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Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
- chupchap 6y agoTechnically Facebook is a personal CRM.
- corytheboyd 6y agoThey called out how this differs from Facebook pretty clearly https://github.com/monicahq/monica#who-is-it-for https://github.com/monicahq/monica#who-is-it-for
- chupchap 6y agoYou're right, but for a normal person Facebook meets the needs and that too without the hassle the details of contacts updated.
- dilyevsky 6y agoIf the person in question is mark zuckerberg
- analogwzrd 6y agoThey should have named it Gary after Tony Hale's character in VEEP.
- gligorot 6y agoThis is one of those things that I wish I had, but I just didn't know it.
- cmrx64 6y agomy mother made a spreadsheet for this, i think she'll really love monica. thanks for sharing, OP!
- productceo 6y agoI was excited by the vision of Dex (a YC company), but its sign up process is so full of friction, I had to look for other Personal CRM solutions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mead5432 6y agoYou aren’t kidding. A 13 question survey AND a 15 minute call to review the app before I can sign up? Plus, there are no available times to call in December. Yeesh.
- ksun 6y agoFounder of Dex here! Apologies for the involved flow + being booked through December. Since everyone manages relationships differently, we've found it a valuable step for our new users. ('do things that don't scale'). If you send me a note (you'll have my email from completing the survey), also happy to send self-service instructions as well.
- particlesplus 6y agoValuable step for new users that complete it. Not too valuable for anyone that just walks away.
- productceo 6y agoHi Kevin, I sent you an email last week asking if I can skip the call and have not heard back. Would you check my email from junwon@product.ceo, activate account, and send me the self-service instruction?
- zwayhowder 6y agoI ran Monica for a year when I worked in a Big4. Technically not the use case, but quite handy. However, I was never able to successfully upgrade it (circa 2018) and therefore moved on to another option because I needed features unavailable and the effort of migrating my data to a new instance was more than the effort of going elsewhere. Might be time for me to revisit as it looks to have come a long way.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoDo you know what format the data is stored in, and if it is human-readable?
- scrollaway 6y agoMonica not being able to sync (two-way) with something as basic as Google Contacts is a dealbreaker imo. I was ready to pay for it to actually be my source of truth for my contacts database, and store a lot more metadata that I'm currently trying to hack into custom Google Contacts fields (profiles on other sites/services primarily). True wishlist: A PRM like Monica, which can sync two-ways with Google Contacts / carddav, and which is able to fetch & search through communication history with all linked services for the contact (not just emails but also SMS, DMs in various services, public posts on fb/twitter etc). This could naturally evolve into a multi-messaging tool like the old libpurple based ones (Pidgin etc). Also, please, if you do a contact manager, let me store humans and businesses as separate contact types. My relationship with "Ada L." is very different to my relationship with "Amazon Business Customer Support Phone Number".
- unixhero 6y agoThat's nice and well thought out. You have to commit this as a feature request to the github repository of monicaprm. Remember to use a user story format.
- zwayhowder 6y agoAll this times 100.
- 6y ago
- neetrain 6y agoDoes it view properly on mobile? Its mobile app seems to be discontinued, but I don't care if I can use it via web.
- productceo 6y agohttps://getdex.com/blog/personal-crm-in-2020-20-startups-apps-and-failed-attempts/ https://getdex.com/blog/personal-crm-in-2020-20-startups-app... This is an organized list and comparison of Personal CRMs.
- vzaliva 6y agoCheck the links in your blog posts. Some are broken. E.g. ZooWho.
- productceo 6y agoNot mine. It is written by this YC company called Dex.
- petr25102018 6y agoYou can add mine side project https://contactcache.com https://contactcache.com to the list :-)
- thesausageking 6y agoNote: this is written by a Personal CRM (Dex) and is pretty slanted. They put themselves first on the list, which is fine, but have broken URLs (example: https//clay.earth/ ) for most of their competitors and throw shade at projects like Monica, calling them "single developer projects... with relatively limited feature sets".
