I’ve been using various contact managers but they all feel like sales tools, so I built Nametag to track the people I actually care about - friends, family, colleagues. It maps relationships, tracks birthdays, and visualizes your network as an interactive graph.
Self-hosting highlights:
- Docker Compose setup - PostgreSQL, Redis, Next.js app. One command to start
- No email service needed - Accounts auto-verify, works completely offline
- Unlimited contacts - No artificial limits (hosted version caps free tier at 50)
- Complete data ownership - Your relationship data stays on your infrastructure
- Optional email - Can configure Resend if you want birthday/reminder emails
- No phone-home - Runs entirely on your network if you want
- AGPL-3.0 licensed - Full source access
Features:
- Track people with flexible attributes (name, birthday, contact info, notes)
- Map relationships between people (family, friends, colleagues, custom types)
- Interactive D3.js network graph visualization
- Custom groups for organizing contacts
- Birthday reminders (if you configure email)
- Dark mode, i18n (English and Spanish for now, but more are coming)
- Mobile-responsive
Tech stack:
- Next.js 16 (TypeScript)
- PostgreSQL + Prisma ORM
- Redis for rate limiting
- D3.js for graph visualization
- Tailwind CSS
Quick start:
git clone https://github.com/mattogodoy/nametag
cd nametag
# Edit .env with your secrets
docker-compose up -d
Database migrations run automatically on first start.
Access at localhost:3000.
There’s also a hosted version at https://nametag.one/ if you don’t want to self-host (helps fund development).
GitHub: https://github.com/mattogodoy/nametag
Happy to answer questions about the setup, architecture, or deployment!
Does it have caldav/carddav capabilities? That’s key to keep it all there.
Very nice project. I’ll definitely keep an eye on it.
Just a few days ago I ended up rolling my own PRM using a couple of tables in my NocoDB instance, Node-RED for notifications, and a couple of Siri Shortcuts as UI for my devices, mostly because as many already said, even Monica is a bit too much and quite hard to use.
I might as well give a spin and see if I can modify my shortcuts to use this instead!
Does it support tracking the last time I contacted a person and reminders if I haven’t contacted someone for a while? Eg I’d like to contact certain people every X weeks.
Yes! That’s one of the main features of this project :)
Great scott! That’s heavy.
Looks good. I’ve considered a personal CRM for some time and have been using Obsidian a little bit. Having said that, I am open to something more tailored to the task. A question: what would it look like if someone wanted to export their data out of this tool later? Do I need to be a programmer to migrate away or is it relatively simple?
There is an “export” option in the account settings :) It’s not in any specific standard (I’m planning to implement CardDAV soon), but it’s exported to JSON, so you can see all the data.
Great to hear. I might give it a try in a limited area, like meeting people from a new hobby or friend group, then expand from there if it works f or me. I definitely see the benefit, especially for ADHD types who might otherwise forget to call someone for 1…2…3…12 months. :-D Thank you for making a cool piece of software.
For small personal deployments, is SQLite support planned? It’s crazy performant and I have to imagine it would work for up to 500 contacts at the very least, which should cover the majority of deployments. Making Redis optional (otherwise using a basic in-memory KV store of some kind) would also be cool.
Agree, it seems kind of resource heavy for my use case
I love SQLite, and I agree that it could very well fit this project. I’m adding it to my list :) Thanks for the feedback!
Any way to sync with contacts on mobile? I’d love one source of truth.
CardDAV synchronization is next on the list of priorities :)
I’m subbing to releases, definitely keeping an eye on this!
I’m currently having sync my carddav to nocodb for relationships and other details since monica went bust, which isn’t very practical.I hear you. I’ve also used nocodb for this, and also tried Obsidian and of course Monica, but nothing felt “right”. It’s crazy how we all arrive at the same solutions to this problem :)
Congratulations on the launch! Could this also be used as a genealogy tree? I’ve been wanting for a long time to create mine but the options I found were too expensive and I wasn’t up to create it from scratch (too long and not future proof).
Thank you! Yes, I’ve thought about this and it’s in my roadmap to create an “export group as family tree to PDF” function. Would that be good enough for your needs?
Ugh, also looking for a way to digitalize mine, but all tools I’ve found are either way too complex or lack critical functions, like e. g. supporting patchwork families/split-up parents which have new children.
A+ for custom connection types. Polycules rejoyce!
I remember using Monica years back for something similar. Quickly lost the habits of using it since it was a lot of work updating and it didn’t feel like it was worth the effort.
