Seven tools, split by the two jobs the phrase covers: remembering to reach out, and knowing who you already have.
By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.
The short version
The best CRM for networking in 2026 is Happenstance if the job is knowing who you already know, and Dex if the job is being reminded to stay in touch. Two different products answer to the phrase: one kind reminds you to follow up with people you've already listed, the other tells you who you know in the first place. For the reminding, Dex is the strongest of the seven here, with Nimble and folk behind it. For the knowing, Happenstance fills itself from seven connected accounts and answers "who can introduce me to someone at Stripe?" in plain English, free. Only Happenstance and Mesh have a free plan. Dex, folk, Covve, Nimble and Streak sell trials of seven to fourteen days.
Start here
Best for reminders and notes on people you already know:Dex
Best for finding the person you know but can't name:Happenstance
Best no-cost tier you can stay on:Happenstance, then Mesh
Best for a shared list two or three people work from:folk
Best for one plan and no tier arithmetic:Nimble
Best if the CRM has to live inside Gmail:Streak
Best annual discount on a per-seat plan:Covve
If you want to be prompted to follow up, Dex. If you want an answer to who do I know, Happenstance is the one built to give you one.
Five questions that decide it
1. How does it fill itself? This is the question under all the others. A list you type by hand is accurate on the day you type it. A list built from a LinkedIn sync is as complete as the tier you paid for. A list built from your inbox and calendar history includes people you'd never have thought to add, which is exactly the population you're trying to search.
2. Is free a plan or a countdown? Five of the seven here offer nothing permanent without paying. A seven or fourteen day trial is a sales motion rather than a tier, and it changes what happens when you stop using the tool for a month, which is what most people do.
3. Does it answer questions, or only store answers? Most of this category is storage with a good interface. Storage is useful when you know whose name you're looking for. It's useless when the thing you need is a name you never knew you had.
4. Does it remind you, and does it hold notes? If birthdays and check-in cadences are the job, buy a keep-in-touch tool: Dex, or Mesh free. Happenstance is the search half and runs beside one of them.
5. What does it cost when the discount is off? Every ladder carries an annual rate and a month-to-month rate. Vendors quote the annual one; the table below prints both.
The seven, side by side
Networking CRMs compared on best fit, how the list gets filled, free plan, starting price and reminders
Best for
How it fills itself
Free plan and limit
Paid starts at
Reminders
Happenstance
Finding who you know
Seven connected accounts, nothing typed
Yes, the whole product with usage limits
$30/mo, $24 billed yearly
No
Dex
Reminders and notes
LinkedIn sync capped by tier, plus email and calendar
No, seven-day trial
$12/mo
Yes
Mesh
Staying free
Imports from email, calendar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, iMessage
Yes, up to 1,000 people
$10/mo
Yes, plus birthdays
folk
A shared team list
Email, Google Calendar, WhatsApp, LinkedIn via extension
No, two-week trial
$24/mo billed annually, $30 monthly
Follow-up assistant
Nimble
One plan, two or three seats
Microsoft and Google sync of mail, records and calendar
No, 14-day trial
$24.90/seat/mo annual, $29.90 monthly
Sequences and workflows
Covve
An annual discount
Scanning cards, event badges and LinkedIn QR codes
No, 14-day trial
$12/seat/mo, or $119/yr
Not advertised
Streak
Living inside Gmail
Automated email logging inside Gmail
No free CRM plan
$49/user/mo annual, $59 monthly
Tasks and follow-ups
Priced for one person
Three of the seven are sold to an individual at a flat rate. If you are the only person who will ever open the thing, start here.
One person, or a group of them, who wants the network they already have to answer questions.
Where it wins
It fills itself. Connect Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and the list assembles from what already happened, ranked by how well you know each person. Then ask in plain English: who do I know in climate tech, who can introduce me to someone at Stripe, how do I know this person. Groups pool a team's or a community's networks at no cost, and the largest make 380,000+ people searchable.
Pair it with
Dex or Mesh, if you also want reminders and notes per person. Happenstance is the search layer beside them.
Price
Free, and the free plan is the whole product with usage limits on chat and on web searches beyond your network. Pro $30 per month, $24 per month billed yearlyChecked August 2026
Choose it if
the question you keep failing to answer is who do I already know who could help with this. 500,000+ people use it, and email is read as headers only.
Dex: best for being nudged before a relationship goes cold
Best for
One person who wants reminders, notes and a tidy list of the people they already track.
Where it wins
The keep-in-touch loop. Reminders and notes per person are the product rather than a feature of it, and LinkedIn, email, calendar and social accounts sync in so the list isn't entirely typed.
What you give up
Finding anyone. Dex tends a network you already know about; it doesn't rank how well you know people or produce a path to someone you do not. The LinkedIn sync is capped by tier at 2,500, 7,500 and 15,000 connections, and there's no free plan.
