Monica

Monica

Open source personal CRM.

11 followers

Monica is an open-source web application to organize the interactions with your loved ones. I call it a PRM, or Personal Relationship Management. Think of it as a CRM (a popular tool used by sales teams in the corporate world) for your friends or family.
Monica gallery image
Monica gallery image
Monica gallery image
Launch tags:ProductivityTech
Launch Team
Anima - OnBrand Vibe Coding
Design-aware AI for modern product teams.
Promoted

What do you think? …

Régis
Founder here. Thanks for posting this small project of mine to Product hunt. I'm actually surprised by the reaction of the community. I built this tool for me primarily as I struggled to keep track of the lives my loved ones, especially since I live abroad and far away from my friends and family. So far it helped me, especially for the reminders of the birthdays of my friends kids. I could have used an old fashioned calendar but well, as an amateur developer, you can't help but create yet another app. So I did, exactly a year ago. I've thought of giving up about a thousand times because I thought that it was useless - then I tried the product myself for real and as I saw some benefits, I continued working on it. I just posted that link on Hacker News yesterday for fun and the reaction has been amazing. People seem to need this which makes me super happy. The repository on GitHub also seems to gain quite some traction quickly. What can I say. Thank you all for giving me more motivation to move forward with this. I think the first steps are to solve the many many bugs the community has found (it's crazy to see how many bugs you have and you don't encounter when you are your only user), create an importer and build an API. Then, we'll see. Thanks for the upvote, and for trying the product. Regis
Jp Valery
@djaiss bien joué 😄 is there a mobile app scheduled ?
Régis
@jpvalery merci :-D It wasn't until yesterday where people really asked for it. Priority now will be to do an API to allow the mobile app to be created.
Jon Wood
@djaiss Since it's open source (I just assume the API would be), I'm sure folks here would love to help! :)
Ben Rosenthal
@djaiss Looks very cool! Any chance you could modify/make something similar for professional relationships?
Alexandre Mouriec
Like @rrhoover I was looking for a personal CRM and didn't find one. I also use Airtable as a personal CRM and it works well, but it's not built for personal relationships like @bentossell said. I am going to try and see if it works for my needs or not. Right now, the lack of mobile app might become a problem in the future if i use it a lot.
Régis
@mrcalexandre @rrhoover @bentossell I agree that the lack of mobile app is an issue. This has been raised a lot on the massive Hacker News thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/ite...). The first things I'm going to focus on are importing capabilities, then API, then mobile.
Alex Hoopingarner
@mrcalexandre I have been using Contactually.com they are great! Not sure if that's what you are looking for.
Joshua Pinter
@mrcalexandre @rrhoover @bentossell Hey Alexandre, take a look at www.ntwrkapp.com if you want a mobile app for a similar thing. Sounds like Régis is still working on an API for this and when it's ready I'll definitely tie into it so you won't have to re-enter any data later on.
Marek Dlugos
When we are in 2017 and need CRM to maintain relationships with our loved ones. 😶
Régis
@marekdlugos yes, in 2017, when people are actually moving from one country to another really often, making it super hard to keep track of those friends in different countries, friends you care deeply about, but don't see every day, every month or even every year, but matters a lot nonetheless :-D This is my reality, but I can see how it might be criticized.
Marshall
@marekdlugos We don't need one, but it makes it easier. What's wrong with that?
Hal Gottfried
@djaiss been trying to fill my need for this for years !!
Brennan McEachran
@djaiss love this idea. I've been complaining to my co-founders for years that there isn't a P(ersonal)RM app. Glad to see someone put in the effort to build one. One of the things I've always thought about is how helpful facebook (it's data, at least) could be in helping here - Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. as well. I'm terrified to ask some of my friends when their birthday is, because, I should know by now... Have you thought about making some of the logging/input more automatic? My worry is, if I can't prioritize the little things for my Friends, can I expect myself to worry about inputting details for everyone? Would love to hear your thoughts here
Régis
@i_am_brennan Hi! Yeah of course I've thought about it. This is the next natural move that you can think of as soon as you try the application. However, I struggle with the idea. I mean, the whole point of the application is to strengthen the relationships with the people you really care about. Not your 1000 contacts in Google Contacts for instance. This is why I didn't write an importer at this time - I thought that it was better to add contacts one by one and really investigate about the persons you are adding - rather than importing 1000 contacts in a row - then what? Go one by one and add data? I ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I struggle with the idea but I also get that people want to import a lot of data right away. I'll do an importer definitely.
Brennan McEachran
@djaiss oh totally! I was thinking it would be less about importing all of you contacts and more about filling their profile with rich data. Might even want to limit the amount of people in the tool to 100 to force it to be about real people you care about. I think the key to these type of apps will be helping the user reach out in genuine ways.
Dennis Sprute
This reminds me of a guy that Malcom Gladwell spoke about in his book "The Tipping Point", who handled all of his contacts the old school way. I've been looking for a tool like this for a long time -- and I'm aware it's hard to build (as all CRMs are, because you usually have your individual style of managing relationships). I just wish I could sync the contacts from my phone / emails (Outlook) / Facebook friends with Monica, so I didn't have to type them in manually. And yes, at some point be able to add them immediately from texts, calls etc.
Régis
@dennis_sprute unfortunately last time I checked, Facebook didn't allow to sync any kind of data (in both ways actually). The community already submitted a PR last night (while I was trying to recover from being #1 on HN all day) to import a CSV, I need to check that. Import will be very important moving forward.
Dennis Sprute
@djaiss sounds good!
Hal Gottfried
@dennis_sprute check out Clooze for inspiration. I don't dig a lot of the way they do things but they do tie the disparate sites together well.
Manuel Frigerio
Product looks VERY nice and potentially a killer app for crazybusy™ people. I signed up and started using it but I don't understand how to edit an existing contact 😅 PS: any plan on monetizing it?
Régis
@mnlfrgr Thanks Manuel. Well - when you create your contact, there is small link under Personal information to edit information. I'm gonna change this behaviour anyway today :-D About monetization, I'd like to offer a paid version with advanced features (I think we could let the current set of features free). As it's open source, people can still host their own version for free anyway.
Manuel Frigerio
@djaiss Great, thanks for the answer. I think I found a bug though. When I click to edit a contact, the page stalls and keeps loading forever :)
Régis
@mnlfrgr can it be because of Intercom trying to load the widget on the page, blocking it? Do you have some kind of adblocker targeted to Intercom? I wonder if I should just remove Intercom.
Manuel Frigerio
@djaiss I do indeed. Not sure why this would happen anyway...
Manuel Frigerio
@djaiss Update. Even disabling adblock, page crashes everytime I try to edit a contact... :(
Kyle Conarro
I've been looking for something like this for a while...have considered hacking something together myself but never found the time. Really cool that it's open source to leverage the community for improvements. Can't wait to try it!
Régis
@conarro Thanks! The community already contributed. 20 PR and counting so far on Github! I'm mind blown by the community.
123
Next
Last