What is the best personal CRM?

Question

I am looking for a great system to manage personal email and relationships that isn't tied to a quota/opportunity/revenue metric but rather better manage my own meetings and address book.

Ryan Hoover · Accepted Answer

I asked this question on Twitter about a month ago and ultimately decided to go with Airtable. Most of the CRM tools are too heavy (built for companies or teams) or too restricted (e.g. mobile only). A basic spreadsheet tool like Airtable has worked great because it's easy to use, multi-platform, very customizable, and integrates with many other API's/tools. At the end of the day I just need a list of people I know, categorized by role, location, and other factors. That said, I'm eager to try a product that's specifically built for the use case you describe. Maintaining this spreadsheet of people is the biggest thing lacking in Airtable right now.

Cody Halff · Answer

This is why we built FollowUp Personal CRM - we needed a simple tool to manage professional relationships, not leads. So instead of pipeline management, revenue forecasting, and other sales CRM features, FollowUp helps you stay in touch with contacts (followups, reminders, events from Gmail) and remember the important details about them (notes, tags, conversation history, contact enrichment).

The most important piece was creating a method that's easy and repeatable. I've tried a lot of different contact management tools and the problem I consistently faced was actually sticking with them. Because FollowUp lives in Gmail you're able to manage relationships as you interact with them, in a place you probably already spend a lot of your time.

Patrick Schüller · Answer

Hey Eric, I would suggest Zenkit. It is great for adding and managing personal contacts. Also, you can easily add meetings with people to the integrated calendar view and work with task lists. Works on the web and on iOs. Android will come soon too. It can also be integrated with over 750 applications via Zapier. Go check it out here: www.zenkit.com

ronsheridan · Answer

I am able to use Airtable for a number of important processes and projects. I must have 15 ATs now with 4-5 that I use daily. I second Ryan's take on why he uses AT. Fascinating to see a free form product at the top of a crowdsourced list of CRM tools.

angela · Answer

I've used this product and it's been exactly what I need.  It links to my already existing Google contacts and calendar that I use very heavily.

I use it to keep track of people that I want to continue to engage with in my network. I use the tool to set a desired follow-up amount of time for each contact (2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, etc) and then I never have to worry about "forgetting" to keep in touch with people.

The app creates events on your Google Calendar and sends an email when you haven't been in touch with someone past the follow-up timeframe you set.  It also has some additional data on the contact page, allows you to add notes, and shows links to social media presence.

David Hoffman · Answer

I've been using FollowUp daily for the past 6 months and highly recommend it. It's great for keeping all of my contacts in order and making sure I speak to everyone I need to. If you're looking for a simple to use and accessible way to keep in touch with people, FollowUp is the way to go.

The Upcoming tab is an added bonus to the personal CRM because I don't have to keep opening and closing my Google Calendar throughout the day.

Anshuman Chadda · Answer

Airtable is flexible and customizable, but NOT actionable, I have to copy and paste email addresses to contact people, there are no inbuilt reminders, and I need to use Zapier every freaking time I need to do anything out of it. It is awesome for backup and archival. Great for a relational database product, but not for personal CRM IMO.

Anshuman Chadda · Answer

It is really designed for marketers, NOT a fan for personal use. and there is constant nagging request for upgrade.

Eli Mather · Answer

Was also going to recommend AirTable for personal CRM - love the flexibility

Alexandre Mouriec · Answer

Like Ryan Hoover, I am using Airtable to make a personal CRM and it works really well 👍 From many tweets read on Twitter, I know many people are searching the perfect CRM app like you. 
At the moment, I think Airtable is the perfect tool but I know at least one person who is working on a personal CRM product.

Jason Scheckner · Answer

I've tried many of these platforms, and it feels like there are more of them every day. My personal choice for a start CRM is HubSpot. It has easy to use out of the box features. Many of my friends also swear by PipeDrive. Finally, I was looking at but never really tried ProsperWorks, but if you are on GSuite, it's well reviewed.

Anshuman Chadda · Answer

Found it extremely slow. Maybe it was my internet that day.

Jonathan Costet · Answer

CRMs are for sales, so they all offer a pipeline view. If you're like me and need to manage a network, this is a problem because: 1/ not all my contacts are meant for the same purpose (think investors, journalists, advisors) 2/ one of my main objectives is to build a relationship over time (not a one-off deal). Folk helps me do this with LOTS of automated features that save time (import, enrichment, email threads, meeting logs, etc...) and with a simple layout to easily create and manage different categories of contacts/outreach efforts. Very smart product (and the design also helps!).

