Monica CRM on a VPS: Self-Hosted Personal Relationship Manager for Life’s Important Connections
Monica is an open-source personal CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) — but for your personal life. It helps you remember important things about your friends, family, and professional contacts: birthdays, how you met, kids’ names, job changes, conversation history, and follow-up reminders. Monica Cloud starts at $9/month. Self-hosting on a VPS keeps your personal relationship data completely private.
What Monica Tracks
- Contacts: Complete profiles with relationships, partners, children, pets
- Journal: Log interactions (“Had coffee with Alice, she’s interviewing at Google”)
- Activities: Track activities with contacts (dinners, calls, meetings)
- Reminders: Birthdays, follow-ups, recurring check-ins via email
- Notes: Long-form notes attached to contacts
- Tasks: To-dos related to specific contacts
- Gifts: Gift ideas and gift history per contact
- Conversations: Log phone calls, emails, texts with topics discussed
Step 1: Docker Compose Setup
<code">mkdir -p /opt/monica && cd /opt/monica nano docker-compose.yml
<code">version: '3.8'
services:
monica:
image: monica:latest
container_name: monica
restart: always
ports:
- "127.0.0.1:8080:80"
environment:
APP_KEY: ${APP_KEY}
APP_URL: https://monica.yourdomain.com
APP_ENV: production
DB_HOST: monica-db
DB_DATABASE: monica
DB_USERNAME: monica
DB_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
MAIL_MAILER: smtp
MAIL_HOST: smtp.mailgun.org
MAIL_PORT: 587
MAIL_USERNAME: postmaster@mg.yourdomain.com
MAIL_PASSWORD: ${SMTP_PASSWORD}
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS: monica@yourdomain.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME: Monica
CHECK_VERSION: "false"
volumes:
- monica_storage:/var/www/html/storage
depends_on:
monica-db:
condition: service_healthy
monica-db:
image: mariadb:11
container_name: monica-db
restart: always
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: monica
MYSQL_USER: monica
MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: "yes"
volumes:
- monica_db:/var/lib/mysql
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "healthcheck.sh", "--connect", "--innodb_initialized"]
interval: 10s
timeout: 5s
retries: 5
volumes:
monica_storage:
monica_db:
<code">cat > .env << 'EOF' APP_KEY=base64:$(openssl rand -base64 32) DB_PASSWORD=StrongMonicaDbPassword! SMTP_PASSWORD=your_mailgun_password EOF chmod 600 .env # Generate proper APP_KEY: docker run --rm monica:latest php artisan key:generate --show # Copy the output and update APP_KEY in .env docker compose up -d
Step 2: Nginx Reverse Proxy
<code">sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/monica
<code">server {
listen 443 ssl http2;
server_name monica.yourdomain.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/monica.yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/monica.yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
}
<code">sudo certbot --nginx -d monica.yourdomain.com sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/monica /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ sudo systemctl reload nginx
Step 3: Create Account and Import Contacts
- Visit
https://monica.yourdomain.com - Register your account
- Import contacts from vCard: Settings → Import → VCF file (export from iPhone, Google Contacts, etc.)
- Or add contacts manually: Contacts → Add
Step 4: Set Up Reminders and Email
<code"># Email reminders require SMTP configuration (done in docker-compose.yml)
# Verify email works:
docker exec monica php artisan monica:sendreminders --dry-run
# Types of automatic reminders:
# - Birthday reminders (3 days before, 1 day before)
# - "Stay in touch" reminders (set per contact: remind me every 3 months)
# - Custom date reminders
# Schedule cron for reminder processing:
docker exec monica php artisan schedule:run
# Or add to host cron:
echo "* * * * * docker exec monica php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1" | \
sudo crontab -
Step 5: Using Monica Effectively
<code"># Workflow example: # 1. Meet someone at a conference: # Contact → Add → Sarah Chen # Tags: conference, ML, potential-collaborator # Note: "Met at PyCon 2025, works on NLP at Anthropic, loves hiking" # How we met: PyCon 2025 # 2. Add a follow-up reminder: # Contact → Sarah → Reminders → Add # "Follow up about ML paper collaboration" # Remind me: 2 weeks from now # 3. Log the interaction: # Contact → Sarah → Conversations → Add # Date: 2025-05-15, Channel: Conference # Topics: "Discussed potential collaboration on NLP project" # 4. Monthly review (Monica's "Stay in touch" feature): # Dashboard shows: "You haven't contacted Sarah in 2 months" # → Log a call → Update → Snooze reminder
Step 6: API Access
<code"># Monica has a REST API for integration with other tools
# Settings → API → Generate personal access token
# Get all contacts:
curl https://monica.yourdomain.com/api/contacts \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" | python3 -m json.tool
# Create a contact:
curl -X POST https://monica.yourdomain.com/api/contacts \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"first_name": "John", "last_name": "Smith"}'
# Add a reminder:
curl -X POST https://monica.yourdomain.com/api/reminders \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"contact_id": 123,
"title": "Follow up about job offer",
"initial_date": "2025-06-01",
"frequency_type": "one_time"
}'
Getting Started
Monica with MariaDB uses 200–400 MB RAM — it runs alongside other services on a 1 GB Ubuntu VPS at VPS.DO. Your personal relationship data — who you know, what you’ve talked about, personal details friends have shared — is highly sensitive and ideally should not live in a commercial CRM. Self-hosted Monica keeps this data under your control with no advertising targeting, no data mining, and no service discontinuation risk.
Conclusion
Monica CRM brings systematic, intentional relationship management to personal life — remembering names, birthdays, conversation history, and follow-up reminders so you can maintain meaningful connections without relying on fragmented notes in different apps. Self-hosted on a VPS, your personal network data stays completely private. For professionals and individuals who want to invest deliberately in relationships, Monica provides the structure that memory alone can’t reliably maintain.
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