- codesnik 6y agoyou don't need anything else. Just Monica.
- idsout 6y agoI'd love something like this packaged as an offline only desktop app. I can't trust any third party to protect such personal data about myself and the people I care about. I suppose there's the option of self-hosting and allowing only localhost...
- aejnsn 6y agoYou can host it yourself on your own server. Or, you can run it within Docker locally. I contributed to Monica a bit and the “desktop version” was always a huge GitHub issue. That, along with an impossible “E2E” encryption issue, devoid of any understanding of RDMBS or TLS, is why I didn’t go much further with my contributions. Edit: see issues 531, and 543.
- movedx 6y ago> Or, you can run it within Docker locally. Just please make sure you're using a volume so the data is persistent. And also please keep backups in case that volume explodes.
- bkanber 6y agoHow do you feel about desktop apps that sync to google drive? I just made scrumsheet.app and a friend mentioned that I should do the same for a personal CRM. Do you trust Google with the data or do you really prefer it to be offline-only?
- brnt 6y agoSoftware or apps including their own cloudsync are a layering violation. I already have tools to sync my filesystem, just make sure your software writes to a logical location on disk and tools already used will sync.
- djeiasbsbo 6y agoI highly agree. One of the most frustrating things is when an application provides "cloud-sync" to google drive or iCloud but tools like syncthing or nextcloud that sync local files can't be used.
- pests 6y agoJust like David Rockerfeller's Rolodex! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867741 I've always wanted to create something like this myself. Glad to see someone do it.
- purplecats 6y agoI’m guessing more people do this, they just don’t post about it. I made my own solution to this 6 years ago and use it to this day. my solution leverages google people api so it’s automatically synced as part of the notes field of my contacts, and I have an app in my iphone and on my desktop and a cloud interface to quickly manage and query the data. 10/10 recommend and wish it was more normalized
- pimlottc 6y agoSounds cool, have you considered putting it on github?
- purplecats 6y agothat requires a bit of effort, so i haven't had a need to. what would be the motivation to do so? i would be curious if there's enough interest to make it into a service though. it would be a webapp/cli that manages the dossier in your google contacts notes (so automatically syncted with all your data natively).
- luckyshot 6y agoI also developed my own version of it and launched it many years ago! It was extremely simple on purpose, you had two views: - List of people: sorted based on when you needed to get in touch with them - The profile: add notes (with a contact more/less often when submitting) and choose social circles (by closeness: Family, Close Friend, Work, Acquaintance... or by situation: Golf Club, Gym, Chess...) Based on the circles, notes, ratings, etc. the App organized them from top to bottom on a "Who should you contact now". It was cool. As I grew older I used it less and less and ended up retiring it. It helped me become a better person by internalizing the importance of remembering names, hobbies, FORD method (Family, Occupation, Recreation and Dreams) and improving my small talk or breaking the ice. If you've never used a personal CRM and you struggle to maintain and nourish relationships I highly recommend you to try something, either Monica or what someone suggested of having text files, a spreadsheet, notes...
- wegs2 6y agoI'd totally pay for something like this, but not $90/year. I'd pay $90 per year for an all-in-one-service to replace Google, but with open source and privacy. It seems like a tough business model, to try to sell a one-off utility like this. Over a 50 year lifetime, that's $4,500. It feels like in the eighties, I'd pay $20 (which is $40 in today's dollars) for a shareware tool, and it'd do this for the rest of my life (or until my 80286 running DOS became obsolete, whichever came first).
- chrysoprace 6y agoLuckily it's AGPL 3.0 licensed, so you can happily host it yourself, potentially at a much lower cost.
- kristianp 6y agoThere's always people who aren't prepared to pay the asking price. Maybe they should charge more, especially if it means there's a sustainable business that isn't going to get sold and shut down.
