Monica
Open-source personal CRM for tracking friends, family, and relationships, self-hosted or hosted.
Liked as a self-hostable personal CRM12 for birthday reminders, notes about friends, and CardDAV/CalDAV contact sync.345 The most common complaint is the project's direction,67 with long-time users put off by slow development and the journaling-focused Chandler rewrite.8910
Why people recommend it
Birthday reminders · 3
Users value automatic reminders for birthdays and other events.
“it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders”
“I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user”
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“I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ which does advertise itself as a personal CRM.”
The concept · 3
Even critics say they like the idea of a tool for remembering things about people.
“I love the concept.”
“I tried using Monica self-hosted for about a year and felt like the authors of Monica had totally different priorities from me.”
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“They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler. Now they're throwing everything out again.”
Notes on people · 2
It gives users a place for details like where friends live, who their partners are, or who got a Christmas card.
“I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ which does advertise itself as a personal CRM.”
“I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user”
Long-term use · 3
Several commenters report using it happily for years.
“I have loved using Monica CRM for several years”
“it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders”
Show 1 more
“I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user”
Contact sync · 1
It works as a CardDAV server for contacts and adds birthdays to calendars via CalDAV.
“it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders”
Caveats and dissent
Project direction · 3
Rewrites, including the move to the journaling-focused Chandler, alienated some users.
“They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler. Now they're throwing everything out again.”
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
Show 1 more
“I tried using Monica self-hosted for about a year and felt like the authors of Monica had totally different priorities from me.”
Slow development · 2
Long-time users were unhappy that not much was happening with the project.
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
Fragile updates · 1
One self-hoster says updates are dicey, with many dependencies and breakage on every major update.
“My own instance is still on 4.0.0 despite 4.1.2 being out because I don’t see a benefit in updating”
Laborious UI · 1
One user found clicking through the UI to record things overly laborious.
“I have loved using Monica CRM for several years”
Duplicate contacts · 1
One user reports the CardDAV interface duplicated contacts in their address book.
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
Hosted downtime · 1
One user says the hosted platform went down many times about eight years ago.
“I used their hosted platform about 8 years ago and It went down many times.”
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- We are rebuilding Monica 7 mentions
- Show HN: Contrack – Self-hosted contact manager and people search 1 mention
- Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026) 1 mention
- Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died 1 mention
- Mob – A personal CRM as an MCP server 1 mention
- Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026) 1 mention
Also written as Monica CRM. Data: monica.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 13
“I kinda moved away from using Monica CRM, not because it failed me”
“it is at least a good carddav server to synchronize your contacts and auto add birthday reminders”
“My own instance is still on 4.0.0 despite 4.1.2 being out because I don’t see a benefit in updating”
“I tried using Monica self-hosted for about a year and felt like the authors of Monica had totally different priorities from me.”
“I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user”
“I tried out Monica when it was posted to hn ages ago and still get the occasional reminder.”
“They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler. Now they're throwing everything out again.”
“I love the concept.”
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
“I used their hosted platform about 8 years ago and It went down many times.”
“I have loved using Monica CRM for several years”
“I'm a long-time user of Monica”
“I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ which does advertise itself as a personal CRM.”