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Founder here. Here to answer any questions you might have. The site is not perfect, it's not mobile optimized, there are probably bugs, there is a gazillion fea
by robinhood 9y ago
Founder here. Here to answer any questions you might have. The site is not perfect, it's not mobile optimized, there are probably bugs, there is a gazillion features missing, no APIs but it's a labour of love, open-source and I hope it will help people other than me. I want to grow this product but I need to know what you need, people.
Edit: sorry for the bugs I see on my server popping here and there. Didnt expect that much users and traffic.
- muzakthings 9y ago1) Does it integrate with my calls from my iOS / emails from gmail? So that I can sort by "least recently connected"? otherwise writing notes each time and looking it up gets tiresome. 2) is there a mobile app? 3) how much will it cost monthly? 4) how are reminder sent?
- robinhood 9y ago1) No 2) no 3) nothing 4) by email :-D
- djaychela 9y agoin reference to 4) any chance of adding something like pushbullet? https://docs.pushbullet.com/ https://docs.pushbullet.com/
- espo 9y agoA similar service is Pushover. They have an e-mail gateway that allows you to send e-mails to your custom Pushover e-mail address and have it be converted into Pushover notifications. Each user has a @pomail.net address assigned when their account is created, and additional addresses can be created with custom options for each one such as a default sound. Highly recommend it.
- Splatter 9y agoI love the idea of a personal CRM. However, I hate the idea of duplication of effort. If you can't create interfaces to these other apps, then perhaps make sure you create an interface to IFTTT with enough control that would let me aggregate my data (phone calls, emails, etc.) to folks in Monica without user intervention.
- canes123456 9y agoSign up with facebook is not working for me. Perhaps because I have two factor on. Also, consider adding an import feature from gmail, vCard, etc Finally, why include male/female binary as the only required field besides name. Seems a little odd
- robinhood 9y agoDamn it, I broke it. I'll fix it today, or remove it entirely, I still don't know about it. I like the idea of being able to quickly log in, but it's yet another feature to maintain, so...
- positivecomment 9y agoMy personal recommendation is to drop third-party logins and allow users to sign-up via usernames (without emails). That means you need to deal with "lost password with no way to recover" situations and spam but it's still better than third parties controlling the most important aspect of your application.
- tyingq 9y agoFB integration, though, might be nice for initial import of friend data that's already there.
- robinhood 9y agoYou can't import ANY data from your friends from Facebook. Facebook doesn't allow to.
- sogen 9y agoReally?!
- confounded 9y ago
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThis seems super handy. I am kinda interested in seeing if I can get it to run on Sandstorm.io. Then I don't have to put a lot of effort into managing hosting for it, but it seems like it'd be handy and I'd probably use it if I could host it that way. And if you want to let people use your open source thing without having to manage it as a service, there's some nice perks: https://sandstorm.io/developer https://sandstorm.io/developer
- eddiecalzone 9y agoWow, I'm now a fan of Sandstorm!
- simplehuman 9y agoHave a look at cloudron.io as well
- jonasvp 9y agoThis is exactly what I need - but I signed up, closed the window and now I get an endless redirect loop after clicking on "Login" on the main page. Please fix so I can try it out! EDIT: It works when accessing https://app.monicahq.com/people https://app.monicahq.com/people - the endless redirect only affects https://app.monicahq.com/ https://app.monicahq.com/
- robinhood 9y agoOh god it happens to me sometimes. I have NO idea why. I need to check.
- sharmanaetor 9y agoIt's a Laravel setting. When you are already logged in and try to access https://app.monicahq.com/ https://app.monicahq.com/ or https://app.monicahq.com/login https://app.monicahq.com/login etc., redirect to https://app.monicahq.com/dashboard https://app.monicahq.com/dashboard instead of https://app.monicahq.com/ https://app.monicahq.com/. That should fix the endless loops. Edit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32130028/82135 https://stackoverflow.com/a/32130028/82135 might be what you are looking for.
- edwardy20 9y agoAwesome work, have been looking for something like this for a while. I would love to see tags for people and a search bar. If I'm trying to organize a casual chess match or pickup soccer game, it would be super convenient to search all my friends with said interest.
- CrackpotGonzo 9y agoOne thought is that it would extremely useful to be able to interact over SMS: log events, contacts, receive reminders etc. Love the idea, keep it up!
- robinhood 9y agoProblem with this: SMS has a price, and would people be willing to pay for this?
- flaviuspopan 9y agoCould be a paid feature, I wouldn't mind paying for advanced features like that. I've been searching for a personal, non-sales oriented "CRM" platform for months now and am currently using Accompany but this feels far more personal.
