Both are personal CRMs for iOS. Both let you keep notes about the people in your life. But they're built for opposite users — and the honest answer to "which should I pick" depends entirely on how big your relationship circle actually is.
The one-line answer. Dex is built for the networker managing thousands of contacts across LinkedIn, email, and conferences. Weft is built around a small circle of people you actually love.
Dex is venture-funded software (raised $1.5M+ from Bloomberg Beta and others) positioned at the networker. The product surface assumes you have a few hundred to several thousand contacts: a LinkedIn-style timeline, a contact-import pipeline that pulls from LinkedIn / Gmail / Google Contacts, a tagging system (investor, customer, college friend), and a notification system that nudges you to reach out across the entire roster. It's a relationship CRM for someone whose career depends on remembering many people moderately well.
Weft is the opposite shape. It is a single-developer indie iOS app designed around remembering a few people deeply, not many people shallowly. The free tier supports seven people and Premium supports unlimited people. There is no LinkedIn or Contacts import, no timeline of everyone, and no tagging — just notes, threads, and a deliberately short Today list. The mental model is closer to a journal than a Rolodex.
If your career involves remembering hundreds of people well enough — founders, salespeople, recruiters, investors, journalists — Dex is the more mature tool. The automatic LinkedIn enrichment alone is worth the price tag; manually copying a thousand contacts into Weft would be miserable. Dex's web app means you can take notes from a laptop during a Zoom call. The broadcast-style follow-up reminders ("you haven't messaged anyone with the 'investor' tag in a month") fit the networker brain.
If you are that user, install Dex. We're not in competition for you.
If your circle is closer to 15 people than 1,500 — close friends, family, the coworkers who matter, the person you should have texted three weeks ago — Dex starts to feel like a costume. You don't want a CRM for your friends; you want a small, private notebook that helps you remember the small things about people you already love.
That's what Weft is. Manual adds and small-circle design remove the temptation to import everyone, while Premium remains unlimited. The on-device database removes the question "wait, is my private journal about Sarah really in some startup's database?" The journal vocabulary — notes, threads, rhythm instead of contacts, pipeline, engagement — keeps the app from feeling like work. Lock-screen and home-screen widgets surface a few people without the panopticon feeling of a thousand-name timeline.
Weft costs $18.99/year, or $39.99 once for a lifetime purchase. Dex Premium is $12/month and Professional is $20/month, with a discount for annual billing. That's not just a pricing difference; it's a different theory of what the product is. A small studio of one can sustainably charge less — and offer a one-time price — because the surface is smaller.
The two tools answer different questions:
If you're not sure, ask yourself: when I tap on a person, do I want to see their LinkedIn headline and last email, or do I want to see what they were worried about the last time we talked? The first is Dex. The second is Weft.
Try Weft. Free for up to 7 people, forever. No Weft account, no card, no email. Get it on the App Store →