# Monica personal CRM

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/monica/

7 people recommended Monica personal CRM in Hacker News comments, 5 had mixed feelings and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 4 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

4 of the 7 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “We are rebuilding Monica”.

**Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it. Free, open-source personal CRM for remembering details about people and getting birthday reminders. Critics say development has slowed, the interface feels dated, and self-hosting is hard.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## What people warn about

- Rewrites and update breakage (4 comments in the sample): "They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523250)) "every major update has had some breakage that takes a while to fix" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528425)) "why aren't mentioning their failed rewrite from 3 years ago?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523735))
- Outdated interface, laborious to record (2 comments in the sample): "it just felt overly laborious compared to just speaking what I wanted to record" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151055)) "It’s such a pain to record everything which is why I never used it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524894))
- Development has slowed or stalled (2 comments in the sample): "the thought of burying my data in a version that might be abandoned soon really put me off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528313)) "which I loved but has slowed down significantly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47286745))
- Self-hosting is difficult and poorly documented (2 comments in the sample): "even though it was a huge pain to self host it - the installation process in particular" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534893)) "Seems the self-hosting documentation is a bit… lacking." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524107))

## Why people recommend it

- Birthday and event reminders (2 comments in the sample): "it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders to your calendar via caldav as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49531990)) "I like that I have alerts set to remind me of birthdays and other events" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523814))
- Remembers details about people (1 comment in the sample): "I created Monica because I kept forgetting details about people I genuinely cared about." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523174))

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Monica personal CRM", https://hackerapproved.com/p/monica/ (7 recommend, 5 mixed, 13 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.