- robinhood 9y agoI don't know Accompany, but no matter what, even if you use Monica for business, my personal view of business relationships evolves around knowing the intimate details of the person and remember the kids name, for instance. Things you won't find in Salesforce :-D
- flaviuspopan 9y agoYes, and also staying in touch meaningfully enough that it doesn't seem tacky and manipulative when asking about the kids :)
- toomuchtodo 9y agoMaybe support putting a user's own Twilio creds in? Also, love your project! How do I give you money? Edit: I'll keep an eye out for the link!
- robinhood 9y ago
- mangandini 9y agoPlease add an option to set relationship to a person ( wife, husband, son , friends)
- the_bear 9y agoDisclaimer: I run my own CRM company, so you can either view this comment as genuine praise/advice, or an attempt to subvert a competitor (but I promise it's the former). First off, this looks awesome. I've heard people complain many times about how they just want a personal CRM for non-business purposes. On the one hand I love the idea because having such a specific use case allows you to make a very simple UI that does exactly what the user needs. On the other hand, I never personally chose to go after it because getting individual consumers to pay for stuff seems hard. So I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you stick with it. The "Why Monica?" section of your website sounds like it was written specifically for me, and I'm definitely going to try it out because of that copy. My main piece of advice: be skeptical of most product suggestions. As someone who has been building a simple CRM for the past ~8 years, I can tell you that everyone wants something different, and if you react to every suggestion you get, your product will end up losing the awesome focus it has right now. That doesn't mean you should ignore feedback, it just means you should make sure the feedback is coming from your actual target audience and not some random person who's looking for Monica to be something it isn't. I fell for that too many times in the early days. My email is in my profile if you ever want to talk shop.
- robinhood 9y agoThanks a lot for the advice. I've been product manager for most of my career so I totally understand what you mean. I will definitely be careful in where I want Monica to go, and definitely I'll reach out to you on your email (but not today, I just received way too much feedback and emails thanks to HN today :-D
- electriclove 9y agoPlease consider creating a 'Deploy to Heroku' button or something similar.
- robinhood 9y agoExcellent idea. If only I knew how to do it though :-D
- elliottcarlson 9y agoIt's actually pretty straight forward; here is the Heroku documentation on it: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-button https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-button An example from one of my projects: https://github.com/elliottcarlson/incidentbot/blob/master/app.json https://github.com/elliottcarlson/incidentbot/blob/master/ap...
- joelbugarini 9y ago+1 This would be great!
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoQuestion: Where does the name come from? Is it another female assistant in the vein of Siri, Alexa, etc.?
- munchman 9y agonot saying this is where it came from, but this is where i imagined it came from http://i.imgur.com/JCnWZqR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JCnWZqR.jpg
- geekamongus 9y ago"Here are everything you can do with Monica" "Manage food preferencies" Correct grammar and spelling are easy to overlook and may seem insignificant, but they go a long way in making a good first impression.
- microcolonel 9y agoThe first thing I looked for was data export and import. I have an export from google contacts I'd like to import to get started quickly. I would also like to know that I can get my data out to use in other applications (a table for the activity logs joined on the relationship's ID, a table for the relationships, etc.). The "Edit" link under "Personal Information" should also be Blue, like the "Add" links under the other sections. It took me about 40 seconds to figure that out because of the confusion. Editing reminders would be useful. More flexible reminder timing (things like "end of the month", which could be more or less than 30 days apart, are very useful). You should be able to select an existing Person entry for the Significant Other field. Also, if you add somebody through the Significant Other field, they should show up as a person. You should also be able to delete a Person.
- robinhood 9y agoYou are right. Import is high on my roadmap [1]. Export will be next, too. It's vital to not be locked in. Editing reminders, yeah, I didn't do it at first because it's way less trivial that it might look, but it's in my todo as well ;-) Thanks for all your ideas, they all make a lot of sense. [1]: https://github.com/monicahq/monica/projects/1 https://github.com/monicahq/monica/projects/1
- confounded 9y agoPlease consider supporting Carddav as much as is sensible! It's the existing open standard. I spent an unreal amount of time gardening my list after tearing myself away from Gmail and Facebook.
- nbm 9y agoSeparate from non-lock-in reasons, I'd consider using the hosted version if I could export data at a later time so I could go self-hosted in the future (say, if I start writing some code for it and there's no API that does what I want).
- sksareen1 9y agoSame here - especially for export. I'm hesitant about pouring in hours and data into this if it's locked in one place unable to be pulled or migrated.