- wegs2 6y agoProfit = number of users x number of sales (Minus costs, which are low for a web service) There's a point that maximizes profit, and my point was that $4,500 might be a bit beyond that for a personal CRM.
- dyeje 6y agoYou can host it yourself for free.
- j3th9n 6y agoI could host it for you for €49/year: joostwebhost.nl . You'll get email with it too, all running on open source software. :-) I mainly focus on WordPress hosting now, but I will add this to my services too.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoSo what can you do and can't using iOS and it's contacts, reminders, calendars, etc? It's like - I don't want a TODO app when I can create simple Note with checkboxes.
- aejnsn 6y agoThe tooling you describe isn't relational. Furthermore, Monica has found great success in helping users with social challenges, maybe with ADHD. The workflow you describe isn't an ideal solution addressing that challenge.
- freeone3000 6y agoI would say it's more ideal than Monica. Monica is a separate app from the ones you usually use, using a separate database, with more latency before first input, and more button presses before you can actually store anything. These are all bad features if you're trying to augment short-term memory. I'm not a fan. (Moreover, Contacts is absolutely relational, in any sense that matters. There's a Relations field. It's stored in a sqlite db.)
- aejnsn 6y agoLet me know when Contacts adds the ability to add spouses and children, and previous gifts at Christmas time. ;)
- movedx 6y ago> and previous gifts at Christmas time. ;) I'm working on a solution for that :P https://superwishlists.com.au https://superwishlists.com.au - it's not open to public registration yet, but it'll get there in the next few weeks. It solves the problem you've outlined and a bit more, whilst being free in every sense.
- joe3774 6y agothere is a "notes" field on the samsung contacts, should be good enough.
- angry_octet 6y agoOffering this as a hosted instance is tantamount to conspiracy to enable identity theft, and worse. These things just shouldn't be chucked into someone's S3 bucket or SQL database.
- neolog 6y agoYou've been downvoted, but it does seem like a high risk for information security.
- angry_octet 6y agoEveryone loves to preach ethics and accountability but I think lots of people in tech secretly dislike the constraints. Or not so secretly if they work at fb. For everything you do, you should consider "what if this is used by the worst person to target the most vulnerable people?" Stalker exes, online scammers, insurance companies, 4chan wieners, toxic MRAs, data brokers working for PIs etc. Assume an open S3 bucket with data from 5000 users. Imagine how much identify theft and intimate partner violence that could enable.
- Throwaway1771 6y agoWait until you hear what people are storing on PasteBin!
- angry_octet 6y agoSecurity companies ('threat intel') routinely scan new pastes to find nice stuff, like creds and code, and also C&C from bots. Pastebin is a bit gauche for that now. Even S3 bucket scanning is too everyday.
- Throwaway1771 6y agoNo, let's sync it to Facebook/WhatsApp/Snapchat/Google, so we know our privacy will be invaded.
- AnonC 6y agoTo anyone who’s been self hosting this for sometime — has it been stable, usable and relatively pain free through updates? The hosted plan for $90 a year is way too expensive for me. The reason I ask this question is to figure out if it’s worth trying or not. On another forum, I’d asked about self hosting Ghost (the publishing platform) and someone said that it’s a pain to keep up with it and that the makers of the software have made it in a way that the hosted solution would be preferred by potential users.
- jakecopp 6y agoJust build your own with Airtable for free, and export to CSV if you want to bail out! They even have an example: https://airtable.com/templates/marketing-and-sales/exp7KcHbb6laaJkjU/personal-crm https://airtable.com/templates/marketing-and-sales/exp7KcHbb...
- chrysoprace 6y agoMonica is open source, Airtable isn't.
- hysan 6y agoHave they implemented CardDAV support yet? I’d definitely add it to my self-hosted stack, but I don’t want to be stuck updating contact info in two places.
- cweagans 6y agoYes! They also added CalDAV for birthdays and tasks. https://github.com/monicahq/monica/blob/master/docs/user/carddav.md https://github.com/monicahq/monica/blob/master/docs/user/car...
