Comparison · Andsend vs Dex
Andsend vs Dex: Best Personal CRM for Consulting Firms
A personal CRM for individuals vs the personal CRM built for consulting firms
Quick Verdict
| Use case | Choose Andsend if… | Choose Dex if… |
|---|---|---|
| Team coverage | You want the team's combined network to work as one: warm paths, shared coverage, no siloed contacts. | You manage your personal network as an individual and don't need team coordination. |
| Daily action | You want proactive recommendations based on relationship signals (silence, role changes, milestones), with configurable cadences as the fallback. | You want keep-in-touch reminders on a cadence you set yourself, as the primary model. |
| Setup and free plan | You want a free plan, self-serve setup in minutes and no credit card required. | You want a low-cost personal CRM ($12 to $20/month) with a strong free plan. |
| What you're growing | You're growing a firm's flow of assignments and cross-sells across a team. | You're growing your personal network: MBA connections, investor relationships, professional contacts. |
Dex is built for one person. Andsend is built for the team.
You search for a contact in Dex and find their note: last spoke a year ago. Useful. Except the partner who actually knows them well is using their own Dex, and so is the other partner who met them at a conference last month. Three people on the same team. Three separate contact lists. The relationship is in there somewhere, just not in a form anyone can act on.
It's the shape most consulting firms hit on a personal CRM. Each Dex is well-maintained for the individual; the team's combined network never lives anywhere.
**Dex is a personal CRM, and a good one.** It pulls contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, iCloud, Facebook and Twitter, sends Keep-in-Touch reminders on cadences you configure, runs mobile-first on iOS and Android, and costs $12 to $20 a month. Over 30,000 people use it, mostly MBAs, founders, investors and freelance consultants managing a personal network. For a clean, low-overhead personal contact manager, Dex does the job.
**Andsend is a business development platform built for consulting teams.** It connects to LinkedIn, email and calendar, then helps the team understand which relationships are warming, which are drifting, where the warmest paths exist and what message should be sent next. The team gets clarity without configuring objects, workflow rules or schemas. The system builds itself from existing relationship activity instead of asking every person to manually maintain a CRM record.
**The question for a consulting team isn't whether Dex is good. It is.** The question is whether one person's well-organized contact list compounds across five partners, or stays five separate contact lists that never talk to each other. Dex has a "Rolodex" feature that lets multiple accounts share a contact view and flag potential duplicate outreach, but there is no per-seat pricing, no AI that shows warm paths across the team's combined network, and no role-based visibility controls.
This is why boutique consulting firms that start on Dex eventually need something different. A firm may begin with one partner managing relationships personally. Over time, the firm grows. Now five partners, consultants and BD leads are speaking to prospects, past clients, referral partners and industry contacts. The question shifts from *"Did I remember to follow up?"* to *"Who in our firm knows this person best?"* and *"Are two of us reaching out to the same contact?"* and *"Which client relationships are quietly drifting?"* Dex was built for the first question. Andsend was built for the second set.
What Andsend Does Differently
Andsend is built for one purpose: consulting business development at the team level. Connect LinkedIn, email and calendar, and Andsend tells you who needs attention today, drafts the message in your voice, and shows warm paths across your whole team.
Real team coordination, not a shared view.
Andsend's team model is built ground-up for coordination. It shows the warmest path from your team to any contact you want to reach, prevents duplicate outreach with intelligence, and compounds each person's individual network across the firm. **Coordination, not surveillance.** Each person stays in full control of their own network; the team sees patterns and gaps, never private conversations.
Proactive recommendations, more than just reminders.
Dex's Keep-in-Touch nudges run on cadences you set. Andsend reads signals first (silence that's lasted too long, a role change, a milestone), with configurable cadences as the fallback. The daily action list shows up without you configuring anything first, but you can set cadences per contact or per tag if you want them.
Stay top of mind across many relationships at once.
When a client needs help, either you are the person they think of first, or they call a competitor who is. The job is keeping as many relationships warm at the same time as you can, across the partners, BD leads and consultants who make up your firm. Andsend works for solo consultants too, but the value compounds when the whole team is contributing.