Price
Premium $12 a month, Professional $20, Enterprise $40, annual billing 40% less; seven-day trial, no free planChecked August 2026
Consider it only if
you already know who matters and the thing you keep failing at is calling them.
Mesh: best free keep-in-touch plan
Best for
Someone who wants a personal CRM that is still free in the second month.
Where it wins
The permanent tier and the price of leaving it. Personal costs nothing for up to 1,000 people, imports them from email, calendar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and iMessage, and sends reminders and birthday notifications. Pro is $10 a month, the cheapest paid tier here. It was called Clay.earth until 2026.
What you give up
The ceiling. A thousand people is the free cap and Mesh doesn't publish a Pro cap. Team jumps to $40 per seat a month, four times Pro.
Price
Personal free up to 1,000 people; Pro $10 a month; Team $40 per seat a month; Enterprise customChecked August 2026
Consider it only if
you want a personal CRM that fills itself without a subscription, and your working network fits inside 1,000 people.
Priced by the seat
The other four are team products. They will sell to one person, but the pricing tells you who they were designed around, and the per seat rate is what you pay whether or not anyone joins you.
folk: best for a shared list with a pipeline on it
Best for
Two to five people who need to look at the same list and send from it.
Where it wins
Team shape. folk leads with contact management, pipelines, email integration and email campaigns, which is close to the set a small team asks for, and it publishes a full ladder rather than routing you to sales.
What you give up
Free. There's nothing permanent without paying, only a two-week trial, so the tool has to be worth $288 a year from the first month. The campaign features also pull it toward outbound, which is a different job from keeping a network.
Price
No free plan. Standard $30 a month, $24 billed annually; Premium $60, $48 annual; Enterprise from $100; two-week trialChecked August 2026
Consider it only if
more than one of you needs the same list and you want sending built into it.
Nimble: best for buying without reading a feature matrix
Best for
A couple of seats that want one plan and one number.
Where it wins
Simplicity of purchase. Nimble sells a single plan at $24.90 per seat per month billed annually, $29.90 month to month, with a 14-day trial. Nothing sits behind an upgrade, because there's nothing to upgrade to.
What you give up
Depth on this exact question, and a free plan. Nimble is a small-business sales CRM with an address book in front of it, so keeping a network is one job it does among several rather than the thing it is built for, and there is no unpaid tier to test that on.
Price
One plan, $24.90 per seat a month billed annually, $29.90 month to month; 14-day trial, no free planChecked August 2026
Consider it only if
you are buying for two or three people and a single price matters more than a feature list.
Covve: best annual discount in the set
Best for
One person who wants a per-seat personal CRM and pays for a year up front.
Where it wins
A published ladder with a consistent yearly saving: Essential $12 per seat per month or $119 a year, Pro $20 or $199, Business $31 or $299. That's 17% off at the two tiers most people buy, applied evenly rather than only at the top.
What you give up
Free, and the follow-up. There's only a 14-day trial before the meter starts. Covve is event lead capture: it fills from scanned cards, badges and LinkedIn QR codes, and advertises no reconnect reminders.
Price
Essential $12 per seat a month or $119 a year; Pro $20 or $199; Business $31 or $299; 14-day trial, no free planChecked August 2026
Consider it only if
you collect cards at events and pay for a year up front.
Streak: best if the CRM has to be a Gmail tab
Best for
Someone whose working day is Gmail and who wants people and deals in the same window.
Where it wins
Where it lives. Streak is a CRM built into Gmail, with tasks and follow-ups on each thread, and its ladder is per user with a clear annual saving: Pro at $49 against $59 month to month.
What you give up
Price, and free. It's the most expensive tool in this set by a distance, $588 per user per year at the annual rate, and there is no unpaid CRM tier. It is a sales CRM by shape, pointed at people you know.
Price
No free CRM plan. Pro $49 per user a month billed annually, $59 monthly; Pro+ $69 or $89; Enterprise $129 or $159Checked August 2026
Consider it only if
you want the CRM inside the inbox.
Free ways to do the same thing
Google Contacts. It comes with a Google Account at no extra cost, has no plan structure at all, and holds up to 25,000 people or 20 MB. Any card in it'll take a free-text note. What it will never do is remind you of anything: birthdays surface in Google Calendar, not here. As a place to keep the people you have decided matter, it is underrated.
Notion. Free for one person, $10 per member per month on Plus billed yearly, $12 monthly. A person is a database row with a page under it, so notes are excellent and structure is whatever you want. Reminders are date properties you build yourself, and the whole thing is typed by hand. For a network of eighty people you chose deliberately, Notion is the sensible answer.
A spreadsheet. Free, portable, and fine until the week you stop maintaining it. Every paid tool above is really selling you a defense against that week, which is the fair test to hold them to.