- hysan 6y agoThat’s great to hear. Checking that page, I see that the sections for iOS is empty. Doing a quick search shows some iOS/Apple specific issues. Any idea if the CardDAV (and now CalDAV) implementations work with Contacts on Apple devices?
- cweagans 6y agoIt does. I haven’t noticed anything major.
- musicale 6y agoI tend to think that CRM is the wrong model for friends and family. Brain + contact info on your computer/phone + calendar with reminders for birthdays etc. + pencil and paper for notes catches the most important things but allows us to forget the less important things.
- tenpies 6y agoWhat's the major difference between what you're suggesting and a CRM? I tend to think back of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and there's an entire chapter devoted to what is basically an analog CRM and devoting time to staying up to date with it (including scheduling calls). If anything I think a CRM applies even more because I care more about friends and family than I do about a sales pipeline. More effort = more importance, in my book. Also there's the added bonus of not having to remember these things so I can focus on remembering more useful things.
- musicale 6y agoThe major differences for me are intent, whether it's retaining more information than you'd normally remember (which seems creepy and intrusive) and whether it's a paid service or subscription. 1. Intent design: CRM seems designed principally as a sales tool and I don't want to sell or be sold to. 2. Information retention: I think regular calendar/contacts/reminders built into your phone balances the "don't forget important stuff" with "don't make an effort to keep track of things that aren't important." 3. Paid service/subscription: I'm OK with contacts apps but I kind of have contacts, notes, and a calendar built into my phone already and have no desire to pay a subscription fee. Elaborating on (1) a bit: I don't really set out to "influence" my friends and I'd be kind of unhappy if they were trying to "influence" me. Influencing family might make more sense though, like influencing kids to study or family members to exercise and eat a healthy diet. The danger in family and friend relationships is turning things into a contract which can be unforgiving and intrusive. "Well, household database shows that you've been late taking the garbage out 52% of the time for the past 3 years!" As a child I dreamed of having a smartwatch that would record everything my family members said so I could play it back to them and prove infallibly that I was right. I was glad they didn't have such a thing to apply to me though. I imagine in the future we'll be wearing smart glasses or contact lenses that will identify the name of any person within view who we've met before, as well as their relevant statistics and information including data from online services like social media or dating sites (much the way that CRM provide sales clerks with information on every customer who walks into the store.) I'm not sure that's entirely a good idea.
- kilroy123 6y agoI've been using this for some time now. It seems like development has slowed down a lot this past year. I think it has a lot of potential.
- b0afc375b5 6y agoNot sure if this was already argued elsewhere as I understand that monica gets posted here frequently, but on the readme: > This project is for people who have hard time remembering details about other people's lives - especially the ones they care about. My argument is, if you actually cared for someone, wouldn't you take the effort to remember everything about them, rather than saving it in a social relationship database? I've tried something similar to this during my college days. I painstakingly inputted all my phone contacts to google contacts. I searched their facebook for their birthdates, what university they were attending and what degree they were studying. Looking back at it now, that was a tremendous waste of time. I've met maybe 1000 people in my lifetime, I could count in my ten fingers the people I care about. Can people actually care about other people, AT SCALE, to the point where you would need an app for that? I've read in other comments, one case in particular, where an uncle kept a spreadsheet of facts about the people he cared about, and that many people went to his funeral. So fine maybe people do need something like this to scale personal relationships. My other argument is that this FEELS ungenuine, and I'm not sure how else to explain it. Saving your friend's child's birthday in a database just so you can say that you remembered vs actually remembering their birthday; I feel like there is a huge gap between the two. I would rather have 1 genuine relationship, rather than 100 superficial, inauthentic relationships. What do you think?
- goatsi 6y agoFor quite a few people, memory and remembering things isn't a simple issue that can be solved by "effort" or "actually caring".
