For you maybe but I am fine, still as you seem to be taking issue with every comment I make I will withdraw gracefully
You waited two weeks to take exception to my noting that a Mac-only solution was probably not adequate for most people who need a CRM, then got upset when I said I understood your position and explained why not having a way to edit on iOS but instead relying on three separate Mac apps wouldn’t work for me. 
I “waited” two weeks because I have more important things to do than trade sarcasm here or wait for replies.
I am not upset at all, life is way to short to let things like this get to me, I merely said I was withdrawing (from this type of pointless ping pong) gracefully
Ah okay. I guess it’s a slow withdrawal, then. 
The combination of CardHop and notes section I contacts works well for me.
1 Like
That’s what I’m using right now, and although I’ve long ago bumped up against the limitations of Apple’s Contacts database its convenience (and integration with better tools like CardHop) keep me with it.
BusyContacts looks like a step up, but as I mentioned a year and a half ago in this thread, the free tier of HubSpot seems pretty compelling.
HubSpot CRM is not a free trial. It’s 100% free — simple as that. You can add 1,000,000 contacts, unlimited users, and your free access to the CRM has no time limit. Just be aware that if you use HubSpot CRM with the Marketing Hub, the contacts you add to the CRM end up in both places, which could affect your Marketing Hub subscription’s contact tier pricing.
Using the free or paid versions of the Sales Hub, you can connect HubSpot CRM to Gmail, G Suite, and many versions of Outlook.
Absolutely agree. Since I’m also in the text notes or Zettelkasten camp I use the Cardhop notes field to link directly to a note within my system and vice versa. Nice side benefit, the data about that contact lies on my machine only (Backups are encrypted) and I can create links between other topics and a contact.
It’s been 7 months since last post here.
Rebooting the conversation to see if anyone has any new suggestions.
To recap the goal: Find a Personal Contact manager that goes beyond what is offered by the Mac’s Contacts app, but is not a Customer/Sales-oriented full-blown CRM like SalesForce or its million and one alternatives.
A Personal Contact Manger (PCM?) should allow us to keep track of our personal relationships, help us remember to keep in touch with people, group people by interests, keep track of conversations, etc.
Think more “Contacts on steroids” rather than “Dumbed down Salesforce”,
more “PM” than “Personal RM”
Ideally (for me anyway…)
- macOS and iOS
- Automatic bidirectional sync with iCloud
- Integrates with multiple Contact Lists (iCloud/Google)
- Integrates with email & message threads (maybe impossible in BigSur and beyond?)
- Mange relationships via Reminders, etc
- Lists/Groups
- Notes Field
- Integrates with Social Media links
- Stable developer that will (hopefully) be around next year/decade.
- What else?
As of Feb 2021, BusyContacts some these points, limited on the “Manager” part, but no iOS, no Mail/Messages integration (not their fault), and a bit long in the tooth.
Cardhop also hits some points, but even less functionality than BusyContacts
Any new suggestions/candidates?
this is where I’m ending up and while not yet switched off busy cal and and busy contacts, it’s getting close as is working well. DTto go fixes the remote part
Over a year since the last post here and I’m just wondering whether there’s anything new! I’m just about to move into a church role that will involve lots of people who I need to ‘know’… staff, congregation, those involved in meetings, external partners and related organisations and so on.
My aim is to:
- record contact details including photo
- quickly recall individuals
- be able to tag (and quickly find) people eg by role, current status, need to follow up, attendance at a meeting and so on.
- ideally be able to deep link to those tags so I can quickly get from a meeting note to a individual.
Would need to be Mac and iOS, as a lot of my contact will be out of the office, noted down in the car quickly after seeing someone.
I’ve looked at Cardhop and it doesn’t seem to offer a whole lot more than the stock app, unless I’m missing something (which I feel I must be). I can enter a #tagofmychoice in the notes field of a contact in Apple Contacts and bring up all related contacts by a search for that tag.
Maybe Apple Contacts is the best for the job?
I ended my quest for this by building my own database with Ninox or you could use tapforms as mentioned above. I have not looked back and the database does what I want rather than trying to shoehorn my data into someone else’s system. It syncs between mac and ios beautifully, is easy to print and export.
Took a week of hard work to build tooing and frooing with the forum, and also attended their free zoom meetup and received excellent help. The learning curve has helped me build a number of databases that replace apps I used to pay for. I’ve realised that learning to build and use a database is a helpful skill in a data driven world.
It wasn’t that hard and has really paid off. You may find it solves your problem also.
Many thanks for the recommendations. Both options look like they have mileage in creating the system I want to have. I do have experience building databases, so I’m grateful for the suggestion. I could possibly throw Notion into the mix too.
Thanks to you both for sending me down this track…
1 Like
I used notion for some time, but felt uncomfortable making notes related to people in there cloud system. CRMs often contain personal and special information that makes many cloud systems unsuitable.
1 Like
Wholeheartedly agree!
Contacts Journal was previously mentioned and might be a more off the shelf approach. Both Mac and iOS versions.
3 Likes
This solution might be a bit more involved than you like, but you might consider a networked knowledge manager. I personally use Logseq. I really like this approach, because all your contacts can be easily linked to any notes you write about those people, such as meetings, or birthday presents, etc. The use of backlinks means that you will see all the names that link to a particular note. (Obsidian and Roam are other apps in this space.)
1 Like
Gosh - this looks really interesting. Have you used it at all? This seems like exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I used Logseq a while back and was impressed even in its alpha form…
I tried Notion at the weekend (since I still have an account), but I find it functional but clunky and not a place I enjoy working (which is part of the decision). Logseq, on the other hand, seems to have come on a huge amount since I last used it and is relatively frictionless… and I see they released “deep linking” to individual blocks over the weekend which is to some extent the missing link in getting it to interact with other applications - especially my calendar app. Seems trivial now to set up a meeting page and link to it directly from an appointment.
PDF upload/handling is great on desktop, but unfortunately the mobile app seems to simply ignore them, not even offering the ability to view them which is a bit of a problem as I’d usually take my iPad to meetings, not my laptop. Early days, though.