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Struggling to stay organized with all of your business contacts? These mobile apps for the iPhone can help.
When you attend a conference or client meeting, you likely collect several business cards from all the new people you meet. But what happens next? In the old days, such cards were meticulously filed or placed in a handy Rolodex. Today, even more efficiently, automated contact managers readily available through the App Store can import and organize all your contacts directly on your iPhone. Below is our list of the best iPhone apps for storing and managing your business contacts.
A contact management app is a program on your mobile device that stores, filters, categorizes and updates contact information for the people in your life. Although iPhones come with a built-in contact app, a third-party vendor’s downloadable contact management app can provide you with many more features than you’d get with the default application.
Along with several other benefits, downloading a special iPhone app to house your business contacts can make networking easier by helping you organize hundreds of contacts. Here’s our roundup of the best iPhone contact apps that help you organize your contacts, make new connections and and grow your professional network.
Source: Apple App Store
CamCard is among the best contact apps for the iPhone, thanks to its ability to easily transform paper cards into digital contacts. Swapping business cards is a time-tested way to introduce yourself to a new business contact, but in the age of the smartphone, it may not be enough. Paper cards are easy to lose, and typing all that contact information into your phone’s address book is tedious and time-consuming.
With CamCard, you can simply point your iPhone camera at a business card and snap a photo. The app’s optical character recognition software pulls out the key details, including the person’s name, phone number, email address and company name, and updates your address book automatically with the new information. The basic app is free and ad-supported. For multi-device support, the ability for CamCard to scan cards on your behalf and VIP recognition, you’ll need a premium account for $8.49 per month, or $46.99 per year.
Source: Apple App Store
Sync.ME bills itself as a caller ID and spam blocker. It identifies incoming calls and warns you if one is from a known spammer. Also, it connects your contact’s picture on Facebook or Twitter in case you forget that person’s name. You can easily look up missed call numbers in a database of more than 1 billion numbers.
Sync.ME is a great contact app for businesspeople and entrepreneurs who can’t waste time with bogus incoming calls. Access to the app’s basic features is free. Starting at $2.99 per month or $9.99 per year for the premium version, you get extra features, such as the ability to merge duplicate contacts, create backups and do background syncing.
Source: Apple App Store
Artificial intelligence (AI) can do so much to make your business more efficient and dynamic, including keeping track of your contacts on your phone. Cloze is one of the best contact apps if you have many information sources and seek a single way to consolidate all the data available about each contact and your interaction with them.
Cloze compiles information from your other apps – like RingCentral, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Slack, Exchange, iCloud, Evernote, OneNote and DocuSign – to create a single composite profile for each of your contacts. Cloze also creates a file that includes your email communications, calls, files and social messages. It even reminds you to rekindle fading relationships with clients. Cloze has a free basic version as well as Pro versions starting at $17 per month when billed annually. [See the best Slack apps for business.]
Source: Apple App Store
Like the best business card scanners, you can use CircleBack to scan business cards and save them as contacts. This app uses AI and crowd-based intelligence to automate contact management and keep job titles up to date. It’s also excellent at consolidating information.
CircleBack removes duplicates and discovers new contacts in your Google and Microsoft Exchange inboxes. It also syncs them across multiple platforms, including Salesforce, Facebook and Gmail. CircleBack allows you to group contacts by favorites and business card scans. On top of all these features, this app is free. [Check out our review of Salesforce CRM.]
Source: Apple App Store
Contacts+ (previously called FullContact) is a digital address book that syncs multiple types of accounts and platforms, including iOS, Mac and PC devices. You can use it to combine Google Contacts, your phone’s address book and social media profiles. You can scan and save business cards while the app backs up all information to the cloud.
Contacts+ features an option for contact enrichment in which the app will automatically fill out your contacts’ profiles with information it finds on the web. You can also attach notes to contacts so you remember important details for the next time you connect with that client or vendor. Contacts+ has a basic version that allows you to scan and sync 1,000 contacts and manage one address book. A premium option, starting at $8.33 per month, is available for managing more than 25,000 contacts per year and syncing up to five address books.
Source: Apple App Store
A2Z Contacts is an intuitive, all-in-one contact manager that sorts your contacts into different groups for quick browsing and access. You can access contacts from iCloud, CardDAV, Facebook, Exchange and your mobile device. Creating a group lets you send group messages via email, iMessage, SMS and WhatsApp.
Other standout features include a favorites list that gives you quick access to the contacts you call or message the most. You can even clone contacts and groups to create new groups without having to manually add members. A2Z Contacts can also remind you about your contacts’ birthdays and anniversaries. The app has a free version as well as a premium version starting at $0.99 per year that offers unrestricted messaging and sharing options.
Source: Apple App Store
If you’re an avid user of Google on your iPhone but find it hard to keep Gmail and iPhone contacts accurate and consistent, Contacts Sync Pro is an excellent iPhone app that can sync your contacts from both sources. This two-way sync functionality keeps contacts on both platforms updated, regardless of which one you use to edit or add contacts.
If the app finds duplicate contacts during the initial sync, the program alerts you so you can merge them or delete one. Use it to back up your iPhone contacts to Gmail, sync iCloud or Exchange contacts with Gmail, or perform syncs in one direction, such as Gmail to iPhone. Contacts Sync Pro, formerly known as Synctastic, has automatic 24/7 syncing so your contact list is consistent across your favorite apps. The app is priced at $7.99.
For salespeople, entrepreneurs, business owners and marketers, the best contact management apps help you collect new contacts in an organized manner. They also help you manage your contacts so you can search for and reach the right people quickly. These apps make it easy to keep information updated and track people in a more efficient and effective way.
The best iPhone contact managers can track both personal and professional information, like a person’s business specialties, job classifications, work anniversaries and family details. They can also merge duplicates and let you search for individual contacts.
If you’re tracking hundreds of contacts, you need a powerful contacts app with data-tracking capabilities that can handle your voluminous network. However, adding a specialized contacts app to your iPhone doesn’t necessarily mean you have to remove the default one that comes with your device. You can continue to use Apple’s Contacts as your personal phone book, or you can ignore it or delete it from your phone.
Common pro-level contact management apps can automatically scan the information on a business card and convert it into digital format. Many apps have AI features as well. These tools allow an app to recognize and pull together contact information from different sources, such as social media accounts, other contact managers and the cloud.
Many apps also have syncing abilities that ensure all information is up to date so that when a contact switches jobs or changes their location or phone number, you can reach them. Some apps even act as scam call blockers and facilitate caller ID, or let you group contacts together for simultaneous messaging.
Using a third-party iPhone app to organize your contacts can ensure you’re not missing out on a potential business opportunity because of a lost business card. To maximize the benefits of a business contact app, scan business cards into your app as soon as you get them. Instead of writing a phone number on a piece of paper, add it to your app right away so you can easily find it later. With a powerful contact app on your iPhone, managing your business network will be easier than ever.
Shayna Waltower and Andreas Rivera contributed to the writing and research in this article.