- kstrauser 6y agoI disagree. I simply cannot remember all of the social niceties I’m expected to remember. For me personally, I show that I care for people by giving myself reminders that they have an important event. Let’s turn this around: if a friend wishes you a happy birthday, do you know or care how and why they remembered?
- b0afc375b5 6y agoTrue. If someone wished me happy birthday I would be glad. On the other side, however, I've already sent countless happy birthdays, merry christmases, and happy new years. Every time I do it I have this gut feeling of inauthenticity. I think to myself, "do I really care about these people". I'm just basically trying to figure out if this is my personal issue or if anyone else feel the same way. Thanks for the response!
- galaxyLogic 6y agoI would love to have a social media platform where I can have multiple tiers of friends. Social Media "friends" and separately a circle of ACTUAL friends. You would get more access to the data shared by actual friends. The best part of it would be that unlike in a CRM I wouldn't have to keep this data up-to-date. My (actual) friends would update their own data, only. Everybody would need to only keep their own data which they want their actual friends to see up-to-date.
- movedx 6y ago> I would love to have a social media platform where I can have multiple tiers of friends. Social Media "friends" and separately a circle of ACTUAL friends. You would get more access to the data shared by actual friends. "Um, /u/galaxyLogic? Why aren't I in you "ACTUAL" friends list? Is there something you want to tell me? Are we not actually friends?" I see what you're trying to say - Facebook friends are often just random chumps you've met once, never or are distantly related to someone else you've met once - but I think a tiered system could quickly become something of burden on said friends :P
- rriepe 6y agoIt was taxing even before this. Welcome to the site! Now choose who your real friends are.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago> Why aren't I in you "ACTUAL" friends list? I can see the point. Nobody wants to be perceived as rude. At the same time I think everybody understands that if we've never met in person we probably are not friends enough to exchange phone-numbers for instance.
- neolog 6y agoThat was Google+
- chrismorgan 6y agoAnd they even called it circles.
- douk 6y agoI recently discovered UpHabit[1] which serves a very similar purpose. Looks like they have a very generous pricing offering: Personal $0/year - Manage limited relationships - Add unlimited contacts - Contacts sync daily - Unlimited integrations - Up to 5 introductions only [1]: https://uphabit.com/pricing/ https://uphabit.com/pricing/
- rrevo 6y agoMonica looks great. I had the same pain point and built Bardun (https://www.bardunapp.com/ https://www.bardunapp.com/) as a iOS app instead of a website. Bardun brings together freeform notes and contacts to capture relationship information. For privacy, the app stores information locally on-device only. Sync of contacts via phone, Google mail or calendar is possible. Contact information is streamed to the device rather than stored on a server.
- Spearchucker 6y agoFirst thought after seeing the screen shot was "whoa way too much whitespace." Second thought was that I do all of this in Outlook, and get world-class email, calendar, tasks/todo and notes with it. Also importantly, all my data is both online and off, and there's a non-intrusive app for all the deives I use. Security is also world class.
- executesorder66 6y agoIs there anyone that has used this for some time who is willing to share how/if this has made any impact on their life? I'm just curious how well this works. Would anyone recommend it?