- sebtoast 9y agoOne note, in location the defaults are "Province" and "Postal code" with country at US by default. I haven't tried but if you have any kind of data validation for those inputs it may annoy some of your US users. I sometimes stumble on some site that only allow five numbers for zip codes and not the six alphanumeric characters we use for postal codes. I would change "Postal code" to "ZIP" and "Province" to "State" if someone selects US as a country.
- lakerz16 9y agoHave you considered the ability to "Share" a Contact? For example, if my Wife wants to share the info she collected about our niece? Or is the entire idea that each person is logging a unique POV or set of information about someone, rather than the system gravitating towards there being a single, cultivated profile about each person that is shared around? (right now it's kind of the anti social media -- which seems like a refreshing take. Just curious if that's on purpose)
- robinhood 9y agoInstead of sharing, I wonder if I should add multi users to an account, so you and your spouse could manage their relationships with their loved ones, for instance.
- sebtoast 9y agoWhy not both? I would like a Family or couple account but wouldn't care for a share option.
- samstave 9y ago+1
- confounded 9y agoSorry to keep writing "CardDav" under everything, but vCards are an established standard for sharing contacts with arbitrary metadata.
- PTRFRLL 9y agoLooks like you're calculating the birth date field's min-date as (today - 50 years)? Which means I can't add a persons birthday if they were born before 1967. Edit: Looks like this is already known: https://github.com/monicahq/monica/issues/16 https://github.com/monicahq/monica/issues/16
- liamcardenas 9y agoThank you so much! I've been looking for something like this (and even contemplated making this myself despite not having any spare time to do so). My one concern: Can you please make all of your contact information downloadable and backupable. My biggest fear would be putting so much precious data in your app and then having you guys go under... then I would lose everything. Also, I don't want vendor lock-in for something as important as this.
- vxNsr 9y agoI think the most interesting thing about this is that it's essentially a souped up address book, so it could basically be turned into a vcard with a bunch of extra fields.
- robinhood 9y agoThis is planned according to the roadmap (https://github.com/monicahq/monica/projects/1 https://github.com/monicahq/monica/projects/1). This is crucially important to me as well, so I'll make it happen. Thanks.
- subrat_rout 9y agoIs it possible to see the code? I do not see a link to the code source.
- mproy 9y agoThere's a github link in the footer. https://github.com/monicahq/monica https://github.com/monicahq/monica
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alexeldeib 9y agoProbably a big investment, but my immediate thought is I'd love a mobile app. The mobile site was better than nothing, but if you had a slick mobile app, I would use it constantly. So many times I forget little things that I would love to jot down in exactly this type of product. e: On birthdays, might be nice to be able to add day/month but no year. I'm working through adding some of my contacts into this and noticing small things as I update/add more.
- robinhood 9y agoIf only I knew how to make one... I will first create an API in the hopes that someone creates a mobile app for this.
- confounded 9y agoCarddav support would a huge win. Even some sensible markup to store metadata in the notes field could allow some kind of editing on the go, and synchronization.
- alexeldeib 9y agoAn API would definitely be a positive step :) awesome work!
- Pr3fix 9y agoIf you made a solid API, I would be very interested in developing a react-native app.. :)
- bbaumgar 9y agoI'll be watching your github repo / release notes pretty closely - will try and make a simple people / event entry + reminder only mobile app for my personal use (and for others, if there's interest).
- wousser 9y agoThere are some mobile applications that do exactly the same as this service: Ntwrk, CJournalLite, Super Social. Disclaimer, I created the last one.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cosinetau 9y agoThis product is dangerous to privacy. It's easy to imagine how this data could be exploited if Monica is sold to Facebook, Google, etc. How are you working to guarantee my data is protected from any manner use outside my own?
- confounded 9y agoAs these things go, the privacy policy is excellent, and can be read in under a minute: https://monicahq.com/privacy.html https://monicahq.com/privacy.html
- cmdkeen 9y agoIt's not excellent. Nothing about data security, encryption at rest, and a whole load of things that would be covered by GDPR (yes the service is registered in Canada, but GDPR standards should be the benchmark now for what is considered acceptable for anything). This is an intriguing idea as a concept but feels like it isn't a sufficient focus. The privacy page hasn't been updated in 18 months either, yet the release notes mention encryption at rest (with very little detail) being added in October 16.
- lucb1e 9y agoJust as a data point, this is the first time I ever heard about GDPR. Not sure it's "the minimum acceptable standard for anything".
- confounded 9y agoIt will be if you want to operate in Europe.