Leo Bassam · Answer

Hey Eric, give Plutio a try. It is a very simple and beautiful CRM for individuals. You could create a profile for your clients and contacts, group them in categories, and even invite them to start a conversations. 

Soon you will be able to talk to any of your contacts without inviting them, this will allow you to 1) keep track of all your conversions in one place, 2) have a bird-eye view of when you've last contacted someone and what it was about, 3) create actionable tasks and reminders.

Hope this helps 😀

Kashish Sharma · Answer

Best lightweight CRM there is out there. Been using it for 2+ years, quick and easy to track, snooze and group your business emails.

Snippets, major time-saving feature here! It has easily brought in 2x efficiency in my email management and response time.

Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré · Answer

Run your entire business from your Inbox. Works with Google Apps.

Diego Pizzocaro · Answer

We designed Sellf CRM to be the Runkeeper for Sales People. We really wanted to change the approach by helping to focus around goals and organize activities to reach those faster. 
In doing this we took inspiration from Runkeeper, Runtastic and in general fitness apps that use goals, badges and competition with firends and we essentially replicated these into Sellf. Give it a try and let us know what you think! We've already have a large community of 100.000 users and would love to have you join us!

Disclaimer: I am the CEO and founder of Sellf.

Alex Bass · Answer

If you're willing to pay the $25/mo, this is by-far the best one you can use personally. Yeah, a bit overkill for personal usage but it's fully customizable and if you have a Gmail account or G Suite account for personal usage, it'll to you well!

Samir Motwani · Answer

Salesmate.io can be perfectly used as personal CRM. With its 2-way calendar sync in the form of activities, email read/link click tracking and email templates help a lot to an individual.  There is lot more in case if its used with teammates.

Tejas Kinger · Answer

You could give Freshsales a try. It comes with a 30-day trial and a free plan that is loaded with quite a few features and should work well as a personal CRM.

Nick Abouzeid · Answer

Just launched last week - seems super simple, but it gets the job done 🎉

Bart Diks · Answer

I use it for all my non commericial clients, and it keeps me up to date on PC, laptop, Tablet and Phone

Anshuman Chadda · Answer

Cloze has been the only tool that has stuck with me for >1 year, I have tried all of the above. Airtable is good only for archiving contacts, but there is nothing actionable you can get out of it. In Cloze, you can do emails, mail merge, groups, reminders, phone calls, tags, notes etc...and it pulls all things passively in the background. 
Airtable and most of the other apps use Zapier.. which is good but is too much work... I actually use Cloze > Zapier > Airtable for backups

Dan Murphy · Answer

I've used FollowUp for the last few weeks and it's great for keeping in touch with those I need to speak with. I use it to setup reminders to contact people at certain intervals and also to ping people at the most optimal times.

The interface is easy and integrates right into Gmail. It's simple and pretty easy to get used to.

There's also some great additions they're adding overtime (see here: http://feedback.followup.cc/) and I'm looking forward to seeing these features go live.

Arnaud Baali · Answer

It's free for up to 5 users and they have Sales, Marketing and support integrated which is nice. you can also use the API

Paul Bleicher · Answer

If you use (and live in) Gmail I recommend Streak. It's a lightweight CRM that comes with a couple of nice features I can't live without: snooze emails, read tracking, etc.

Learn UX · Answer

Hi Eric, Great question :) We just released 2 months ago, with contact integration and a lot of support for conversation tracking - and we're FREE :) Curious about what features you want related to "managing (your) own meetings and address book"?  Would love to hear more, and help you with that! -Brendan

Roger Auge · Answer

In my opinion, FollowUp CRM is awesome because it's simple and works so well with Gmail!

Dominik Kugelmann · Answer

Nice way of keeping track of your Google Contacts inside GMail! If you do not need a full blown CRM and still want to keep track of your contacts this is the choice you need to take.

Joe Rodriguez · Answer

Easy to use, intuitive and seamlessly integrated with GMail.  Who could ask for anything more.

Pénélope Romand-Monnier · Answer

I read Airtable was a great flexible tool you can use to setup you very own personal CRM with Zapier and cie. https://airtable.com/universe/expJKl9IU7xLG9W2s/a-better-personal-crm

Raphaël Chabaud · Answer

Automated update and link to pictures, social networks is very handy and time saving.

