What a Personal CRM Is,
and Whether You Need One

You run into someone you haven’t seen since winter. You know their partner had a big operation, or they were about to start a new job, or their dog was very old. You just can’t remember which, and asking “how’s everything?” feels thin.

A personal CRM is a fix for that moment. It’s a place, an app or a plain document, where you keep the small things people tell you, so you can pick up where you left off.

Where the name comes from

CRM stands for customer relationship management: software that helps a business keep its customer relationships, sales and service in one place (Salesforce’s explainer is a plain summary). A personal CRM borrows the name for one person’s relationships instead of a company’s customers: friends, family, neighbours, clients and the people you meet along the way. You’ll also see it called a personal relationship manager, or PRM.

The borrowed name can mislead. A sales CRM is built to move people through a pipeline. A personal one has a smaller, kinder job: to hold onto what someone told you, so you can ask about it. I wrote more on that difference in Ditch the spreadsheet.

Whatever the tool, most of what’s worth keeping fits in five lines:

Add anything you promised (“I’ll send you that podcast”) and you have the whole thing. Those five lines are the bones of my free personal CRM template, and the same five lines OldMate fills in on a note’s page.

The main kinds of personal CRM

Personal CRMs differ mostly in one thing: how the detail gets in. Here are the four broad kinds, with an example of each as its maker described it on its own site on 4 October 2026. Features change often, so check before you choose.

Reminder-and-integration tools

Dex and Mesh (formerly Clay; clay.earth now redirects there) start by pulling your contacts in from other places. Dex says it “brings together LinkedIn, email, and all your daily tools” (its integrations page names Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook and Instagram), keeps a contact timeline, and sets keep-in-touch reminders. Mesh connects to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and others, keeps contact details up to date, notices job changes and prompts you to reconnect. Both run on phones, the web and desktop.

What they do better: they save a lot of typing for a big professional network, and they’ll tell you when someone’s gone quiet. If you want a prompt to get in touch, this is the kind built for it. Where they’re thinner: what they import is the professional surface (job title, company, last email). The fact that someone’s mum is in hospital still has to come from you.

Manual record-keepers

Monica calls itself “the open-source personal CRM”. You enter what you want to keep: activities, life events, important dates, gifts, debts and promises, with reminders for the dates that matter. Its code is published under the AGPL licence, so you can host it yourself, and there’s a hosted version too.

What it does better: it’s thorough and it’s yours. If you want full control of where the data lives, self-hosting is something few others offer. Where it’s harder: everything is typed in by hand, field by field, which is a lot to ask in the minute after a conversation.

A notes file or a spreadsheet

A note per person in Apple Notes, a Notion table, a Google Sheet. It costs nothing, you already know how to use it, and nobody else holds it. For a handful of people it can be all you need, and my template shows how to set one up in each.

Where it slips: it relies on you opening it at the right moment, twice: right after the conversation, and right before the next one. Most spreadsheets go stale somewhere between the two.

A note after the conversation

This is the kind OldMate is, and it’s built for the two moments the other kinds skip. The first is the minute after a catch-up, when the details are fresh and typing into a form is the last thing you feel like. You say a quick note, the way you’d tell a friend about it, and who, where, what’s new and any promise fill in beside your words as you speak. Tap a detail to fix it, check it, save, and it’s on that person’s page in your own words.

The second is the minute before you see them again. Open their page, or search your people by what you noted about them (“moved to Newcastle”), and what they told you last time is there, with the question you meant to ask. Follow-ups gathers the promises and questions you’ve left open, and when someone’s on your mind, a short reflection helps you think them over.

By design, OldMate never contacts anyone for you, and it doesn’t import your phone’s contacts, LinkedIn or email. Your list is only the people you’ve actually talked about. If you want keep-in-touch prompts or a merged address book, one of the tools above will suit you better. OldMate sorts your words with AI, so it needs an account and an internet connection; the privacy policy explains where your words go.

If you’re weighing one against another, Dex, Clay and Monica alternatives compares them side by side, including where each does more than OldMate.

One coffee, kept three ways

Here’s the same catch-up kept in three kinds of tool. Hannah is made up, like everyone in the examples.

As a spreadsheet row

Accurate, and thin. “Follow up? Y” doesn’t say about what, Biscuit didn’t make it, and the physio promise is gone. In December, this row tells you she lives in Newcastle now and not much else.

As a reminder-style record

This kind is good at making sure you do get in touch: early January, a prompt will arrive. It’s less help with what to say when you do. The note field is as short as you had patience for at the time.

As an OldMate note

Under half a minute of talking on the walk back to the station. The details are your own words, the promise is kept on its own line, and there’s a question waiting for December. Nothing is sent to Hannah. When you know you’ll see her, you open her page.

When you don’t need one

Plenty of people are fine without any of this. You probably don’t need a personal CRM if:

• Your circle is small and close. If you see the same dozen people every week, the conversation carries on by itself.
• You already remember. Some people hold onto names, kids’ names and job news without trying. If that’s you, keep doing what you’re doing.
• You want to be prompted, not prepared. If your problem is forgetting to get in touch at all, a calendar reminder or a reminder-style tool fits better than a notebook. OldMate doesn’t schedule keep-in-touch prompts.
• It feels wrong to you. Some people find notes about friends a bit odd, and that’s a fair feeling to take seriously. I’ve written about it in Is it weird to keep notes on your friends?
• You won’t keep it up. A system you never open helps nobody. Try the free template for a month before you sign up for anything.
• It’s really a sales pipeline. If you’re tracking deals for a team, use a sales CRM. That’s the job they’re built for.

If you do want one, what to look for

• Capture at the right moment. Detail fades quickly, so the minutes straight after a conversation are the easiest time to keep it. Why we forget names covers what memory research says about that window, and How to remember details about people turns it into a habit.
• Your words, not just fields. “Biscuit hates the train” won’t fit in a dropdown, and it’s the line that makes Hannah laugh in December.
• Easy to find before you see them. Open it in the car park and the question is right there. See Questions to ask a friend you haven’t seen in a while.
• Somewhere you trust with other people’s details. A personal CRM holds things about people who never signed up for it. Know where it’s stored, who can read it and what it’s sent to.
• Built for your situation. Clients have their own etiquette (Remembering client details), and so does the evening after a room full of strangers (After a networking event).

For why small check-ins matter, there’s some research in The power of micro-support, and on why the people you see only now and then matter in Your best mates won’t get you hired.

Why ours is called OldMate

In Australia, “old mate” is what you call someone whose name has gone but whose story hasn’t: old mate from footy, old mate who got into sourdough. That’s the gap a personal CRM fills. The longer version is in What’s an Old Mate?