Multiplayer Address Book?

January 26, 2022 5:02 PM

What's the state-of-the-art in address book sharing solutions, for family/home use? There's gotta be something better than a shared Google Sheet without installing a whole CRM system… right?

I'm trying to find some solution for sharing an address book between members of a family. Right now, we just use a shared Google Sheet with columns for firstname, lastname, phone, address, etc. This works okay but it's not great—no integration or syncing with my phone's address book or my computer's, it's pretty clunky to update on mobile, there's no easy way to share a single contact (as a VCF or whatever) with other people... it's constantly out of date and it feels like a hack (and it is).

Ideally, I'd like something like an Outlook GAL, but without, you know, running a whole Exchange server. Or maybe like Google's enterprise shared address book features, but that works with my regular Gmail address and account. (Not super interested in migrating my personal Gmail onto a custom domain just to get the address book functionality, although I guess if that's the best thing that exists, it's not out of the question.)

I'm fine with installing an additional app on each of our phones and computers, but I definitely want some level of integration with built-in address books on MacOS, iOS, Android, and Google.

I'm also fine with paying money for this, either for the backend server component or for each client, and I'm even reluctantly open to a subscription service (although I'd rather pay more now than subscribe to something forever and have my data hostage).

It seems like this is a fairly common problem, but there aren't any great solutions? I'm hoping I'm missing something.

I've read the answers to very similar questions asked in 2004 (heyyy, mathowie!), early 2008, late 2008, and 2013. Of the suggestions given:

• Google Sheets is what we're using right now, and I'm hoping to improve on. Maybe this is a fool's errand.
• Using a dedicated Apple ID and iCloud account for shared contacts seems like a hack, but I guess I'd be willing to try it if would work across both Apple and non-Apple devices/accounts (in particular, syncing with Google Contacts). Moving my partner from Android to iOS isn't happening.
• Blist appears to be dead, and now points to a company offering the "Socrata Data Platform™". Doesn't seem likely to be a fit.
• Running my own LDAP server is not out of the realm of possibility, although LDAP makes my skin crawl (must be an allergy to ASN.1), and I'm unclear how to sync up our existing iCloud/Google address books to LDAP, and what app/frontend would make LDAP easy enough to use and update so that we'd actually use it. Hosted LDAP is apparently a thing, and doesn't seem to be outrageously expensive, which seems tempting compared to becoming sysadmin of a publicly-accessible server or having to also stand up and maintain a VPN. But do people use LDAP for contacts management? It seems like the use case it's meant for these days is really systems authentication.
• Highrise seems to be mostly dead, and not accepting new users. Bummer, as it seemed to be recommended a lot.
• Full Contact has seemingly turned into some sort of "identity resolution" enterprise product.
• Plaxo seems dead (at least, its website seems to be down).
• Airset also seems to be dead, and its domain occupied by a squatter that wants to redirect me somewhere that Chrome doesn't want me to go. Not a good sign.
• Keepm—also dead.
• Bebo has turned into an invite-only "online community".
• Return Path got sold off, and is now part of a "powerful email success platform".
• ACT is way into the "whole-ass CRM" side of things, which seems like serious overkill. I'm not looking to automate my digital marketing here, just share a freaking address book between a couple of people. Also, for 2 people it'd be $24/mo, which is pretty steep for something I'd like to set up and essentially forget about for the next decade or so.
• SilverOrange's Intranet got a shout-out in 2004, but has anyone used it since? Can you integrate it with modern phone contacts?
• Turba, which is part of the open source Horde Project, seems like it might be a reasonable front-end to LDAP... maybe? Has anyone actually used it in a modern cross-platform environment? It looks like installing it is probably a solid day's project, so it'd be nice to know what I'm getting before investing the time.
• Movable Type, MediaWiki, etc. which were variously suggested in years past, seem like they're not really well-suited to contacts, won't interface with anything, and aren't markedly better than a shared spreadsheet.

The only thing I've found in my own searching is Contacts+, which seems like it might work, although $10/user/month adds up over time. But if that's the best-of-breed, I'll suck it up.

Anybody have anything that works well for them? Is everyone just using Google Sheets these days?

posted by Kadin2048 to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: Shared Contacts Manager will let you share contacts between multiple Google accounts, including free Gmail accounts and is cheaper than any of the other options you list here (and cheaper than paying for Google Apps for your Domain), but would require you to all use Google contacts or sync your Apple contacts to Google.
posted by ssg at 5:33 PM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've been hunting for this for years, as well. In the end, we use a shared google sheet and manually update. It's not great, but I haven't found anything better.

I did just get an email via minted from a friend getting married that asked us to update our mailing address, so it seems like they might have some address book built into their system. I can't speak to whether or not the data can be extracted for your own mailing, but I'd bet you're locked into using their mailing services with those addresses in your minted address book.

When doing some searching for this kind of thing in the past (and also looking for a way to track membership of an organization I volunteer with) I found a subset of CRM software that is aimed at churches and are less sales-driven than other CRM software I've seen. Here's one open source one, but there seem to be many more.

I have no experience with that one or any other church CRMs (I am not religious at all), but the thing that appeals to me about those for a personal address book is that they seem geared toward tracking family relationships and info.
posted by msbrauer at 6:34 AM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]