- tomgs 6y agoI have to mention that this is one of the top 3 tools in my personal stack. See some comments below regarding various things I saw in this thread. Stability: Been running it for 2+ years now (or is it 3+ already?), no problems whatsoever. I update when the mood strikes - never had to roll back because something wasn't working. Why: As someone who considers himself terrible at remembering things, this little piece of software made all the difference re keeping up with people. The e-mail notifications is a killer feature - so simple, yet I've never done it before in my personal inbox. I think the fact that it's an external service and not inside your inbox matters from a UX perspective. I have this other place where I define the logic, and then receive it in the screen I look at every morning. Originally came to know of the project years back through https://sive.rs/hundreds https://sive.rs/hundreds, and while he's a bit better (a lot better) at it than I am, I can confidently say I've stayed in touch with dozens of people thanks to Monica. His notion of "ranked lists" also makes sense, at least to me, as a mental framework for managing personal contacts. Shameless plug (for the creators!): I 100% recommend Monica, have contributed to it, and am a big big supporter of https://github.com/djaiss https://github.com/djaiss (Regis), https://github.com/asbiin https://github.com/asbiin (Alexis), et al. They're actively working on something new now, so if that helps them somehow - link incoming: https://www.officelife.io/ https://www.officelife.io/ A personal comment: There's a (repeating) notion in this thread that keeping up with people is somehow linked to how much you care about them. I care deeply about many people I meet, personally, but I don't think the two are necessarily correlated. Example: Say I met someone years ago at school, and I thought she was pretty cool. I added her to Monica and I reach out to her once in a while to see what's up. We talk about work, exchange some personal stories, and go our separate ways. I might not think about her for months at a time, but then - quite intentionally - I think about her when the email notification comes up. It makes me happy that this person is somehow in my life. Is that impersonal? Is it wrong in some way? It's my own very, very private way of keeping people in my life. I don't see it as not genuine or fake. If it works, right?
- terpimost 6y agoI wonder what are another 2 tools in your stack?
- sneak 6y agoA hearty chuckle here: > We are like you, and this is why we are on GitHub: we hate big corporations that do not have at heart the best interest at heart for their users, even if they say otherwise. That's definitely what I think of when I think Microsoft!
- mszcz 6y agoI tried it some time ago and liked it. Self hosted aspect is a big plus for me. However, I've since stopped using it because the upgrades did fuck it up more than once I think and it was too slow to add information, too much friction. I've since started using markdown files edited in Sublime and synced over Dropbox. Quick, no maintenance overhead.
- wil5for 6y agoI recently developed my own app to solve the same problem, I call the Personal CRM a “PRM” (link here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prim-relationship-manager/id1455596937 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prim-relationship-manager/id14...) The privacy comments elsewhere in the thread resonated with me, but I think self hosting is too large a barrier for most users. I decided to build Prim by leveraging iCloud’s local/cloud CoreData storage. This approach ensures I never have access to user’s data - it stays completely within the Apple ecosystem. I have also taken a mobile-first approach, I think that focus reduced some of the installation and maintenance barriers for users. With the iOS app there’s no deployment or setup cost for users. Personal interactions (chat) and data (contacts, calendars) are already managed through our phones, so the iOS app also seems to be a natural fit for other reasons. I hope to see more products/projects where the users data, monetization, and developer incentives align. It’s great to see an open source PRM project that matches those incentives.
- Schiendelman 6y agoThank you for writing this. I’ve tried a few methods to keep track of important information about friends, and thought about writing exactly this - especially tracking contact frequency. I just installed Prim and I’m going to try it!
- kaioelfke 6y agoFeel free to try my iOS app. You can track the frequency. It's basically SwiftUI on top of SQLite. All data stays on the device. It has support for Siri, Shortcuts and widgets. Feedback is welcome. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1481868897 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1481868897
- sails 6y agoWhat are your thoughts on data interoperability? I have a few contact lists (names, emails, numbers, addresses across a few services) that I'd like to consolidate into a single list and take that into whatever app I end up using. Is this at all possible? Have you come across any useful standards?
- 6y ago
- draugadrotten 6y agoIt is legal to put my European friends in there, considering GDPR?
- danparsonson 6y agoThe GDPR doesn't apply to personal usage of data - only if you're using the data in the course of operating a business. > In the case of personal or household activities, the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK outlines the exemption as being the processing of personal data in the course of a ‘purely’ personal or household activity, with “no connection to a professional or commercial activity” (source: https://www.hutsix.io/does-gdpr-apply-to-individuals/ https://www.hutsix.io/does-gdpr-apply-to-individuals/)
- mothsonasloth 6y agoMonica ... Peter Gregory is dead ...
