized contact management tool and nothing more, but the real power comes in using the different features. If you want to better manage your relationships—personal or professional—then a personal CRM is a good step in the right direction.
Related reading:
This article was originally published in April 2023. The most recent update was in January 2025.