Guides

Everything on personal CRMs and staying in touch

What a personal CRM is, how it compares to the tools you're probably using instead, and practical guides for keeping a real network alive.

Guides

What is a personal CRM?The full definition, and what it's actually for Personal CRM vs CRMWhy a sales CRM and a personal one solve different problems Personal CRM vs contacts appWhat a plain address book was never built to hold Best personal CRM toolsAn honest rundown of the main options available How to manage a large networkStructure that scales past a few hundred people How to remember to follow upTurning a good intention into something that happens How to keep in touch after movingWhat actually works once proximity is gone Personal CRM for freelancers & consultantsWhen your network is your business development Personal CRM for networkingTurning a new connection into an actual relationship How to organise 1,000+ contactsStructure for a list too large to scroll Track relationships without a spreadsheetWhy manual tracking usually stops after a few weeks

Comparisons

The Vault vs Dex The Vault vs Atrium The Vault vs Mesh (formerly Clay)The Vault vs Monica The Vault vs a Notion CRM template The Vault vs HubSpot's free CRM The Vault vs a spreadsheet Personal CRM alternatives

Best personal CRM for...

Best personal CRM for students & recent graduates Best personal CRM after moving cities, jobs, or schools Best personal CRM for iPhone & Apple users

The Vault - Personal Relationship Manager

The Vault is an invite-only personal relationship manager: an app for keeping up with the people in your own network, not a sales pipeline tool repurposed for personal use. It remembers what a spreadsheet or your phone's contacts app never does - how you met someone, what you last talked about, when you're overdue to reach out, and what to bring up next time.

What you can do with it

Keep a full record for every contact - company, role, birthday, tags, interests, notes, an interaction log, tasks, and reminders - and see them all together on one chronological timeline. Link contacts to each other, track who you met at which event, and see your whole network plotted on a real world map, geocoded down to the town. A colour-coded recency badge shows at a glance who you've gone quiet on, and a weekly digest surfaces birthdays, due reminders, and upcoming events in one place.

Ask Vault, the built-in AI assistant

Ask Vault has real read and write access to your contact data - ask who you haven't spoken to in months, have it log a call, set a reminder, or fill in a new contact from a paragraph of freeform text. Every write goes through an explicit confirmation card before anything is saved, and every confirmed action is logged to a visible, individually undoable history, so nothing happens to your data without your review.

Keeping your data clean

A duplicate-detection scan finds likely duplicate contacts by matching email, phone, or a close name match, and a merge tool combines two records - notes, tasks, reminders, relationships, and event history included - into one. Tag management lets you rename or merge tags across every contact at once to fix typos and inconsistent labels as your network grows.

The Vault is invite-only while it's in early access. Visit vaultprm.com to join the waitlist.