New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

[robinhood]

Author here. Super happy with this release. It took us 18 months of working on it "side project style". Almost every night and weekends actually. It's a full rewrite of the current project, with its own advantages and disadvantages of a rewrite. I hope people who used it before and didn't like it, will give it another try this time. I hope that current users who love Monica, will love this new version even more.

[KMuncie]

My wife and I tried to use Monica for many months in the past but had to give up because of the incredibly buggy CardDAV implementation when using iOS. Now that this has come out it seems the issue (https://github.com/monicahq/monica/issues/6175) was ignored likely because of all this work.

Have improvements been made with this in the new version?

[setgree]

I just recommended this to a friend who uses a conventional CRM (Salesforce I think) as a personal CRM -- a PRM? (The "C" is no longer relevant)

Question about:

> the feature I’m most proud of is the ability to customize almost everything in Chandler: from the layout, to the modules you can enable, to the data you can enter about your life.

Was this a customer-driven product decision? Based purely on past experience, this seems like the kind of thing that PMs sometimes get very excited about, but then ends up adding a lot of complexity for both developers and users... so I am curious to hear how you thought about the tradeoff :)

[chetangoti]

Congratulations on the Beta and thank you for creating Monica.

It states it(Chandler) does not have Import from existing Monica yet. Just wanted to get clarity on: will it get the Import option in future?

[Semaphor]

Congratz! As someone who installed Monica several times, and always said "I’ll fill it with data eventually" (and often thinks how useful it would be to have it filled…), I want to use this as an opportunity to try once again. What will the upgrade path be for selfhoster for the later versions? Will there be automatic migrations until 1.0?

[jmkni]

Congrats!

Also the name gave me a genuine chuckle

[asbin]

co-author here. Very happy about this new release, thank you for all beta-testing!

[tenebrisalietum]

Want to say thanks! I really like Monica. I haven't upgraded to 4.0.0 yet (waiting for Debian bookworm to release so I can have PHP 8.1 supported).

[ParadisoShlee]

When is the current hosted monicahq going to upgrade to chandler?

[mbreese]

I get the rationale for the new naming, but I find it really funny. It’s not the first personal information software to be named “Chandler”. I’m not going to say the name is cursed, but if you were around for this, you’ll chuckle at the new name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software)

https://www.chandlerproject.org/ (2009)

If you want a great story about a software project, open source, and how to not ship, there is also a really good book about this project called “Dreaming in Code”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreaming_in_Code

[kareemm]

I’ve had “personal CRM” in my ideas file since 2003. In fact, I failed to convince a buddy to apply to the very first YC batch with it.

Love the concept. But I’d love the landing page at beta.monicahq.com to describe what Monica (or in this case Chandler) actually does. A short video, some screenshots, anything… right now it’s not clear to me why I’d click “signup”.

[pelagicAustral]

About that beta page, Man! what the hell is with the light gray text over pale cream color background.

[pocketarc]

I think it's just because that's their "app" login page, where you already know what it does and you already have an account. When I go to login to AWS or Datadog or whatever, the login page doesn't tell me what it does, either.

Like you, though, I've also had "personal CRM" as a potential project for a very long time. Monica is a great step in that direction, and I've happily used it for many years, but it's not all the way there, and I still hope to one day have the resources and time to actually build something truly great.

[blitzar]

https://www.monicahq.com/features like that perhaps?

[anayia]

in the meantime checkout covve.com

[bratao]

I genuinely appreciate Monica, and congrats to the team. However, I've been searching for a native Android app and haven't come across a suitable alternative, as the Monica app has been discontinued.

I'm looking for an app that helps me remember significant dates and details about my acquaintances, provides birthday reminders, and allows me to take notes on them. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[endisneigh]

At least on iOS you can do all of that with the native contacts app

[akam4n4n]

i tried an app called fabriq, it is unpolished but definitely works well.

[sam_goody]

Thanks, I use Monica and it is very helpful.

Q1: Will you be able to upgrade from Monica once this is out of beta? I have a lot of data in a self hosted Monica instance, and can't imagine starting from scratch.

Q2: Are there any plans to make a multi user Monica? I would like to use it with my family, so that some users (such as family members) will be shared and editable by all, and others are private.

Q3: you have had that "Office Life" banner since forever. Is that abandoned? Is it advancing?

[waiyan13]

So when is Ross, Joey and Phoebe?

[anaganisk]

We already have it

Ross is for an app that pretends to love you then constantly cheats on you, kinda like Facebook.

Phoebe: App to feel holier/superior than everyone (TikTok).

Joey: Tinder, don't need descriptions at all.

Rachael: App to show off, Instagram

[franky47]

* Rachel has left the chat *

[Couto]

Definitely interesting, albeit a bit too green to be a beta version imho (I can't select a contact when adding a relationship, added two pets by accident because there was no feedback... e.g).

However, it looks really promising and more feature rich than the current version of Monica.

I do have a question thought. Will this version support WebDav/Cal? Syncing contacts to my mobile phone is the main reason why I use monica on a daily base.

[billyjobob]

Is this a fork of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software) ? (If not, pretty confusing to have two apps that do similar things with the same name.)

[robinhood]

Chandler is a codename. We'll keep Monica for as long as people will want the tool.

[rasulkireev]

It is a temp name. It will become Monica ones ready for prod.

[ryangittins]

Funny, I just checked up on the status of this project yesterday! I've been on the lookout for a personal CRM for a long time and have had my eye on Monica for months.

It looks really promising but I could not for the life of me get it to run in the Docker container last time I tried. I have a dozen or so other Docker containers running without issue, so I don't think it's my setup. Are people reporting better success with Chandler when it comes to containerization? I'd love to use it but have spent too many hours trying to get it to work.

[dromio]

I was just trying this beta out with "docker run -p 8080:80 ghcr.io/monicahq/monica-next:main" and ran it without issue.

What problems did you have?

[PaulHoule]

People often resort to containerization when they've lost control of their dependencies. Containerization is only completely effective when you control your dependencies and if you control your dependencies... You don't need the container.

[Cthulhu_]

I've been interested in software like this, even set up an instance on Heroku the one time (the free tier should be adequate), but it would be a lot of work to import all of your contacts and keep it up to date with e.g. every interaction you have with these people; it's another extra load on top of your life. Great if you're a people person that wants to min/max your social life (e.g. a recruiter, HR, marketeer), but maybe Facebook would be better for the average person.

[ParadisoShlee]

I've been a long term Monica user, and great to hear this project will continue and grow... I'd love to request a few features

[williamhyzhang]

Do you have integrations? Pulling in contacts from CRMs, database, Google sheets, or pushing out to marketing tools would be interesting additions (I guess more geared towards your OfficeLife product rather than a PRM)

[ubermonkey]

Is this name collision, or is Monica somehow related to the previous Chandler?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_%28software%29

[robbs]

Both are characters from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends

[manojlds]

Do you plan to provide Bing integration?

[Mashimo]

Why does it cost 9 USD per month? (Unless you self host)

[blitzar]

How much do you think it should cost? More or less per month? Or maybe annual? Multi currency support?

It is a genuine question.

[unstatusthequo]

Perhaps the author wants to eat and have a beer sometime?

[cornfutes]

Why does Google and Facebook cost $0 USD per month?

[drooopy]

Could you BE any more parsimonious?

(/s)