Personal CRM: why & how to choose the right one

The personal CRM software mainly meets three needs:

• Stay in touch with those who matter to you, and better manage your schedule;
• Aggregate your communications with each person in your network to better manage them;
• Easily search your network for people who meet certain criteria. For example, those who know someone you are trying to contact well.

Some people go even further and see the personal CRM as a real productivity tool, with task management, time-tracking, travel organization, etc.

In reality, after a certain stage, each person builds a system that suits him or her according to the most frequent and important needs. However, there are a few really well-designed software programs that are able to meet the majority of use cases, and help structure the approach.

What makes a good personal CRM?

The first and most important feature of a personal CRM is the integration with all your channels of communication with your network. The idea is to save time and spend it on higher value-added things, not on data entry. Some prefer email, many prefer the phone, and a few integrate networks like Linkedin. There are also some more “old school” integrations like business card scanners.

Another aspect related to the first is the enrichment and updating of data. Personal data is hyper dynamic. Being informed when someone you care about changes jobs, moves, or is passing by is one of the key aspects of this software.

The last point, common to all the solutions in this top 10, is an absolutely impeccable user experience. Centralizing information necessarily makes things much more complex. For it to be valuable, the complexity must be smoothed out by the software, and it must make it simple and easy to find the information. This is also why the more classic CRM software like Pipedrive or Hubspot (which we like a lot in a business context) are not very well adapted to this subject: they have too many features.

Our top 10 personal CRM software

Folk is a CRM software that has been designed as a dynamic repository for contacts. It allows you to automatically synchronize your contacts from your sources. You can also activate them with the integrations offered by Folk.

It is a fully customizable, flexible software that adapts to the needs of each user. It offers a whole set of resources to help you connect Folk to your tools. In particular, you have access to a set of pre-enriched contact lists perfectly suited to those who wish to leave technical matters to the professionals.

Folk offers a free version and a paid plan at 13€ per month.

Clay is a fairly new CRM application that offers a very detailed system for tracking personal relationships. It’s a very automated application that doesn’t require much information to build your contact base manually.

It is a very efficient tool to keep small details about your contacts. A simplified notepad is associated with each contact in your list. You can make it appear and note any relevant information about this person whenever you want, manually or by voice transcription.

You can also deepen your contacts thanks to the calendar and the integration of social networks. The application has light and useful widgets that make it easy to send reminders.

Clay offers a free version and a first paid plan at 18€ per month.

Monday is a powerful CRM solution that allows you to add an unlimited number of contact profiles for your entire network and populate the space with any information you deem relevant. You can also view your communication history with the contact.

Monday allows you to import your contacts directly into your personal CRM workspace from an Excel file. You can connect Monday to social networks for better interaction with your personal CRM. This is also true for Google Calendar or Excel.

Monday a free version and a first pay plan at 8€ per month.

Streak is a Chrome extension for Gmail that allows you to write emails and schedule them later, or save them for broadcast campaigns. The software offers an email thread separator where each new conversation can have separate recipients.

Streak also offers a tracker that tells you when one of your recipients opens an email. It also has basic pipeline and spreadsheet functionality.

Streak offers a free version and a first plan at 39€ per month.

Superhuman is an application that allows you to better manage your emails. Super fast, Superhuman emphasizes interesting organizational features to gain efficiency. The software differs a little from the other solutions in this top 10 because it is not quite a personal CRM, but it remains a small revolution to manage emails.

All actions follow the 100 ms rule invented by Paul Buchheit, creator of Superhuman and co-founder of Gmail, according to which each interaction must be faster than 100 milliseconds (sending emails, searches, launching the program, etc). This makes it a perfect solution for professionals who are looking for a very fast solution and a hyper-efficient organization.

The software offers a very rich functional depth: cancel email sending, repeat conversations, email scheduling, etc. It offers a free version and a paid plan starting at 28€ per month.

Covve is a personal CRM with many AI-based features, such as automatic reminders of who to contact or notifications when you lose contact with certain contacts. It also offers sophisticated proprietary technology and external sources to find and suggest information to your contacts.

Covve has a unique AI-powered news engine that alerts you to news that might affect your contacts so you can be the first to contact them. It offers an interactive mapping of your contacts, filtered by country and sector, contact recommendations and automatic updates of your address book very interesting to expand your personal network.

Covve offers a free version and a first paid plan at 12€ per month.

Queue is a very new CRM software that only exists on Apple’s IOS and works by connecting to your calendar data to automate much of your manual work.

It is a very easy-to-use solution that offers classic automation features. For example, the software examines your calendar data to make sure that it only reminds you of the contacts you lose touch with.

Queue offers a free version and a first paid plan at 45€ per month.

Dex is considered by many to be one of the best personal CRM systems because of its comprehensive set of integrations and data management features. The main objective of this solution is to help people maintain personal and professional relationships.

Dex allows you to import your data from various social networks and to quickly sort your contacts according to their importance. You also receive reminder notifications to help you remember who to contact. Dex has an integrated kanban table that allows you to visualize your contacts according to the frequency of exchanges.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dex is its ability to gather relevant data from different platforms. It allows the user to more easily manage their most recent social contacts. It is a perfect tool for those who want to deepen their networks.

Dex offers a free version and a first paid plan at 11€ per month.

Mogul is the only contact management application for individuals that offers end-to-end encryption, making it an excellent choice for people who need complete privacy. Mogul also has a very nice design but does not offer any integration.

It is an excellent solution to protect your data, encrypted from end to end. However, all integrations must be done manually.

Mogul offers a free version and a first paid plan at 9€ per month.

Contacts+ is accessible on mobile, desktop and web browsers and synchronizes contacts from Google, Apple and Microsoft suites. The software allows you to deduplicate all data, search for updates on your network and index all contact information, notes and tags for granular search.

For calls, Contacts+ blocks spam and offers advanced caller ID. There is also a business card scanner that can transcribe details in less than 20 minutes. It is one of the very good CRM software and offers an interesting free plan.

Contacts+ offers a free version and a first paid plan at 9€ per month.