Which one is yours
If you want a nudge before a relationship goes cold, buy Dex. Set the cadence, take the reminder, and accept that you are paying $144 a year at the monthly rate for a habit, or $86 if you commit to a year.
If you want to know who can introduce you to someone at Stripe, that's Happenstance. Connect one account and ask. The product page has the mechanics.
Two of you need to look at one list. folk, and budget for the absence of an unpaid tier beneath it.
You want to spend nothing, permanently. Happenstance, or Mesh up to 1,000 people. Everything else here is a trial with a date on it.
You're running a job hunt through this. That's a different set of tools: the best CRMs for a job search covers trackers and referral paths separately.
Your network is your inbox. Start with the best CRMs for Gmail, where the field is Streak, Copper, NetHunt and Salesflare rather than these seven.
which of my connections have raised a seed round in the last year?
Example
Ran 3 searches
8 founders in your network raised a seed round in the last year; five are in fintech.
Example results for “which of my connections have raised a seed round in the last year?”
Person
Thinking
Mutuals
MA
Mateo AlvarezFounder, Ledgerly
LinkedIn post, March: 'Ledgerly closed a $3M seed to build accounting for marketplaces.'
ID
Ingrid DahlCofounder, Sable Health
LinkedIn post, May: 'We raised our seed. Sable is hiring its first engineers.'
RB
Rahul BhattFounder, Quill Robotics
Announced a $4M seed in January; led a robotics team at Tesla 2019 to 2023.
An example of the answer this question returns. The people and the counts are illustrative; what a search returns depends on the accounts each person has connected.The difference between the two halves of this category in one screen: nothing here was typed into a list first.
Prices are from each vendor's own pricing page. Dex plan limits from getdex.com/pricing.
What a tool that fills itself can see
Email is read as headers only. Message content and attachments never reach our servers. Yes. Your connections are searchable only by you, the friends you accept, and the groups you join, and sharing is always mutual. Your public profile shows a constellation of named people you know by default, which you can turn off anytime. We never share, sell, or use your data to train AI models. Happenstance is SOC 2 certified and DTI Trust Level 2; the full list of what is stored and for how long is on the security page.
Frequently asked questions
What's a CRM for networking?
Software for the people you know rather than the people you're selling to. Nobody in it is a lead and there's no quota. The category splits in two: keep-in-touch tools that remind you to follow up with a list you build, and search tools that build the list from your connected accounts and let you ask it questions.
What's the best free CRM for networking?
Happenstance. The free plan is the whole product, with usage limits on chat and on web searches beyond your network, and unlimited connected accounts, friends and groups. Mesh is the other genuine free plan in this set, for up to 1,000 people. Dex, folk, Covve, Nimble and Streak have no free plan, only trials of seven to fourteen days. 500,000+ people use Happenstance.
Is a networking CRM different from a sales CRM?
Yes, in what it is organized around. A sales CRM is organized around deals: stages, forecasts, quotas, sequences. A networking CRM is organized around people you know and want to keep. Several tools in this guide are sales CRMs that people repurpose, which is why folk and Streak have pipelines and Dex does not.
Do I need one if I already have LinkedIn?
LinkedIn holds your connections but won't tell you which of them you know well, and it doesn't see your inbox or your calendar. That's why every tool here either syncs LinkedIn into somewhere you can work, caps that sync by price tier, or reads sources LinkedIn cannot see. If you only ever need a name and a job title, LinkedIn is enough.
Which networking CRMs send reminders?
Dex and Mesh send reminders and birthday nudges, and reminders and notes per person are the product at Dex. folk has a follow-up assistant and Streak has tasks with follow-ups. Nimble runs sequences; Covve advertises none. Happenstance is the search half of the category: it finds the person, and Dex or Mesh reminds you to write.
How much does a CRM for networking cost?
Mesh Pro is $10 a month and Dex Premium is $12. Covve Essential is $12 per seat per month or $119 a year. folk is $24 a month billed annually, $30 month to month. Nimble is one plan at $24.90 per seat per month billed annually, $29.90 monthly. Streak Pro is $49 per user per month billed annually, $59 monthly. Happenstance Pro is $30 a month, $24 a month billed yearly; the free plan is the whole product.
Can a spreadsheet do this?
For fewer than a hundred people, yes, and it's free. What a spreadsheet can't do is fill itself or rank people by how well you know them, so it goes stale the week you stop tending it. That is the test for every paid tool here: does it stay accurate when you stop typing.
What happened to Clay.earth?
It became Mesh in 2026, at me.sh, with a free tier for up to 1,000 people, Pro at $10 a month and Team at $40 per seat. Contactually and Zoowho are dead, and Wave Connect at wavecnct.com sells digital business cards rather than a CRM.
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