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Contact Book: the alternative to UpHabit

What moving from UpHabit to Contact Book actually looks like in 2026.

Switching
Personal CRM
Keep in touch
Comparison
Julia Yukovich
Julia YukovichCo-Founder + CEO
·January 9, 2026·
3 min read

Contact Book is what people use when UpHabit 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

UpHabit's pitch is import everything and let reminders do the rest: it syncs your phone contacts, lets you tag and group them, and nudges you on a schedule. Contact Book takes the opposite starting point - a smaller circle you add on purpose, with a sentence of context per person, hosted in Germany with no trackers. Pick UpHabit if you want your whole address book pulled in and reminded against; pick us if you'd rather keep a thin, curated, private log of the relationships that genuinely matter.

Switching

What moving from UpHabit actually looks like

The switch goes in three rough phases: export from UpHabit, import into Contact Book, and reorganise what came over. Most people allocate an evening for it. The export side is where the time goes - UpHabit 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 UpHabit: feature comparison

When to pick which

Pick Contact Book when

You'd rather curate a small circle than have your whole address book imported.
You want context per person - the log, the life events, the family graph - not just reminders.
Hosting in Germany and a no-tracking posture matter to you.

Pick UpHabit when

You want your entire phone address book pulled in and reminded against in one move.
Reminders are the whole job for you and you don't need a deep per-person record.

Import-everything vs curate-on-purpose

UpHabit's centre of gravity is the import: it pulls your phone contacts in, then layers reminders on top so you keep in touch with whoever's there. That removes the cold-start problem - you open the app and your network is already populated. Contact Book makes the opposite bet on purpose. We assume the people worth a relationship memory are a curated few dozen, not the several hundred numbers your phone has accumulated over a decade. So we start nearly empty and you add people deliberately. The trade is real: UpHabit feels full on day one, we feel intentional on day one. Which is right depends on whether you want a reminder layer over your whole address book or a private record of the relationships you've actually chosen.

What you remember about a person, not just when

Both tools remind you. The difference is what sits behind the reminder. UpHabit's strength is the nudge and the tagging; the per-person record is comparatively thin. Ours is the texture: a conversation log so the next message has a hook, dated life events so you check in before the hard week, gift history so you don't repeat last year's present, and a family graph so you remember whose sister is whose. When the reminder fires, ours arrives already loaded with everything you need to make the gesture land. If you mostly want a prompt, UpHabit is plenty; if you want the prompt and the context together, that's the seam we're built on.

Where your relationship data lives

Once you've imported a whole address book and layered notes on top, the question of where that data lives stops being abstract. Notes about your friends' health, families, and confidences are some of the most sensitive material you'll ever store. Contact Book is hosted in Germany, runs no third-party trackers, never trains on your data, and lets you export or delete everything yourself. If a relationship tool can't tell you where the data sits, what runs against it, and how to get it all back out, that's a reason to look carefully before you pour your network into it - whichever tool you pick.

Step by step
1

Export from UpHabit

Find the export option in UpHabit'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.

Account settings → Export / Download data
Pick the broadest format the tool offers (usually JSON)
2

Map fields in Contact Book

Open the import tool in Contact Book. UpHabit's field names rarely match Contact Book' 1:1; the import flags any unmapped columns so you can pair them up before anything commits.

Account settings → Import
Resolve the mapping prompts the tool surfaces
3

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.

4

Re-create your views, tags, saved searches

UpHabit-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.

5

Cancel UpHabit 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 UpHabit subscription from their side. Contact Book keeps your export option self-serve in account settings - no lock-in either direction.

Switching from UpHabit

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.

Julia Yukovich

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.

julia.yukovich at aicuflow dot comLinkedIn