Business professionals rely on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to record everything related to a client. This database helps them quickly look up who needs to be serviced or followed up with and all information related to them so that the business and the client maintain a healthy relationship. The same concept is now increasingly popular for private use for individuals in the form of personal CRM apps.

Some people are naturally good at staying in touch with family and friends, while others need a nudge. These personal CRM apps will help you manage your contacts to know how long it has been since you last spoke, display any information about your chats or their personal details, and remind you when it's time to reach out to them.

1. Dex (Web, Android, iOS): Most Powerful Personal CRM App

Dex is the most powerful personal CRM app to manage contacts and interactions, and get reminders to stay in touch with people

Dex is the most powerful personal CRM app, importing contacts from all your different social databases to organize relationships. It also integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar to update the latest contact and upcoming meetings. The free version allows you to manage only 100 contacts, but it's good enough to understand how the whole thing will work.

Each contact card holds a ton of information about the person, such as all their contact details and social profile links, related contacts, description, notes added by you, and so on. You can set how frequently you want to get in touch with each individual and get reminders when the time comes.

You can add contacts to different groups and add custom tags so that you can quickly filter or sort them in the sidebar. The cool map view lets you see where all your contacts are on a global map. The browser extension also makes it easy to add any online profile to your Dex in a couple of clicks.

The "Today" dashboard of Dex is your main source of managing relationships. It'll tell you about birthdays and other important dates, upcoming meetings and who you'll be interacting with, and reminders for who you should contact. When you meet someone, go to Timeline to add it as an interaction, complete with notes, date, and type of meeting.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with Dex. The premium version offers cool features like syncing with LinkedIn so that contacts are auto-updated or adding custom fields to contact cards to create your own types of filters.

Download: Dex for Android | iOS (Free)

Download: Dex for Chrome (Free)

2. Mogul (Web, iOS): Manage Unlimited Contacts and Relationships for Free

Mogul lets you add unlimited contacts and unlimited interactions to manage all your relationships in one database

Most personal CRM apps limit how many contacts or relationships you can manage in the free version. Mogul bucks the trend by letting you add and manage unlimited people for free. However, you'll need to pay for the premium version if you want auto reminders to get in touch with them.

Mogul is fantastic as a personal CRM database to manage information about your contacts. You can sort them into groups and quickly view filtered lists. It's easy to log interactions with people, and you can see a timeline of all your interactions too. The main table gives you an at-a-glance look at who and when you spoke with.

We'd especially like to note two of Mogul's best features: search and privacy. Mogul searches all the text within your contacts and notes in a jiffy, letting you quickly find exactly who you're looking for or when you last used a certain term. And the app offers end-to-end encryption to ensure all this personal data is kept private for your eyes only.

Download: Mogul for iOS (Free)

3. Covve (Android, iOS): Stay in Touch With Friends and Save All Info on Phone

Today, anyone with whom you have a personal relationship is a contact on your phone. Covve helps you manage relationships with these contacts from your phone without using complicated systems on a desktop.

Once Covve imports all your contacts, you can start adding some of them to your "relationships." It's best practice not to add all contacts here but only manage those who you want to network with and build a better connection.

For each contact, you can set how frequently you want to keep in touch, and Covve will automatically remind you when you go past that period. You can also add what interactions you had the last time you spoke or met and save any pertinent information about them that you want to remember. Covve also retrieves the birthdays of these relationships and sets auto-reminders to wish them.

In the app settings, Covve includes a few additional features to make networking easier. You will find professional email templates for networking and catch-up, a tool to create a digital business card that you can share quickly, and the latest news pertinent to your managing relationships.

The free version of Covve lets you manage 20 relationships, get 20 auto-reminders, add 20 notes and activity logs, and set 20 tags. The free version removes all restrictions.

Download: Covve for Android | iOS (Free)

4. TinyBlu (Web): Simplest Personal CRM for Desktop and Mobile

TinyBlu is the simplest personal CRM for desktops and mobiles, as it shows three colors (red, yellow, green) for each contact based on how long it has been since your last interaction

TinyBlu is a manual personal relationship management system that doesn't auto-import data. However, it's worth mentioning because it's completely free, lets you add unlimited contacts, and is a web app so you can use it on any device and update your relationships from anywhere.

Each contact in TinyBlu is called a Lifeline. Each Lifeline gets three colors assigned to them: green, yellow, and red, based on how much time it has been since you last connected. You can set when the color changes and make it different for each contact. So in the main dashboard, you will see a green, yellow, or red box next to each Lifeline, telling you who you need to get in touch with at one glance. You can also set TinyBlu to remind you with an email when a contact goes into Red.

When you connect with a contact, you can update their profile with the activity you did, the date, any additional notes, and if there were any other contacts, you met with them. All this information shows up in a neat timeline when you click Lifeline's profile. Lifelines can also be added to groups for easier management.

5. Notion Personal CRM (Notion): Customizable Personal Relationships Database

If none of the aforementioned personal CRM tools meet your requirements, try out Jeff Su's free Notion template for a database of your personal relationships. Once you duplicate the template into your own Notion, you can customize it however you want, adding or deleting elements per your needs.

The basic template is nonetheless great for managing relationships. Su recommends dividing your contacts into two types: those with whom you need to manage a relationship and VIPs. For regular contacts, you'll add their name, relationship to you, birthdays, the industry they belong to, and location. Since you can be connected to a person in multiple ways, the relationships tab allows for multiple tags.

For any VIP contact, you can add additional details like when you last contacted them and what you spoke about. If it has been more than three months since the last contact, the template will automatically assign a "Hit them up!" status as a notification to get in touch. If you click a VIP contact, their profile can have plenty of additional information like personal details, preferred contact modes, notes about past interactions, and more.

Su offers some excellent tips in his video on managing and using this personal CRM, such as valuable advice of keeping your VIPs low. By pruning VIPs as per your current goals, you are more likely to maintain and update data and follow through on interactions.

Social Media Isn't a Real Connection

When you press that Like button on a friend's post or leave an odd comment once in a while, that isn't "staying in touch." Social media has warped our sense of what true human connections are, and it's important to learn to maintain those.

Use these personal CRM apps to figure out who you actually want to stay actively connected with and follow up on making that happen. To build meaningful connections, you must make an effort through in-person meetings, calls or video calls, and even activities. Don't succumb to the easy option of a quick social media interaction.