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Contact Book: the alternative to Monica
What moving from Monica to Contact Book actually looks like in 2026.
Contact Book is what people use when Monica 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
Monica is the elder statesman of the personal-CRM space - mature, open-source, actively maintained, and self-hostable. It is a genuinely good product and we recommend it without reservation to anyone who wants to run their own server. Contact Book is the answer to a narrower question: what if I want Monica's idea without running Monica's server? We're younger and lighter, with a sharper UI, live multi-tab updates, hosting in Germany, and a deliberately small surface. Self-host and tinker - pick Monica. Want a clean, fast, bilingual personal CRM you don't maintain, on a hosted plan from €1 a month - that's us. The short version: Monica without the server.
Switching
What moving from Monica actually looks like
The switch goes in three rough phases: export from Monica, import into Contact Book, and reorganise what came over. Most people allocate an evening for it. The export side is where the time goes - Monica 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 Monica: feature comparison
When to pick which
Pick Contact Book when
Pick Monica when
Same goal, different shape
Both products want to give you a single calm place to keep the people in your life. Monica gets there with a comprehensive feature surface accumulated over years of community contribution. Contact Book gets there with a sharper, more opinionated subset and a fast UI on top.
The honest take: if you tested both and only had ten minutes per app, you'd probably feel us as faster and Monica as more configurable. Pick whichever feeling matters more.
Hosting + jurisdiction
Monica gives you two ways to run it: self-host it yourself anywhere, or use Monica's own hosted cloud. The self-host route means the data sits wherever you put it - full control. The hosted cloud, by contrast, doesn't publish a hosting location on its pricing page. Ours runs in Germany under German law and we say so plainly. For most users the EU GDPR baseline is the same either way; if you have a requirement that specifically points at Germany - or you just want the location stated, not guessed - that's a clear win for us. Otherwise, treat it as equivalent and pick on UX.
Hosted, without the self-hosting (the real cost math)
Monica's headline is "free and open-source", and on the self-host route it genuinely is - you pay only for a small server (roughly €5 a month). But free software isn't free time. Self-hosting Monica means you own the Docker stack, the database backups, the SSL renewals, and every version upgrade. Reviewers who've costed this out honestly land around €150-220 a year once you price your own maintenance hours - which is more than Monica's own hosted cloud (about €90 a year), and more than us.
That's the whole pitch in one line: Contact Book is for the person who likes Monica's idea but doesn't want a server in their life. If "Docker Compose" means nothing to you, or you've self-hosted before and are tired of being the on-call admin for your own address book, the hosted route is the right one - and we think we're the calmest version of it.
Migrating from Monica: what actually transfers
If you're already on Monica and weighing a move, the honest mechanics matter. Monica's contacts export cleanly as vCard (.vcf) - names, emails, phones, addresses, birthdays - and that file imports straight into Contact Book. Monica also offers a full JSON export (currently a preview feature) and an older SQL dump, but be aware: the JSON has no matching import on Monica's side, and the SQL route is being phased out and skips photos. So the realistic path is vCard for the contact graph, plus a short manual pass to carry over the handful of journal entries, gifts, or notes you actually want to keep.
None of this is a one-click miracle - no personal CRM ingests another's full data model verbatim, and we won't pretend otherwise. But the part that's painful to re-type, the contacts themselves, moves in minutes.
Common questions, answered
Is Monica still maintained? Yes - actively. It has a large open-source community, regular releases, and is a current, healthy project. We'd never tell you otherwise; this comparison is about shape, not about one product going stale.
Does Monica have a mobile app? Not a first-party native one - you use it in the browser. Contact Book is the same in spirit (web-first), but built mobile-first so the contact card loads fast on a phone. Does either read my email? No. Neither Monica nor Contact Book ingests your inbox - both are deliberate, manual-entry systems, which is the opposite design choice from Cloze.
Which should I actually pick? If you want to own the server, Monica. If you want the idea without the server, us. If you're not sure, our free tier lets you try the hosted experience before you decide.
Export from Monica
Find the export option in Monica'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. Monica'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
Monica-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 Monica 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 Monica subscription from their side. Contact Book keeps your export option self-serve in account settings - no lock-in either direction.
Switching from Monica
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, development, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.
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