from Hacker News

Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

by terramauthe on 12/1/20, 9:17 PM with 198 comments

• by tomgs on 12/2/20, 6:13 AM

  I 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, 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 (Regis), 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/

  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?

• by submeta on 12/2/20, 10:18 AM

  This 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.

• by idsout on 12/2/20, 3:11 AM

  I'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...

• by wil5for on 12/2/20, 8:59 AM

  I 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/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.

• by wegs2 on 12/2/20, 3:27 AM

  I'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).

• by galaxyLogic on 12/2/20, 5:22 AM

  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.

  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.

• by productceo on 12/2/20, 2:40 AM

  https://getdex.com/blog/personal-crm-in-2020-20-startups-app...

  This is an organized list and comparison of Personal CRMs.

• by AnonC on 12/2/20, 3:41 AM

  To 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.

• by mszcz on 12/2/20, 7:30 AM

  I 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.

• by trwhite on 12/2/20, 10:35 AM

  I 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.

• by pests on 12/2/20, 3:21 AM

  Just like David Rockerfeller's Rolodex!

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867741

  I've always wanted to create something like this myself. Glad to see someone do it.

• by dsalzman on 12/2/20, 2:44 PM

  I’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.

• by hysan on 12/2/20, 3:59 AM

  Have 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.

• by executesorder66 on 12/2/20, 6:11 AM

  Is 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?

• by dzhiurgis on 12/2/20, 3:27 AM

  So 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.

• by musicale on 12/2/20, 4:02 AM

  I 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.

• by rrevo on 12/2/20, 5:52 AM

  Monica looks great. I had the same pain point and built Bardun (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.

• by b0afc375b5 on 12/2/20, 4:13 AM

  Not 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?

• by productceo on 12/2/20, 1:56 AM

  I 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.

• by zwayhowder on 12/2/20, 2:01 AM

  I 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.

• by Spearchucker on 12/2/20, 6:10 AM

  First 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.

• by akyshnik on 12/2/20, 11:02 AM

  Recently 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.

• by sneak on 12/2/20, 7:18 AM

  A 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!

• by halgir on 12/2/20, 10:33 AM

  Like 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.

• by kaioelfke on 12/2/20, 7:50 PM

  Monica 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

• by tapirl on 12/2/20, 1:45 PM

  Does 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?

• by h-1 on 12/3/20, 12:38 AM

  What 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.

• by codesnik on 12/2/20, 3:02 AM

  you don't need anything else. Just Monica.

• by astrostl on 12/3/20, 3:51 AM

  The 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

• by gligorot on 12/2/20, 1:55 AM

  This is one of those things that I wish I had, but I just didn't know it.

• by analogwzrd on 12/2/20, 1:42 AM

  They should have named it Gary after Tony Hale's character in VEEP.

• by angry_octet on 12/2/20, 3:35 AM

  Offering 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.

• by jimmcslim on 12/2/20, 11:41 AM

  Some folks are big on using Roam Research as your personal CRM.

• by floppiplopp on 12/3/20, 4:17 PM

  Finally, a tool with which to manage my private life just as I manage my corporate existence and my business customers. Amazing!

• by kilroy123 on 12/2/20, 4:13 AM

  I'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.

• by jherdman on 12/2/20, 12:33 PM

  This is kind of interesting. I use the Contacts app in macOS to capture this data. It's worked quite well for me.

• by douk on 12/2/20, 5:24 AM

  I 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/

• by neetrain on 12/2/20, 2:35 AM

  Does it view properly on mobile?

  Its mobile app seems to be discontinued, but I don't care if I can use it via web.

• by mothsonasloth on 12/2/20, 9:46 AM

  Monica ... Peter Gregory is dead ...

• by jakecopp on 12/2/20, 3:59 AM

  Just 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/exp7KcHbb...

• by chupchap on 12/2/20, 1:36 AM

  Technically Facebook is a personal CRM.

• by draugadrotten on 12/2/20, 9:46 AM

  It is legal to put my European friends in there, considering GDPR?