Feature by Feature Comparison
| Feature | Andsend | Dex |
|---|---|---|
| Primary workflow | Generate assignments, cross-sells and referrals for consulting teams | Manage and grow a personal professional network |
| Built for teams | Yes, team coordination is a core product layer | No, personal CRM with a thin shared-contacts add-on ("Rolodex") |
| Team warm-path showing | Yes, automatic. Shows the warmest path from your team to any contact | No |
| Shared team coverage (who has the relationship) | Yes, across all team members | Rolodex shows shared contacts; no per-seat model or warm-path intelligence |
| Daily priority list | Yes, who to reach out to today | No |
| Proactive recommendations | Signal-triggered by default (silence, role change, milestone); configurable cadence per contact or tag as fallback | No signal-triggered recommendations; reminders are configured by the user (Keep-in-Touch cadences) |
| AI-drafted messages in your voice | Yes, grounded in conversation history and your tone | Yes (AI Messaging Assistant, generates warm messages) |
| Relationship states | Yes: Inner, Active, Drifting and Cold | No |
| Drift detection (automatic) | Yes | No (cadence reminders, user-configured) |
| Keep-in-touch reminders | Signal-triggered, with configurable cadence per contact or tag as fallback | Yes, user-configured cadence (a core Dex feature) |
| Setup time | Minutes, self-serve | Minutes, self-serve |
| Free plan | Yes, free forever, no credit card | Yes |
| Email sync | Yes, Gmail and Outlook | Yes (Gmail, iCloud) |
| LinkedIn support | Yes (unified threads, native drafts) | Yes (LinkedIn sync; up to 9,000 connections on Professional) |
| Mobile app | Yes (iOS and Android) | Yes (iOS and Android, mobile-first product design) |
| Social-graph breadth | Business-relationship focused (LinkedIn, email, calendar) | Broader personal social graph (Facebook, iCloud, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail) |
| Privacy framing | Team sees patterns and gaps, not messages. Private conversations stay private | "Built to be private", no third-party data sales |
| Custom data model / fields | No (by design) | Notes, tags, custom fields per contact |
| Per-seat team pricing | Yes (Pro and Team plans) | No per-seat pricing |
| Consulting-firm buyer | Yes, the named buyer | No, individual buyer |
Results
Trusted by consulting firms
500+ leaders use Andsend.
“We doubled our interim revenue last year, and a big part of that was becoming systematic about the relationships we already had. I speak with so many HR leaders that without a system, follow-ups slip, and people drift. Andsend gives me the structure to stay top of mind with the right contacts, at the right time, in a way that still feels personal.”
Sofie König
Partner/Owner, Stardust Consulting
“Every quarter we used to map our consultants' LinkedIn networks to see how well we covered key accounts and where we had warm introductions. Today, Andsend does that continuously for us. It's a living overview of our relationships, who's moved, who's new, and where we need to act, so no important connection goes cold.”
Patrik Hallén
Partner, Andersen Consulting
Where Andsend Wins vs Dex
Built for consulting teams, not just personal networking
Dex's audience is individuals: MBA students, founders, investors, job seekers, solo consultants managing a personal network. The product shape reflects that: a personal contact list, individual pricing, no firm-level value case. Andsend's named buyer is the partner or BD lead at a consulting firm who needs the team's combined network to produce a steady flow of assignments. That is a different product and a different problem. **The question Dex answers:** "Who in my personal network should I reconnect with?" **The question Andsend answers:** "Which relationships across my firm need attention today, and who on my team is the warmest path to that target client?"
Warm paths shown across the team
Dex's Rolodex feature lets multiple people share a contact view and flag potential duplicate outreach. That is useful. **It is not a team coordination system.** Andsend shows every person on your team who has the warmest connection to any firm, person or account you want to reach. It prevents duplicate outreach before it happens. It compounds every individual's network across the team so the firm's collective reach grows as a unit.
Proactive recommendations, more than just reminders
Dex's Keep-in-Touch feature is one of the cleanest implementations of cadence-based follow-up. You configure a cadence, and Dex reminds you when the time comes. Andsend has configurable cadences too (per contact or per tag), but they're the fallback. Signals lead: silence that's lasted too long, a role change at a key account, a milestone worth mentioning. The system shows who needs attention now, before any cadence timer would have flagged it. The difference is the difference between a calendar reminder and a colleague who notices something and flags it for you.
See which silences matter
Andsend watches which relationships are cooling and tells you who to reach out to before they go quiet. It reads silence (someone you haven't spoken to in months), role changes (a contact who just moved to a new firm), and milestones, then puts them on today's priority list. Dex keeps a contact history per person but does not tell you whether that silence is normal or a warning sign. You see the list of contacts; Andsend tells you which silences matter.
