Self-host Monica

CRM

deployed & timed by usprices checked · Aug 2026

Monica is a personal CRM (a PRM, not a business CRM) for tracking relationships with family, friends, and other personal contacts — reminders for birthdays and calls, gift ideas, and a private journal of interactions. It self-hosts via the official Docker image with a MariaDB backend.

Key facts

CategoryCRM

LicenseAGPL-3.0

StackPHP, Laravel, Vue.js

Min RAM1024 MB

Dockeryes

Difficulty

Our recommendation

Monica is a personal CRM (a PRM) for keeping track of relationships with family and friends — birthdays, conversations, gifts — not a business sales tool. It's a fine fit if that's genuinely what you're after; it is not a Salesforce or HubSpot alternative for running a sales pipeline, and shouldn't be treated as one.

What you need

Any VPS with at least 1024 MB of RAM
A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
Under an hour if you've used Docker before

Install with Docker Compose

Save this as compose.yml and run docker compose up -d:

# Monica — official monica:apache image + MariaDB
services:
  app:
    image: monica:apache
    depends_on:
      - db
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      - APP_ENV=production
      - DB_HOST=db
      - DB_DATABASE=monica
      - DB_USERNAME=monica
      - DB_PASSWORD=secret
    volumes:
      - data:/var/www/html/storage
    restart: always
  db:
    image: mariadb:11
    environment:
      - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=true
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=monica
      - MYSQL_USER=monica
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/mysql
    restart: always
volumes:
  data:
  db-data:
# docker compose up -d  →  http://SERVER_IP:8080

vps picksBest VPS for self-hostingbenchmarked quarterly · re-priced monthly

What you take on

Monica's biggest risk isn't a resource number, it's the project's own pace — worth weighing carefully before you rely on it:

non-negotiableNo stable release since May 2024. Monica's v5 rewrite has been in progress for over two years with no shipped stable release as of this writing — a real maintenance-risk flag, not a footnote, and worth checking the project's current status before you commit to it.

non-negotiableIt's a personal CRM, not a business one. Don't reach for Monica if you need a sales pipeline, deal tracking, or team collaboration — it's built for relationship-tracking with the people in your life, and this cluster's business CRMs (Twenty, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM) are the right comparison set for that job.

non-negotiableIt's AGPL-3.0. Network-copyleft terms apply if you modify and offer it as a service — standard caveat for this cluster, worth checking regardless of the project's pace.

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