Overview
Mix (14 tools)
- License: 9 open source · 5 proprietary
- Hosting: 7 self-hosted · 5 SaaS · 2 both
Contact-management tools store and organise people – names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, organisations, and the notes and relationships around them. This category covers the tools whose primary job is the address book, split across three shapes:
- Personal-CRM / contact apps – standalone web apps you log into to manage people, notes, reminders, and interaction history (Monica, Nextcloud Contacts).
- CardDAV / address-book servers – headless servers that store vCard contacts and sync them to phones and mail clients over the open CardDAV protocol (Baïkal, Radicale, DAViCal, Xandikos).
- Groupware with a contacts module – suites where a shared address book ships alongside mail and calendar (SOGo, grommunio, EGroupware).
Proprietary SaaS address books (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Fastmail, Contacts+) are evaluated as reference and customer-integration points.
Key Capabilities
- Contact records – structured people/organisation records with multiple emails, phones, and addresses
- vCard import/export – interchange with the vCard (.vcf) standard
- CardDAV sync – open-protocol sync to iOS, Android, Thunderbird, Evolution, and mail clients
- Groups & sharing – labels, lists, shared or team address books, delegation
- Deduplication – merge and clean duplicate contacts across sources
- Relationships & notes – (personal CRM) track how people connect, plus notes, reminders, and history
- API access – REST/JMAP/Graph/People APIs for programmatic contact access
- Self-hosting – run on your own infrastructure with your own backup and retention
Evaluation Criteria
- Deployment – self-hosted (Docker/K8s/direct) vs SaaS-only
- Open standards – CardDAV / vCard support for portable, client-agnostic sync
- Footprint – from a single-binary DAV server to a full groupware suite
- Contact model – flat address book vs relationship/personal-CRM data model
- SSO – native OIDC/SAML/LDAP vs reverse-proxy forward-auth (most DAV servers)
- Multi-user & sharing – per-user books, shared team books, delegation
- API – REST/JMAP/Graph for integration
- Licensing – OSS licence and edition vs proprietary SaaS
Category Boundaries
- CRM / SFA (full sales pipelines, leads, opportunities) are in CRM / SFA. A CRM’s contacts module is a capable address book, but the tool is scoped to sales – so EspoCRM, SuiteCRM, Odoo, etc. live there and are only cross-referenced here.
- Directory services / IdP (authoritative identity, LDAP/AD) are in Directory Services and IAM & Identity Governance (IGA). Those hold accounts; this category holds address books.
- Groupware suites appear here only for their contacts capability; their mail/calendar roles are covered where those categories exist.
About this data & disclaimer
The information on these pages was researched by a combination of human review and large language models. This catalogue serves as a reference for the resources, applications, devices, deployment payloads, and other components that the ResorsIT platform integrates, deploys, and manages. To suggest an addition or correction, please contact us. Prepared by Rhodium Systems Inc., author of the ResorsIT platform — a unified IT operations management platform for IT teams and MSPs that integrates a curated suite of open-source, commercial, and SaaS applications into a single system with shared identity, single sign-on, access control, and a common audit trail. This information is compiled on a best-effort basis: it may be incomplete, contain errors, and become out of date as tools, vendors, licences, and features change. Use this catalogue only as a starting point for your own research, and independently verify and review any tool carefully against your own requirements before relying on it.
Comparison
For a self-hosted contact-management deployment, the open-source options split into three shapes: personal-CRM web apps (Monica, Nextcloud Contacts), CardDAV address-book servers (Baïkal, Radicale, DAViCal, Xandikos), and groupware suites with a contacts module (SOGo, grommunio, EGroupware). Proprietary SaaS (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Fastmail, Contacts+) is included as reference and for customer integration.
Deployment Model
| Tool | License | Self-Hosted | SaaS | Docker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monica | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nextcloud Contacts | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SOGo | GPL-2.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| grommunio | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| EGroupware | GPL-2.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Baïkal | GPL-3.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Radicale | GPL-3.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| DAViCal | GPL-3.0 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Xandikos | GPL-3.0+ | Yes | No | Yes |
| Google Contacts | Proprietary | No | Yes | N/A |
| Outlook Contacts | Proprietary | No | Yes | N/A |
| iCloud Contacts | Proprietary | No | Yes | N/A |
| Fastmail Contacts | Proprietary | No | Yes | N/A |
| Contacts+ | Proprietary | No | Yes | N/A |
Contact Capabilities
| Tool | Shape | CardDAV | vCard | Web UI | Personal-CRM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monica | Personal CRM | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nextcloud Contacts | Address book | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOGo | Groupware | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| grommunio | Groupware | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| EGroupware | Groupware | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Baïkal | DAV server | Yes | Yes | Admin | No |
| Radicale | DAV server | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| DAViCal | DAV server | Yes | Yes | Admin | No |
| Xandikos | DAV server | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Google Contacts | SaaS | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Outlook Contacts | SaaS | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| iCloud Contacts | SaaS | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Fastmail Contacts | SaaS | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Contacts+ | SaaS | No | Yes | Yes | No |
Monica syncs contacts and tasks over CardDAV/CalDAV but its relationship model is richer than plain vCard, hence “Partial”. Outlook and Contacts+ expose contacts through APIs (Graph / their own) rather than open CardDAV.
