I’ve run an independent consultancy for years, and I’ll tell you the uncomfortable truth about personal CRMs: most of them end up as beautifully organised graveyards. You set one up on a quiet Friday, import your contacts, feel briefly in control, and then never open it again.
That’s not because the tools are bad. Dex, Clay, and folk are all well-made products with real followings. It’s because the model asks something of you that consultants rarely have: spare attention. Your pipeline is your network, but your network doesn’t pay you to maintain a database about it.
So here’s my honest take on the main options, what each one is genuinely good at, and where I think the whole category is heading.
What a consultant needs
Before comparing tools, it’s worth being clear about the job. As an independent consultant, you need four things from any relationship system:
- Memory. Who you know, what you discussed, what they care about, who they know.
- Timing. A nudge when someone’s gone quiet, a prompt before a meeting, a reminder that you promised James a follow-up three weeks ago.
- Pipeline. A view of live opportunities that doesn’t require a sales ops hire to maintain.
- Low friction. If the system needs feeding, you’ll stop feeding it. Ask me how I know.
Most personal CRMs do the first well, the second adequately, the third barely, and the fourth not at all.
Dex: the diligent networker’s choice
Dex is probably the best-known personal CRM. Its browser extension sits on top of LinkedIn, it pulls interaction history from your email and calendar, and its keep-in-touch reminders are the core of the product: set a cadence for a contact and Dex tells you when you’re overdue.
Where Dex shines: if you already have a networking habit and want a system to make it consistent, Dex is a strong fit. The LinkedIn integration is genuinely useful for keeping profiles current.
Where it falls down for consultants: Dex is a place you go. The reminders arrive, but acting on them (recalling context, drafting the message, logging the outcome) still happens across four other tabs. And there’s no real concept of a deal, so your pipeline lives somewhere else anyway.
I’ve written a fuller piece on this: Dex alternatives for people who never open their CRM.
Clay: the best-looking address book you’ll ever own
Clay (the personal CRM at clay.earth, not the sales-data platform with the same name) takes a different angle: it builds your network view automatically from your email, calendar, LinkedIn, and Twitter, then surfaces “moments”, like job changes and birthdays, as reasons to reach out.
Where Clay shines: the automatic enrichment is impressive and the design is the nicest in the category. If your goal is a living, self-updating address book, Clay is the closest anyone’s got.
Where it falls down for consultants: Clay is optimised for staying in touch broadly, not for winning work. There’s no pipeline, no sense of an open opportunity, and the nudges don’t know that Sarah Choo is a £40k proposal waiting on a decision rather than an old colleague due a coffee.
folk: the lightweight team CRM
folk sits closer to a traditional CRM: contact lists, pipelines, email sequences, and a Chrome extension for capturing people from LinkedIn. It’s built for small teams doing outreach together.
Where folk shines: if you’ve outgrown a spreadsheet and want pipelines without the weight of HubSpot or Salesforce, folk is a sensible step up. The shared workspace model works well for a small agency.
Where it falls down for solo consultants: it’s team software priced and designed accordingly. As a solo operator you end up paying for collaboration you don’t need, and the discipline problem remains: folk only knows what you type into it.
The comparison at a glance
| Dex | Clay | folk | Aldous | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Consistent networking habits | A self-updating address book | Small teams doing outreach | Consultants who want a colleague in their corner, not a database |
| Keep-in-touch nudges | Yes, cadence-based | Yes, moment-based | No | Yes, and Aldous notices who’s gone quiet |
| Pipeline view | No | No | Yes | Yes, kanban boards |
| Where you use it | App + browser extension | App + browser extension | App + browser extension | WhatsApp, email, and a web dashboard |
| Data entry | Manual + LinkedIn sync | Mostly automatic | Manual + extension | Chat or voice note: you talk, Aldous does the admin. Plus your inbox, calendar, and meeting notes |
| Meeting follow-up | No | No | No | Aldous checks in after each meeting |
| Goals and coaching | No | No | No | 7, 30, and 90-day goals, a weekly review, and a daily plan built around them |
The honest answer
If you’ll reliably open a CRM every week, buy Dex or Clay and you’ll be well served. They’re mature products and the discipline they ask for isn’t unreasonable.
But here’s the reframe that changed how I think about this whole category. There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly works a gala, and Andy stands at her shoulder quietly feeding her the name, the role, and the personal detail of every guest walking towards her. Miranda greets each one like an old friend. What makes that scene work isn’t a database. It’s a colleague.
That’s the thing no personal CRM on this list is built to be. They store what you know. The hard part is showing up: walking into the room remembering the daughter who started university, the house move, the proposal that’s sat unanswered for a fortnight. Those little things are the difference between a warm conversation and a cold one, and over a career they’re a big part of why people choose to work with you.
So I built Aldous to be the colleague, not the cabinet. Aldous briefs you before you walk in: who you’re meeting, what you last discussed, what’s still open, the detail worth asking about. The admin runs on one design principle (you talk, Aldous does it): a voice note walking out of a meeting is enough, and because Aldous connects to your key apps (email, calendar, meeting notes), the picture of each relationship keeps deepening on its own.
And a good colleague cares about where you’re going, not only who you’re meeting. Aldous works as a growth partner by your side every day: 7, 30, and 90-day goals you set together, a weekly review of what moved and what stalled, and a day planned around the people and deals that take you there.
You don’t maintain Aldous. Aldous makes sure you show up already knowing.
We’re in invite-only alpha at the moment. If a colleague at your shoulder sounds more useful than another database, tell us about your practice and we’ll be in touch.