- M2Ys4U 9y agoIf you have users in the EU/EEA then you _will_ have to comply, or risk a fine of up to €20,000,000 or 4% of your _global_ turnover (whichever is larger).
- 9y ago
- plttn 9y agoSome comments: It's weird seeing the kid number pushed so hard on the dashboard. I'm in college, so that's not really a feature that applies to me. I'm not a fan of the date picker, an actual calendar popup would be better IMO. If people are getting unique IDs, it should much rather be a GUID rather than what appears to be an incrementing index.
- vultour 9y agoWhat's wrong with an incrementing index?
- myhf 9y agoAn incrementing index suggests comparison. If you are closer to friend #35 than you are to friend #8, it can feel strange to be exposed to that kind of numbering.
- plttn 9y agoMy concern was that it seems like the person ID is shared with all users. The first person I added was somewhere in the 2000s, rather than starting at 1.
- ponyous 9y agohttp://imgur.com/a/ZtJIW http://imgur.com/a/ZtJIW I can't add a birth day of a person. Chrome Version 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit) OSX Looks nice though!
- atVelocet 9y agoI am sorry but this doesn't make any sense to me: I can't aggregate information from calendars (Outlook, Facebook, etc.) or any other information source out there. So every info i take, i have to take twice.
- Improvotter 9y agoIt would be neat if there was a demo. For this kind of stuff I'd rather not give my information till I know what I'm in for completely.
- librett0 9y agoThere are instructions for setting up your own instance on the Github page. https://github.com/monicahq/monica https://github.com/monicahq/monica
- pwenzel 9y agoI wouldn't mind being able to import a file from my Google Contacts. I've been using that as my friends-and-family CRM for over a decade now. Also, this may sound stupid, but how do you delete a contact?
- alexeldeib 9y ago+1 for importing Google Contacts, or any standard contact format I can import. Also just noticed no deletion...
- clairity 9y agoas someone who built a similar product (but for networking), i will reveal a very hard-earned lesson about CRMs that don't target sales & marketing: no one cares. everyone will tell you what a great idea it is, and how useful it could be, but no one wants to do any work to that end. it just doesn't solve a real pain for enough people to build a business around (given the product you present on the home page). however, if you're serious about this space, you will automate the crap out of data collection and make the product a super-passive intelligent assistant (for mobile). make users seem more kind and thoughtful than they otherwise are with this app, and people might just pay for it. there's a potentially big privacy hurdle but i found most people to be surprisingly unconcerned about that if you provide tangible value.
- JepZ 9y agoWell, who said robinhood wants to build a business around it? For what it's worth, I care about the topic, but I would never want to use a hosted service for something like that. So his decision to build an open source app is the only way to do it. But as I am using my own Nextcloud and XMPP Server I would like to see a simpler setup/update procedure.
- clairity 9y agoyou might be right. the few comments i read by robinhood seemed to indicate a desire to make it the core of a SaaS business but maybe not. that this was designed with self-hosting in mind is a nice nod to privacy though.
- pedalpete 9y agoCongrats, this looks really nice, the feedback you're getting here is a good bit of proof that you're on to something people like. My first reaction to the "CRM to manage friends..." was, what? Why do I need a business tool for my personal life. I wonder if there is a better terminology than CRM. You bump up against the social network on one end, and a person tool on the other. I wrote an executive summary for my business last week, and the feedback I got from an advisor was that they loved the idea that there are these two big existing markets, and that their is a middle-ground between them which hasn't been addressed. I think that is what you've got here, it needs to be named. I haven't quite been able to name mine yet either, so I'm not suggesting this is easy. What do other think? Is the CRM a good label for a personal tool?
- imron 9y agoCRM = Customer Relationship Manager, so not really an ideal term for something personal. Perhaps 'PRM', but then nobody knows what that stands for.
- iDemonix 9y agoI've been learning Laravel for some time now and use it for a few personal and work projects, I'm also new to the open source world and yet to contribute much - are you looking for contributors, or are you just on GitHub for the transparency?
- robinhood 9y agoBoth :-D I'm not looking for help necessarily but if it helps create a better product, I'm more than happy about it. I don't think we can create a great thing all alone. The idea to open source it, amongst other thing, is the transparency.
- chaostheory 9y agoI've built a versoin of this app a few years ago before mobile was big and there are features that I've always wanted for my app that I just didn't get to before I had to move on. The big feature that I've really wanted is integration with my calendar, email, phone, IM, fb, etc... Why? So the system would be able to tell me when I need to interact with someone using something better than a timer. You will probably need a mobile app for some of this to work There are also two people on IndieHackers who built a mobile version of this who you may want to talk to. I also own the domain muchcloser if you're interested in it. Let me know if you want to talk.