SSO / Identity
| Tool | OIDC | SAML | LDAP | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monica | No | No | No | Front with Authentik forward-auth |
| Nextcloud Contacts | Plugin | Plugin | Native | Inherits Nextcloud auth |
| SOGo | No | Native | Native | SAML2 + CAS + LDAP |
| grommunio | Native | Plugin | Native | grommunio-web OIDC |
| EGroupware | Plugin | Plugin | Native | Auth backends |
| Baïkal | No | No | No | Basic/Digest; reverse-proxy auth |
| Radicale | No | No | Plugin | htpasswd / LDAP plugin |
| DAViCal | No | No | Native | DB or LDAP auth |
| Xandikos | No | No | No | Reverse-proxy auth |
| Google Contacts | Native | Native | Paid | Google Workspace |
| Outlook Contacts | Native | Native | No | Entra ID |
| iCloud Contacts | No | No | No | Apple ID |
| Fastmail Contacts | No | No | No | Fastmail account |
| Contacts+ | No | Paid | No | SSO on team tiers |
DAV servers generally have no native federated SSO; they authenticate CardDAV clients with per-user credentials and are best fronted by an authenticating reverse proxy (Traefik forward-auth + Authentik) for their browser/admin surfaces.
Choosing a Self-Hosted Contact Manager
For a self-hosted, open-source app that just does contact management, the shortlist splits by how much surface you want to run:
- Nextcloud Contacts – lowest-friction if you already run (or will run) Nextcloud: a real web UI, open CardDAV sync, and it inherits Nextcloud’s OIDC/SAML/LDAP single sign-on. A strong default when a broader Nextcloud footprint is acceptable.
- Monica – if the need is a dedicated contact app with relationship notes, reminders, and interaction history (a light personal/relationship CRM) rather than a full groupware stack. Small Laravel app; it has no native SSO, so pair it with a reverse-proxy for authentication.
- Baïkal – if all you want is a lightweight CardDAV backend to sync one address book to phones and mail clients, with no standalone contact UI.
Groupware suites (SOGo, grommunio, EGroupware) are the right call when contacts must sit alongside shared mail and calendar rather than stand alone.
Tools
14 tools.
Apple iCloud Contacts
Apple’s iCloud address book, syncing contacts across Apple devices and the iCloud web app, with standards-based CardDAV access.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Non-SSO identities
Baïkal
Lightweight self-hosted CalDAV and CardDAV server built on Sabre/DAV with a small web admin; PHP + SQLite or MySQL.
License: GPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: docker, direct · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Non-SSO identities · Local host account · Key-based access
Contacts+
Cloud contact manager (formerly Full Contact / Contacts+) that consolidates, dedupes, and syncs contacts across Google, Microsoft, and mobile.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Non-SSO identities
DAViCal
Long-standing PHP CalDAV and CardDAV server backed by PostgreSQL, with per-principal address books and LDAP authentication.
License: GPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: direct, package, docker · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities · Local host account · Key-based access
EGroupware
Web-based groupware with a full address-book module, CalDAV/CardDAV sync, calendar, mail, and project tools; PHP + SQL, self-hostable.
License: GPL-2.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, direct, package · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities
Fastmail Contacts
Fastmail’s hosted contacts, part of its mail/calendar suite, with open CardDAV and JMAP sync to standard clients.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Non-SSO identities
Google Contacts
Google’s cloud address book, part of Google Workspace/Gmail, with contact sync across Android, web, and CardDAV, plus directory sharing.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Provisioned account · Non-SSO identities
grommunio
Open-source groupware and Exchange/Outlook-compatible server with shared contacts, calendars, and mail; MAPI/HTTP, EAS, CalDAV/CardDAV.
License: AGPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, direct, appliance · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities · Key-based access
Microsoft Outlook Contacts (People)
The People/Contacts experience in Outlook and Microsoft 365, backed by Exchange Online, with Graph API access and Entra ID identity.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Provisioned account · Non-SSO identities
Monica (Personal CRM)
Open-source personal CRM for tracking people, relationships, notes, reminders, and interactions; PHP/Laravel + MySQL, self-hostable.
License: AGPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, direct, saas · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Forward-auth · Vaulted credential · Non-SSO identities
Nextcloud Contacts
Nextcloud’s contacts app: a CardDAV-backed web address book with vCard import/export, groups, and sync to phones and mail clients.
License: AGPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, direct, saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities
Radicale
Small, simple self-hosted CalDAV and CardDAV server in Python; file-system storage, easy to run and back up.
License: GPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: docker, direct, package · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities · Local host account · Key-based access
SOGo
Open-source groupware server with a web address book plus CalDAV/CardDAV and native ActiveSync; strong LDAP integration.
License: GPL-2.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, direct, package · SSO: SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Non-SSO identities
Xandikos
Lightweight CalDAV and CardDAV server that stores data in a Git repository, giving versioned, auditable address books; Python.
License: GPL-3.0-or-later (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: docker, direct, package · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Web App without SSO
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Non-SSO identities · Local host account · Key-based access
