Monica Alternatives in 2026: Personal CRMs While Sign-Ups Are Closed

Monica is the open-source personal CRM: a private place to write down what's going on in the lives of your friends, family and colleagues, and to be reminded of the dates that matter. If you're searching for an alternative in 2026, it's usually for one of three reasons. You tried to sign up for the hosted version and couldn't, you're running it yourself and the upkeep has started to feel like a second hobby, or you want a tool that fills itself in instead of waiting for you to type.

This page explains where Monica stands right now, what it does better than anything else on the list, and which alternative fits each reason for leaving. Every detail about another product comes from that company's own pages, linked where it's used.

Can you still sign up for Monica?

Not for the hosted version, at the moment. Both Monica's homepage and its pricing page say "Registration is currently closed." The homepage also says Monica v3 is being rebuilt from scratch and is expected before the end of 2026, with a migration path for existing accounts and a promise that nothing is deleted or forced on anyone overnight.

Self-hosting is still open to anyone. The code is on GitHub under the AGPL license, and the homepage lists Docker or a manual PHP installation as the ways to run it. One detail matters if you're installing today: the GitHub README says the main branch is the beta in development and points to the 4.x branch for the stable version.

What Monica does well

Monica is built for personal relationships, not sales. Its homepage covers what's happening in people's lives, how you know them, important dates, past conversations, gifts, debts and promises, plus how families, partners and coworkers connect to each other. There's a journal, an activity history for meals, calls and trips, reminders to get back in touch, and custom fields for whatever you want to track.

• Privacy is the point. The homepage says hosted data is never sold, never used for advertising and never used to train a model, and that support staff only look at an account with your explicit permission for a specific problem. The source code is open, so you can check.
• You own the data. Monica imports vCard and CSV files, shows you duplicates before merging anything, and exports everything at any time, including the custom structures you built.
• Self-hosting costs nothing from Monica. The pricing page lists self-hosted Monica at $0, with unlimited contacts and unlimited users "as far as your infrastructure allows."
• The hosted price is simple. $90 a year or $9 a month, unlimited contacts, one account price rather than per seat, and a 30-day trial with no card needed during the trial.
• It can be shared. Monica's vault documentation says several users in the same account can belong to one vault, so a couple or a family can keep a shared record.

The README is just as clear about what Monica isn't: not a social network, not a smart assistant, and it has no built-in AI integrations. If that's exactly what you want, and you can run a small server, self-hosted Monica is still a better choice than anything below.

Why people look for a Monica alternative

The reasons are practical, and most of them come straight from Monica's own pages.

• You can't start a hosted account. With registration closed, a new user's only route into Monica is running it yourself.
• Self-hosting is real work. The pricing page lists what you take on: the server, updates, backups, monitoring and security patches, with "some" technical knowledge required.
• Everything goes in by hand. Monica imports vCard and CSV files, but it doesn't read your email or calendar to log conversations for you.
• No native phone app yet. The homepage says the web app works on a phone today, and native iOS and Android apps come after v3.
• Reminders arrive by email or Telegram. Monica's notification docs list those two channels for now.
• You want help, not just a record. Monica deliberately has no built-in AI. The homepage says v3 will add an MCP server so you can connect your own assistant to your data, if you choose to.

The alternatives, matched to the reason you're leaving

Nametag: if you want to stay open source

Nametag is the closest thing to Monica on this list. Its GitHub README describes it as a personal relationships manager that helps you remember the people in your life and how they're connected. It's licensed under the AGPL, like Monica, and self-hosts with Docker Compose.

Per its README and homepage, Nametag covers reminders for important dates and for staying in touch, relationship mapping, groups, a private journal, and an interactive graph of your network. Two things set it apart from Monica: CardDAV sync with Google Contacts, iCloud, Outlook and Nextcloud, and a hosted service at nametag.one that's open for sign-ups. The pricing page lists a free plan for up to 50 people, 10 groups and 5 reminders; Personal at $1 a month or $10 a year for up to 1,000 people; and Pro at $2 a month or $20 a year with no limits. Self-hosting is free with no limits.

Nametag's homepage doesn't mention native phone apps; it describes a mobile-friendly site, with CardDAV keeping your phone's contacts in step. It's a smaller project than Monica (about 1.1k GitHub stars against Monica's 25.5k), so look at the repository's recent activity before you commit years of notes to it.

Choose Nametag if open source and self-hosting are why you chose Monica, and you'd like contact sync or a hosted plan you can actually sign up for.