- rkuykendall-com 9y agoTwo feature requests that would make this a killer app for me (yes, I would pay): 1. Import names from Facebook (is this included if I had used Fb to register?) 2. Generate random individual to reach out to, weighted or sorted by when I last contacted them.
- robinhood 9y agoThanks a lot. 1. This is not possible. Facebook does not give me those information through an importer. So it won't happen unless they change their mind. 2. Interesting. I had something similar in mind, I think you'll be pleased when it'll be out.
- vnchr 9y agoWhat about a mobile device contact import? Facebook and other platforms update those contacts. That could be your social network workaround.
- mrleinad 9y agoThere's the workaround of exporting it from Facebook and then uploading it to Monica. You'd just need to parse the exported files.
- e12e 9y agoHeh, I thought fb allowed that for "apps" (you would have to add Monica as an fb app)? If not, maybe support fb "archives"? https://m.facebook.com/help/131112897028467 https://m.facebook.com/help/131112897028467
- bbcbasic 9y agoWhy did you decide to make this a site rather than a desktop app? This is a private database as I see it, so there is no need for it to be online. And keeping it offline would be good for privacy, and would make it easy for anyone to download and install, rather than the more complex install needed for a web application (or letting someone else host and sacrificing privacy).
- robinhood 9y agoBecause I just know web technologies. Also, because having a web app will allow me to create an API, which will allow to use a mobile app for this, which totally makes sense. If you care about the privacy, you can also host this yourself :-D
- jefurii 9y agoAlso because there are many times when you may not be in front of your own computer but you have your phone with you.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rosege 9y agoThanks for this. I was thinking of making something similar but just for personal use as it would have been much more basic. My use case is that I've been to a couple of family events and I always have trouble remembering the names of ppl I might only see once a year like my cousins kids or husband etc. Or sometimes friends of family members who I will only ever see through them very infrequently. Ultimately the most amazing use would be to have google glass etc and when I see them their name comes up in a bubble. Noticed a couple of bugs but im pretty sure they have been reported - e.g. not able to link someone like add a child if they already exist. So at present you can only add one parent Cheers!
- adambowles 9y agoFound a bug: adding a debt with a contact will always say "You owe $x" regardless if you select "You owe contact" or "Contact owes you"
- springogeek 9y agoA couple quick suggestions: Allow the default currency for debts to change :) I'm based in England, so Dollars don't help me. On the People list, make the whole list entry clickable, not just the name. The list of "Country" is not sorted and slow to load. Can we add other kinds of relatives, not just SOs and children. What about siblings or Uncles?
- billpg 9y agoHow much will it cost? (Your service, not hosting my own copy.) If its free, how will you pay for your costs? (Ads? Selling my data?)
- robinhood 9y agoNo ads, ever, I hate them. No reselling of data, that practice is the worst for me. I plan to provide a paid version with an extremely generous free version. The paid version will contain some great features, and will probably be a couple of dollars per month.
- quadrangle 9y ago> No ads, ever, I hate them. Thank you! We shouldn't trust anyone who thinks otherwise. It should be considered shameful to show paid advertising.
- vit05 9y agoDo you hate any type of ads? I see great potential in having service app options that do not seem to me to be very harmful, but I may be wrong... For example, when I mark that I had dinner with my friend at a Japanese food restaurant that I really liked, I could not have an option to book a table using an app like resy.com. Or yelp to find a different one? Or when I note that the last time I was with a friend, it was in a movie theater and this week will launch its sequel, a link to redbox.com. Or in the case of a band show we like, link to ticketmaster? It does not have to be something that makes it difficult to use, an icon at the end of the note could be enough.
- prebrov 9y agoThis would most likely mean that an ad script will drop a cookie, scrape the page and dump your data into some DMP for others to buy. This very much undermines the value of a privacy-focused service.
- claar 9y ago"The paid version will contain some great features, and will probably be a couple of dollars per month." Forgive my ignorance, but with the code under the GPL license, how can you offer exclusive features?
- mase 9y agoI really love the idea of this but it seems incredibly arduous to keep it updated. Everytime I do something, call someone, have a conversation, learn something new, have lunch, etc - it all has to be tracked. I suppose this is the price to be paid if one wants to track all of those things, but much like many other CRMs there are integration points that could make this far less work for the consumer. Thoughts or plans on this?
- peterburkimsher 9y agoA useful feature for me would be to tag people in photos. That's how I cue my memory when I forget someone. The photos also have the time and location, so I can place it on my calendar.