Erin Flynn · Answer

I love FollowUp! It's so much easier for me to remember to actually use it than other CRMs. It's right in your inbox, and syncs reminders to your Google calendar, so following up actually happens!

David Ferguson · Answer

Blends seamlessly with your workflow if you use Google Apps/Gmail.  The reminder feature if you haven't contacted someone in a certain timeframe is the best feature.

Eric Ang · Answer

It's free, with mobile app - along with all activity, call tracking.

Peter Klein · Answer

using is with great success, very simple

Fanuel Dewever · Answer

I prefer Nimble Social CRM. It is very easy to add social  media profiles of your contacts and to auto discover other channels they use. I sync it with my Fb, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google contacts so I have the entire list up to date all the time. NIMBLE.com

Answer

If you're just looking for help to keep in touch with friends and family may I recommend my creation.

Alja Knez (Laylae) · Answer

I've tried many but at the end decided for Hubspot CRM

Answer

We have just launched an online CRM software DigitalCRM. It has all the features required for automation of sales and marketing functions

Sway Ventures · Answer

Affinity makes getting started with CRM a breeze, it greatly speeds up several internal processes from deal sourcing to relationship management.

Vijay Krishna · Answer

If you have lot of voice calls in your flow - smarterbiz.ai is a wonderful solution. The voice analytics does a great job of setting the next follow-ups automatically and captures  true customer inputs without having to manually update into the CRM. Best  tool to respect the sales person's natural flow.

Alfredo Giorgi · Answer

It's great for personal and projects management also. I've been using it to keep up with projects' stakeholders.

Vivek Rp · Answer

It works great as both personal note taking & CRM.

Answer

This is the best I've seen in this space since it's aimed at long-term relationships vs. pipelines. Believe it was designed for real estate agents, but might work for what you're looking for.

Alessia Bellon · Answer

Love this App. Has made my life so much easier!!!

Answer

Podio is a toolbox of sorts, and can easily be used for 'PRM' (personal relationship management). It's easy to customize, something I appreciate since someone else's idea of how things should work don't always match one-for-one with mine. I also like the integration with other services. Nothing worse than trying to keep key data in sync across multiple services. Duplicates are bad, but merging/deleting records that aren't the same is worse.

Björn Bakker · Answer

Personally, I also really like Airtable. It has a lot of flexibility, and the spreadsheet view is really nice. It's like google sheets on Steroids. However, if you are really looking for a tool that helps you setup triggers to follow up on people and to build a strong network, I recommend checking out Contactually. It was recommended once by a top VC out of SF and he is a big fan (he wasn't even an investor). Other things I've tried out, is to build it in a Trello board, as I love the kanban approach and put pictures of the people I'm building relationships with. The challenge with all your personal CRM tools, is that it requires time and dedication to keep it up to date. My most natural behavior is actually taking notes of interactions and put that in my Evernote. I then sometimes set reminders to follow up. I do the same with my gmail. Mixmax has also some cool stuff you can do to scale your personal CRM a bit more. I think the gmail function of reminder yourself <x days if someone didn't respond or you haven't received an email works fine for me.

Mindiply · Answer

I find Cloze great for business, it helps me focus on the important emails, remember to stay in contact with people, remind me to reconfirm upcoming meetings.

Danielle Cadhit · Answer

This is what I use for personal / business. It's great because it smartly imports your contact data instead of having to manually input everything every time. The free plan allows for up to 1000 or 2000 free contacts I think.

Ammar Alakkad · Answer

Despide the old fashion design, Bitrix24 is very powerful CRM, whether for personal or for small to mid-size companies.

Dimitris Printezis · Answer

It's very intuitive and leaves inside Gmail. It just works :)

drew olanoff · Answer

Does exactly what I need it to do without making me use salesy features or a separate app/tab

Kevin Taylor · Answer

Been using this for almost a year now, after trying InfusionSoft, HubSpot, ProsperWorks, Nimble and some others. Agile CRM has the best combination of functionality and pricing, especially for small business.

Fernando Batista · Answer

I'm using it right now and is a very complete and affordable CRM solution.

Christopher Owens · Answer

You might find our app, LincSphere, a good fit.  It is designed to be specifically a business networking CRM - so all the tools and features in it are focused on supporting and encouraging best practices in professional relationship-building, not selling.  It's pretty intuitive and easy to use.

Currently, it is only available as a native iPhone app, but by the first of the year we should have a new web interface in place so that users can work from their computers as well, and Android users will be able to use it through the browser on their phones.