Dex: if you're tired of typing everything in

Dex is a paid personal CRM for keeping up with people, per its homepage. It's the opposite of Monica's hands-on approach: Dex pulls contacts in from more than 15 sources, including email, calendar, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook, Instagram, your phone's contacts and CSV files, and merges duplicates. Keep-in-touch reminders tell you when to reach out. It runs on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, the web and as a Chrome extension.

Dex has no free plan on its pricing page. Premium is $12 a month billed annually, $16 quarterly or $20 monthly, with up to 2,500 LinkedIn connections. Professional is $20, $27 or $34 a month on the same terms, adds Outlook, multiple email accounts, API and Zapier access, and raises the limit to 9,000 connections. Both start with a 6-day trial that needs a credit card. On data, Dex's security page says it encrypts data at rest and in transit, never sells your data to third parties, and hosts its servers and databases in the US.

Choose Dex if you want your network assembled for you from LinkedIn and your messaging apps, and you're comfortable with a hosted, paid service.

Mesh: if you want a free plan and native phone apps

Mesh, the personal CRM formerly called Clay, gathers the people you've met from email, calendar and social accounts, keeps their details current and flags job changes, according to its homepage. It's available on macOS, Windows, the web, Android and iOS, with reconnect prompts, reminders and birthdays in a home feed. Nexus, its AI assistant, searches and organizes your network.

The pricing page lists a free Personal plan for up to 1,000 contacts, though a credit card is required to access the platform. Pro is $10 a month for unlimited contacts and CSV import. Mesh's security and privacy page says it doesn't sell your data or use it for advertising, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and may process data outside your country. Nexus features are opt-in and run on a mix of Mesh's servers and third-party partners, none of which may train models on your data. For a fuller look, see our Mesh alternatives page.

Choose Mesh if you want an automatic contact book on your phone and computer, and the free plan's 1,000 contacts is enough.

Merlin: if what slips is the follow-up

Merlin is a Mac app whose People panel draws on three Google sources: your mail, your calendar and your contacts. It works differently from Monica: instead of a record you keep up by hand, it reads your mail and shows who is waiting on your reply (a real person, not a mailing list, who emailed you between two days and a month ago and still has no answer), birthdays in the next 14 days, reminders that are due, and people who have gone quiet after regular emails stopped two months ago.

Opening a person shows a short summary of where things stand, a timeline of emails, meetings, meetings you recorded with Merlin, and your notes, and an About section for who they are to you, how you met, family, pets and things to remember. You can type that in, or mention it in chat, such as how you met someone or the name of their dog, and Merlin files it on the right record. When you want to write to someone, ask for a draft; it comes back for you to edit and approve before anything is sent.

Merlin is a poor fit for some Monica users, and it's worth being plain about why. It isn't open source and can't be self-hosted; your People records are kept with your Merlin account. It's Mac only, with no phone app. It reads Google accounts, not Outlook. It has no journal, no custom fields, no photos or files on a person, and no way yet to delete someone from People. Its pricing starts with a free plan of 5,000 monthly credits; Pro is $29 a month or $278 a year.

Choose Merlin if your relationships mostly run through Gmail on a Mac, and the trouble isn't remembering details but getting back to people.

Monica vs. Nametag vs. Dex vs. Mesh vs. Merlin

Prices are in US dollars as each company publishes them, with the billing period shown.

How to choose

• You want Monica, just hosted for you: wait for Monica v3 if you can, or try Nametag's hosted plan in the meantime.
• You're happy to self-host but want contact sync with your phone: Nametag.
• You'd rather not type anything: Dex if LinkedIn and messaging apps matter most, Mesh if a free plan does.
• You need a native app on your phone: Dex or Mesh.
• Privacy and control outrank everything else: stay with self-hosted Monica or Nametag, where the data sits on your own server.
• Your people live in Gmail and your computer is a Mac: Merlin.

Moving your contacts out of Monica

1. In Monica, export your data. The pricing FAQ says the export covers contacts, relationships, notes, reminders, activities and custom fields, with attachments included in the documented format.
2. Check what the new tool can read. Nametag imports vCard and JSON, Dex takes CSV files, Mesh includes CSV import on Pro, and Merlin starts from your Google Contacts, so importing your contacts into Google first is the simplest route there.
3. Expect journal entries, activities and custom fields to need a second pass. Names, emails and phone numbers are what every tool above imports; the free-form history you wrote in Monica may have no matching field on the other side.
4. Keep the original export somewhere safe until you're sure nothing was lost.