That’s one of the reasons I started this project. Monica is a bit too complex for my needs.
Makes sense. Good work.
This might work for my poly group. We always wanted to visualize how we are all connected.
Careful! You might realise you’re cousins 😂
Pardon my ignorance but what is a poly group?
Polyamory, multiple partners and they each have multiple partners
Yeah, we have been wanting to make a who is connected to who chart. I was going to use draw io but it was a little manual.
I don’t have the attention span to draw out a Pepe Silva looking graph (even if I periodically have to try to explain it to newbies haha)
A poly group (also known as a polycule) is a network of polyamorous people’s relationships. Polyamory, in case you’re unaware, is the practice of having multiple romantic or sexual partners at the same time, in contrast to monogamy.
If you were polyamorous and wanted to graph out your relationships, you could do it a few different ways. For example:
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Just you and your partners. If any of your partners are also in relationships with each other, you’d draw lines between them as well.
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Extend an extra level and include all of your partners’ partners (known as metamours), again connecting any pair on the graph who are partners.
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Extend that further and include all of your partners’ partners’ partners (no specific term for this as far as I know). This would likely include people you don’t personally know, and it would be difficult to build a complete graph of all their relationships.
Etc.
I had a feeling they were talking about polyamory, but I wasn’t sure since it felt a lot like over-sharing. But I guess it’s good to announce any and all use cases for something like this, why not. 👍
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I use org-roam (similar to Obsidian) to do that, the graph is neat for it! I only personally go to metamours, but I might pass an Obsidian vault around to see how deep that rabbit hole goes.
Quick question, when hosted plan says up to 50 people, is that you can add 50 people to remember or 50 people can access one database?
It means you can add up to 50 contacts. I might have to clarify that. Thanks!
This looks fun. I think I’m going to try that.
I’ve also just randomly noticed that the link on alternative.to doesn’t work for whatever reason: https://alternativeto.net/software/monica/?toid=nametag--never-forget-a-name-again
That’s true! I think it might be because I just submitted it and it’s currently under review
This looks great. I’m running a Teable instance, but sometimes it feels like it is “too much” sometimes.
I think I’ll deploy this for fun to check out. I don’t see anything specific here for things like gift ideas or favorite flowers/colors? Like custom tags/categories/attributes.
I’m using Teable to track things like that, but I love the visualization here, reminds me of my obsidian mind map lol.
Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to keep it simple, so I just added a single notes field for purposes like those. This said, I am also considering adding custom attributes to people to solve these needs that apply to some of the contacts, but not all.
I would appreciate some type of custom attributes, but the notes section works fine as-is, so definitely not a huge “need” IMO.
I have used Monica/other CRMs in the past, but they all felt a bit too corporate or “sales” driven like you said in your OP.
I spun up a quick docker instance in my test environment and I’m using it right now, it’s been quite solid! I do have some confusion with how relationships get applied(from/to in regards to child/parent), but I believe I just need to use it a bit more to get used to the “flow” of how it is supposed to work.
My biggest want/need is being able to select multiple people at once to add to another person, so I guess a “bulk” edit or multi-select. Like adding 10 “child” to one “parent” at once if all of the children have already been created. Or if some logic can be applied where if one parent(dad) has three children, then you add a spouse(mom) to dad, then nametag can auto-add or offer to bulk edit the three children to add the new spouse(mom) as a parent too? Just quicker/better/fluid workflow.
Again, the site as-is is already solid. Just some fine-tuning IMO.
Thank you so much! This is very valuable feedback. I’ll add bulk edits to my to-do list :)
This looks cool, interested to see how this stacks up against Monica & if there are plans for a mobile app
Mobile apps are on the roadmap! I’ll try to actually publish a roadmap at some point.
I only found out about Monica from one of the ADHD communities, and when I looked there has been. No update for almost a year. I thought it might be dead?
That is one of the reasons I started this project. Monica feels too complex for what I need. Also, self hosting it is not very straightforward. And finally, as you mentioned, it seems to be a bit abandoned and outdated.
I like what you’ve got and will give it a go. I’m following a trail that started with an iOS app for helping you keep track of when you last contacted your friends. I couldn’t see that in your screenshots, but it would be a great feature for me at least!
Thank you! Yes, there are reminders for keeping up with your friends, and you can set the frequency you want for each contact. Also, mobile apps are on the roadmap :)
No idea tbh, it seems to have commits from 5 months ago but no new releases