AI-drafted messages in your voice
Andsend drafts a message in your voice, grounded in your actual history with that person; you review it and send directly from Andsend, on LinkedIn or email. The reply lands back in the same unified thread. Every interaction becomes context for the next recommendation, so the system gets sharper as you use it. Dex has an AI Messaging Assistant that generates warm messages from templates. Both help reduce the manual work of follow-up; Andsend's is built around your actual conversation history, Dex's is built around template generation.
Coordination, not surveillance
Andsend's team layer shows patterns and gaps (warm paths, coverage, who has the strongest connection to which target account) without exposing any private conversations. Each person chooses what to share, and messages stay private. The upside is mutual: intros, cross-sells, and coordinated focus on the accounts that matter most. The result is a team that contributes because contributing is worth it, not because anyone is forced to surrender their network.
Where Dex Wins vs Andsend
Solo pricing
For a single professional, Dex is cheaper. $12 to $20 per month vs. Andsend Pro at €49 per month. If you are not buying for a team, the economics favor Dex clearly.
Broader personal social-graph syncs
Dex pulls in Facebook, iCloud, Twitter, LinkedIn and Gmail. Andsend is focused on business relationships: LinkedIn, email and calendar. If your personal network extends meaningfully across consumer social platforms, Dex covers more of it.
Mobile-first product design
Both Andsend and Dex have iOS and Android apps. Dex is designed to be used primarily from a phone. If you want a tool you manage almost entirely from your phone, Dex's mobile experience is more intentionally centered there.
Cadence-first by design
Dex's whole product is built around the cadence-and-reminder model: you set the rhythm per contact, Dex follows it. Andsend has configurable cadences too (per contact or per tag) as a fallback, but the primary surface is signal-triggered. If you want a tool where the user-set cadence is the central interaction model rather than a backup, Dex's approach is the more committed fit.
Privacy framing for individuals
Dex's "Built to be private" message is aimed at individuals who don't want their personal contact data sold or shared. Andsend's privacy story ("Coordination, not surveillance") is about team dynamics: private conversations stay private, the team only sees patterns and gaps, not messages. Both lead with privacy. The framing is different because the audience is different.
Andsend vs Dex Pricing
Dex is priced for individuals; Andsend is priced per seat for teams. A solo professional pays $12 to $20/month on Dex vs. €49/month on Andsend Pro. For a 3-person team, Dex Professional totals around $60/month (~$720/year), but the team gets no shared coordination, no warm-path showing and no per-seat model designed for firm-level BD. Andsend Team at €129/user/month runs about €387/month (~€4,650/year on monthly billing, or ~€3,240/year on annual) and adds all of that. Both products have a free plan; the number on the invoice is not the comparison. It's what each plan actually delivers for a team that needs to coordinate.
| Plan | Andsend | Dex |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes, free forever, no credit card | Yes (free plan available) |
| Public pricing | Yes (Free / Pro / Team) | Yes ($12 Premium / $20 Professional per individual) |
| Entry paid tier | Andsend Pro: €49/user/month or €34/user/month annually | Dex Premium: $12/month per individual |
| Top individual tier | (Andsend Pro covers individuals) | Dex Professional: $20/month per individual |
| Team plan | Andsend Team: €129/user/month or €90/user/month annually | None (no per-seat team plan) |
| Per-seat team model | Yes | No |
| Billing model | Monthly or annual (annual ~30% off) | Monthly |
Who's it for?
Find the right fit for your team
Who Should Choose Andsend?
- Consulting firms, advisory firms and fractional executives whose growth depends on the team's combined network.
- Partners who want proactive relationship intelligence without configuring reminders or logging tasks first.
- Teams that want warm-path showing across every person's network, without building a shared spreadsheet.
- BD leads who need to see which relationships are drifting before they go quiet.
- Firms that want self-serve setup in minutes, a free plan and a tool that works alongside an existing CRM.
Who Should Choose Dex?
- Solo professionals (founders, investors, MBA graduates, freelancers) who want a clean personal contact manager.
- Individuals who manage their network primarily from a mobile device and want a mobile-first product.
- People who want keep-in-touch reminders on a cadence they control, at a low price point.
- Anyone whose network spans personal social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, iCloud) as well as LinkedIn.
- People who are not yet buying for a team and want the lightest-overhead option.
FAQ
The next step when one partner becomes a team
Dex is a good personal CRM. Andsend is what you need when the whole team's network has to work together. See who's drifting, find the warmest path to any firm you want to reach, and draft the message in your voice.
Start with the relationships you already have.
Andsend connects LinkedIn, email and calendar, then shows your team who needs attention today, drafts the message in your voice, and helps you send. Andsend prepares. You decide.
