Monica personal CRM
Personal CRM in Productivity & writing
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.
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.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 48%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 2 years
Median of the 5 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Birthday and event reminders
“I still have an instance of it running and get email reminders about birthdays, but no, I don't think it has been actively developed for years.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died” “it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders to your calendar via caldav as well”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” “I certainly underutilize its features but things like birthday reminders + a place for a few notes is nice”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Poppy – a simple app to stay intentional with relationships” - Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”
Remembers details about people
“I certainly underutilize its features but things like birthday reminders + a place for a few notes is nice”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Poppy – a simple app to stay intentional with relationships” “I created Monica because I kept forgetting details about people I genuinely cared about.”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Rewrites and update breakage
“They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler.”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” “every major update has had some breakage that takes a while to fix”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” “why aren't mentioning their failed rewrite from 3 years ago?”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” - Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”
Outdated interface, laborious to record
“Monica is too outdated by today's standards.”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died” “it just felt overly laborious compared to just speaking what I wanted to record”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Mob – A personal CRM as an MCP server” “It's such a pain to record everything which is why I never used it”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” Development has slowed or stalled
“I still have an instance of it running and get email reminders about birthdays, but no, I don't think it has been actively developed for years.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died” “the thought of burying my data in a version that might be abandoned soon really put me off”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” “which I loved but has slowed down significantly”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 on Hacker News - Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)”
Self-hosting is difficult and poorly documented
“even though it was a huge pain to self host it - the installation process in particular”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica” “Seems the self-hosting documentation is a bit... lacking.”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poppy | 24 | 13 | 65% | 3 | — | — |
| Monica personal CRMThis page | 15 | 16 | 48% | 4 | 2 yrs5 owners | — |
What people said
32 of the 35 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“even though it was a huge pain to self host it - the installation process in particular”
“there is something very moving in that alone”
“remove features in next version like API”
“it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders to your calendar via caldav as well”
“every major update has had some breakage that takes a while to fix”
“the thought of burying my data in a version that might be abandoned soon really put me off”
“now it's just a generic LLM slop website”
“some features were a bit clunky”
“v2 to v3 as another rewrite would be the same move.”
“I don't get why Monica would struggle with this”
“felt like the authors of Monica had totally different priorities from me”
“It's such a pain to record everything which is why I never used it”
“I appreciate opinionated software reminding me to invest in what matters in relationships.”
“For me the problem was the interface.”
“This is a CRM, even a personal one.”
“Seems the self-hosting documentation is a bit... lacking.”
“I like that I have alerts set to remind me of birthdays and other events”
“why aren't mentioning their failed rewrite from 3 years ago?”
“They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler.”
“I created Monica because I kept forgetting details about people I genuinely cared about.”
“it didn't auto-save, so if your browser crashed or you accidentally closed the tab, you lose everything”
“What I like about Monica HQ is that it doesn't follow this model.”
“Monica is too outdated by today's standards.”
“I still have an instance of it running and get email reminders about birthdays, but no, I don't think it has been actively developed for years.”
“Monica is open source and has a good API.”
“it just felt overly laborious compared to just speaking what I wanted to record”
“was unhappy that not much was happening”
“which I loved but has slowed down significantly”
“I certainly underutilize its features but things like birthday reminders + a place for a few notes is nice”
“essentially spying on their users”
“How is this remotely technically impressive? LLM chat apps have been commoditized for years already.”
“they are the frontier AI chat bot aggregator”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.