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Endearist vs Contacts+ (FullContact)
A fair, specific comparison — written so you'd be comfortable if a Contacts+ (FullContact) engineer read it.
Fairness pledge
Contacts+ has a complicated family tree worth untangling honestly. It began as one of Android's best-loved contacts apps; FullContact acquired it in February 2018 and merged its consumer apps under the Contacts+ brand; then in January 2021 FullContact sold Contacts+ to Benchmark Email and pivoted entirely to enterprise identity resolution (FullContact itself now operates as Fideo Intelligence — there is no consumer FullContact app to go back to). What survives is genuinely useful: Contacts+ today is a competent cross-platform address-book utility — syncing up to 5 accounts, deduplicating, scanning business cards, backing up to 25,000 contacts — and it still gets maintained. What it is not, and stopped trying to be after the pivot, is a relationship tool: no reminders to reach out, no notes-driven workflow, no sense of who matters. Different category, honestly stated.
Where your data lives
Contacts+: cloud sync is the product — your address books from up to 5 accounts are mirrored on Contacts+ servers (owned by Benchmark Email, a US email-marketing company, since January 2021) so they can be merged, deduplicated, and synced back. Endearist: your device first — sync optional via your own cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, WebDAV) or Endearist Cloud (EU-hosted), end-to-end encrypted with a key only you hold.
How AI is accessed
Contacts+ has no LLM features — its "smarts" are business-card scanning (100 cards/month on Premium) and duplicate detection, which work fine and quietly. Endearist's AI is opt-in and the app fully works offline without it: bring your own key (GPT, Claude, Gemini), or use Pro Cloud Light (~250 EU-routed actions/mo, €4.99) or Pro Cloud (~600 actions/mo + voice transcription, €9.99).
3-year total cost
Contacts+ Premium: $9.99/month, or $99.99/year on annual billing — roughly €275 over 3 years on the annual plan (monthly billing runs higher; third-party listings quote up to $13.99/month). A free tier exists for basic use. Endearist Pro Lifetime: €69 once. Endearist Pro Cloud Light: €4.99/month (~€180 over 3 years).
What we don't do
We are not an address-book sync engine. Endearist won't merge and write back contacts across 5 accounts, won't scan business cards, and our dedup is a cleanup tool inside your vault — not a continuous sync service keeping Google, Exchange, and iCloud aligned. If your actual problem is address-book chaos across accounts, Contacts+ solves a problem we don't.
Feature matrix
Side-by-side.
| Feature | Endearist | Contacts+ (FullContact) |
|---|---|---|
| Local-first data storage | Yes — your device holds the primary copy. | No — cloud sync is the product; contacts mirror to Contacts+ servers. |
| End-to-end encrypted sync | Yes — AES-256-GCM end to end; the key stays with you. | Transport TLS; the server holds plaintext (it has to, for merge and dedup). |
| Mobile native apps (iOS / Android) | Yes — native Flutter apps on both iOS and Android. | iOS and Android apps. |
| Desktop native apps | Real desktop clients — native for macOS, Windows, and Linux. | Web app (app.contactsplus.com); no native desktop client. |
| AI features | Yes, opt-in: bring your own key (on-device), or Pro Cloud Light (~250 EU-routed actions/mo) or Pro Cloud (~600 actions/mo + voice). | No LLM features — card scanning and dedup are the smarts. |
| Active development & support | In active development, funded by the paid tiers — with a pledged source release if we ever shut down. | Maintained under Benchmark Email since January 2021, with a quiet roadmap — a sync utility now, not a relationship product. |
| Self-host option | Not today — the local store is the desktop app itself. | No. |
| Pricing | Free up to 25 contacts, then your pick: Pro Lifetime €69 once, Pro Cloud Light €4.99/mo, or Pro Cloud €9.99/mo. | Free tier. Premium $9.99/mo (or $99.99/yr); Teams plans. No lifetime. |
| Open source code | Source-release pledge covering shutdown and acquisition. | No — proprietary. |
| Plain-Markdown export | Yes — plain Markdown, readable with no app at all. | vCard / CSV export — solid and standard, but no Markdown. |
| Voice-note transcription | Yes — 60 min/mo on Pro Cloud, or with your own key. | No. |
| Journal / reflection | Yes — a built-in journal with weekly ritual and appreciation prompts. | No — a notes field per contact at most. |
| Relationship depth (how-we-met, pets) | The whole story: how-we-met, pets, custom pronouns, life events, debts, attachments. | Address-book fields only — no how-we-met, life events, or reach-out cadences. |
| Calendar / messenger integrations | Context over sync: read-only calendar (Google/Apple/Outlook) plus manual share-sheet capture from messengers. | Strong multi-account address-book sync (5 accounts on Premium) + business-card scanning; no relationship-context features. |
When to pick Contacts+ (FullContact)
When Contacts+ (FullContact) is the better fit.
If your real problem is that you have five address books — work Google, personal Gmail, iCloud, Exchange, and a drawer full of business cards — and they disagree with each other, Contacts+ is the right tool and we are not. It will merge, deduplicate, sync back, and keep 25,000 contacts aligned across accounts, and the card scanner is genuinely handy at conferences. Pick Contacts+ for address-book hygiene. Just know what you're getting after the 2021 pivot: a maintained utility, not a relationship product — nothing in it will ever remind you to call your oldest friend. Plenty of people sensibly run a contacts utility and a personal CRM side by side.
Switching
Coming from Contacts+ (FullContact)?
Contacts+ is one of the easiest tools in this series to move away from, because clean, standard export is part of its job: in the web app at app.contactsplus.com, select your contacts and choose Export — you get vCard or CSV (Google and Outlook flavors). Endearist imports both via Settings → Import; names, numbers, emails, addresses, and notes land in one step, and any leftover cross-account duplicates get caught by Endearist's dedup. Tags from Contacts+ arrive as labels you can keep or drop. The part you'll build fresh in Endearist is everything Contacts+ never had: per-person cadences, how-we-met, the journal. Keep Contacts+ running if you still want it as your sync layer — the two don't conflict.
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Prices and positioning verified 2026-06-10.
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