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Contact Book: the alternative to Hippo
What moving from Hippo to Contact Book actually looks like in 2026.
Contact Book is what people use when Hippo stops fitting. Below is the honest side-by-side - same product surface, different posture: hosted in Germany, no third-party trackers, one honest price - plus the migration mechanics that decide whether the switch lands in an evening or in a quarter.
At a glance
Hippo's design philosophy is the opposite of feature-creep: do the keep-in-touch reminder loop perfectly and stop. Contact Book does the same loop alongside life events, gifts, family graph, and a journal. Pick Hippo if you want the simplest possible nudge tool; pick us if you want the texture too.
Switching
What moving from Hippo actually looks like
The switch goes in three rough phases: export from Hippo, import into Contact Book, and reorganise what came over. Most people allocate an evening for it. The export side is where the time goes - Hippo hands you a CSV/JSON dump and the field mapping isn't always obvious; once that's resolved the import is a couple of minutes. We don't paywall the import path or pretend it's a pro-only feature, and you can run both side-by-side while you decide.
Contact Book vs Hippo: feature comparison
When to pick which
Pick Contact Book when
Pick Hippo when
Export from Hippo
Find the export option in Hippo's account settings. Most tools provide a CSV or JSON download. Save the dump locally - that's the source of truth for the next step.
Map fields in Contact Book
Open the import tool in Contact Book. Hippo's field names rarely match Contact Book' 1:1; the import flags any unmapped columns so you can pair them up before anything commits.
Run the import
Run the import. Contact Book shows a preview of the first parsed rows in the import dialog so you can sanity-check the column mapping + a sample of records before anything commits. If you're nervous about a large dump, import a small subset first, verify it landed the way you expected, then run the full file.
Re-create your views, tags, saved searches
Hippo-specific UI metadata (custom views, saved filters, in-app annotations) doesn't transfer with the data export. Spend an evening rebuilding the views you used most - usually a 30-minute job once you've done it once.
Cancel Hippo when you're confident
Run both side-by-side for a couple of weeks if you want to be sure. When you're confident, cancel the Hippo subscription from their side. Contact Book keeps your export option self-serve in account settings - no lock-in either direction.
Switching from Hippo
The five questions we get most often before someone moves their data over.
Start with Contact Book
Free plan, no credit card. We host in Germany. Export + delete are self-serve.
Written by
Julia Yukovich
Co-Founder + CEO
Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.
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