- submeta 6y agoThis looks like a beautiful software. But I would like to add some thoughts. In the past I've been using many tools for managing all kinds of data. In the 90s MS Access for creating personal database "apps". In the 2000s various CRM solutions (desktop-based, self-hosted and hosted; among others Act CRM, SugarCRM, Highrise). Also, extensively used a self-hosted version of Confluence as a personal wiki (yeah, way to heavy for the goal). And then also many many PIM tools for managing personal notes, contact data and notes. I have seen many tools come and go. Many of them have high maintenance costs in the long run, especially if you decide to use a self-hosted version. But even if you decide to pay for the hosted version: Your data is stuck in someone elses solution. Finally, I come to realize, that no matter how shiny and beautiful an interface might seem, in the end the long-term accessibility and the ability to keep and own my data is much more important than anything else. Now I keep most of my essential data in plain text-files, albeit in a structured way (in org-mode + Emacs). Emacs + Lisp are just wonderful: I can write some code in Emacs Lisp to create the perfect workflow, for all kinds of use-cases (meeting notes, contact data, overviews in ascii-tables, text-files dedicated for certain contacts, structured in org-mode and many more). I tend to think that Emacs + Org + plain-text will be here in fifty years from now, when all other shiny solutions are replaced by the latest trends du-jour. Feels good to liberate my data.
- owlmirror 6y agoThere is no reason why you could not run any of the (self hosted) solutions you've mentioned in fifty years. Your data is still yours and it's easy enough to transform the database with simple tools in any format you like, if you choose to do so. For me the build in capabilities of these tools can not be beaten by text files. Especially when it comes to searching/filtering and linking your data. In the end the database and business logic are still just files on your hard drive
- submeta 6y agoVery idealistic. - Have you ever tried to maintain a PHP project or Django project or any other web project after several years? Dependencies break, packages are abandoned, or the whole project gets abandoned, then try to maintain the regular updates, patches, fixes. Whole lot of work, until you give up, have yet another database dump in your hand and no interface to work with the data. Of course you can query those tables, get your data out of them, but that's another story.
- halgir 6y agoLike others in this thread, I tried using this some years ago. But unfortunately the friction of yet another specialized tool kept me from actively maintaining it, which of course makes it entirely worthless. I've started just using Google Contacts for this. It syncs and integrates with all my devices, supports birthday reminders, relations and custom fields, and has a general purpose note taking area for gifts and other details. I only wish the custom fields were more powerful/versatile and that the relations could be hyperlinked with other contacts instead of being just text fields.
- trwhite 6y agoI left social media about 6 months ago. I don't regret it at all but I do find that keeping up to date with people outside my inner circle is harder. Previously I could send someone a message based on something I'd seen in their Instagram story but now I have to consciously remind myself to message people. Making and maintaining adult relationships is hard.
- akyshnik 6y agoRecently I've noticed the discrepancy in management of one's business relations and personal relations. You could argue that the latter is more important, but it has nowhere near the multitude of tools and solutions of former. It is nice that Monica tries to fix this.
- gocartStatue 6y agoEvery time I see some open source project in PHP I get excited, then see "Laravel" and leave to never return. Domain model coupled with framework and active record... Sorry, unable to contribute :|
- bnt 6y agoPersonally, I feel Laravel is amongst the top reasons why PHP is so vibrant. The amount of innovation that sprung from Laravel and it’s close ecosystem is amazing, LiveWire, Inertia, Alpine.js, Tailwind just to name a few.
- gocartStatue 6y agoI am yet to see a single framework-agnostic project using Laravel, that's the main problem for me. It's like Ruby on Rails, you're either Ruby developer or "Rails developer". Same dichotomy for PHP/"Laravel developer" for me.
- RasmusLarsen 6y agoHaving seen the average quality of open-source PHP projects that don't use Laravel, I think it might be a necessary evil.
- jimmcslim 6y agoSome folks are big on using Roam Research as your personal CRM.
- jherdman 6y agoThis is kind of interesting. I use the Contacts app in macOS to capture this data. It's worked quite well for me.
- tapirl 6y agoDoes PHP keep backward compatibility? I ever used some open source PHP soft (forums and wikis) several years ago. The development of these soft has been discontinued for a long time now. Recently, I decided to re-install the php4 age but failed. There are too many APIs and syntax are broken now. Anyone else have the same experiences?
- AstroJetson 6y agoThey try somewhat to warn what will break in future releases. So you get a few releases of warnings and then a release of THIS WILL BREAK NEXT RELEASE and then it breaks. One thing for PHP is a huge 'customer' is the Wordpress universe and they have been good about not breaking Wordpress. But with PHP 8 that will change. If you are on PHP4 and are moving to the 7.x series plan for some pain. My problem is I try to find things that will work with flat files. I just spent some time moving from Mediawiki to PMwiki, because of the database nonsense in keeping that in sync with PHP and Mediawiki. I'd love to find a CRM tool that had the flexibility shown here but would live in flat files that I may have a chance to import into something else.
- dsalzman 6y agoI’ve recently struggled with this problem recently and looked at all the personal CRM tools. Monica, Dex, UpHabit, Cloze, CJournal etc. I learned that tools are just tools, they’re not magic. The way to keep in touch with people is to consistently keep in touch and write down their information. It doesn’t matter the tool. I now just allocate a few hours each weekend to update and review a custom excel sheet I use as my CRM. You might think it’s inefficient, but the inefficiency is where I actually accomplish the most. Progress often looks inefficient in hindsight. Plus - simple doesn’t mean easy and complexity itself doesn’t equal better.
- kaioelfke 6y agoMonica is a nice tool, but I wanted an iOS app with great UX and privacy. Amicu is basically SwiftUI on top of a local SQLite db. It supports tracking the last contact date, catchup reminders, birthday reminders, Siri, Shortcuts (for semi automatic workflows), and widgets. Save the main comm app per contact (WhatsApp, Telegram, FB, etc.) for batch messages like a birthday event invite. Feedback is welcome. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1481868897 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1481868897
- topoftheforts 6y agoJust tried it for 5 minutes, the UI looks really clean, the UX is not the best though. I've been trying to add contacts with the "batch" feature, I tick some checkboxes expecting to add them to my list, but there's no apparent way to do so. They stay checked and I don't understand why and what that means. I'm not sure what "mark people as in touch" is, and to me it sounds the same as adding someone from your contact, but it looks like this is a different operation from adding a contact to the list. I like the "more" tab and its contents. Out of curiosity, as I'm interest and work in UX, did you test this app with some real people / how did you test its UX?
- kaioelfke 6y agoThanks for the feedback and trying Amicu. I often talk to people to improve the UX. Marking someone in touch means you interacted with this person somehow for example you met or called. This sets the last contact date to today. This is used for reminders to catchup after some time and sorting the contact list to see which contacts you met recently and where it's been some time. Setting in touch and adding contacts uses a similar UI, which can be confusing in the beginning. I need to improve this. Thanks! You can also contact me at kai@amicu.app, if you've more questions or feedback.
- h-1 6y agoWhat if this isn't a memory issue? What if we don't need to remember everything and overestimate our roles as tiny person on blue dot? Or what if we don't remember due to valuing things more than people? The app becomes an illusory replacement of genuine interaction.
- anoffvu 6y agoSame can be said about writing and text and any form of better than extremely leaky memory or history I think this is a good augmentation of our own mind, as are the others
- astrostl 6y agoThe thing I desperately want in these is a mobile app that only works with local data and determines last contact using things like SMS, Signal, email, etc. I'm also on iOS, which seems to make that a non-starter :P
- floppiplopp 6y agoFinally, a tool with which to manage my private life just as I manage my corporate existence and my business customers. Amazing!