wait who? vs Dex: Personal CRM vs LinkedIn Relationship Memory

Dex and wait who? get compared because both promise the same feeling: you stop forgetting people. They get there differently. Dex is a personal CRM that gathers contacts from many places and helps you keep in touch with all of them. wait who? is relationship memory for one place, your LinkedIn network, and tries to tell you who to talk to there and why. Here is how they actually differ, using Dex's own pricing and help pages as of October 25, 2026.

Who each product is for

Dex is for people whose relationships are spread across channels. Its integrations list LinkedIn, Gmail and Google Calendar, Outlook, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook, Instagram, phone contacts and CSV imports, all landing in one timeline per person. It has keep-in-touch reminders by email or push notification, notes, groups and tags, custom fields, a map view, and native apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows as well as the web (getdex.com). If you want one place for every person you know, from your old roommate to your investor, that is what Dex is built for.

wait who? is for people whose working relationships mostly live on LinkedIn: founders, sellers working their own book, consultants, recruiters, people raising a round. It connects to your own LinkedIn account and nothing else. In exchange it goes deeper there: every connection and follower with the real date you connected, who reacted to and commented on your recent posts (with their words), a short daily list of people worth talking to with a reason for each, a drafted first message, and a Clean up tab for the connections you'd let go of.

Side by side

Dex details from getdex.com/pricing, Dex's LinkedIn Sync docs and Dex's LinkedIn FAQ, checked October 25, 2026. Prices are in US dollars as Dex lists them.

Where Dex is the better choice

This part matters, so plainly: for a lot of people Dex is the better tool, and no amount of LinkedIn depth changes that.

• ✓Your relationships don't live on LinkedIn. Friends on WhatsApp, clients over email, family in iMessage: Dex brings them together, and wait who? can't see any of it.
• ✓You want it on your phone. Dex has native iOS and Android apps with push reminders. wait who? is a web app.
• ✓You want a keep-in-touch cadence you control: "every month for this group, every quarter for that one". Dex's reminders are built around exactly that, using your last interaction across channels.
• ✓You want a CRM-like record you shape yourself: custom fields, groups and tags, a timeline of notes. Dex is further along there.
• ✓Price, if you pay annually and your network fits under the cap. Dex Premium at $12 a month billed annually is less than €27 a month.

Where wait who? is the better choice

It fills itself, and all of it. Connect LinkedIn and your whole network comes in on the first sync, connections and followers, with the date you connected with each person. There's no data entry and no cap: if you have 8,000 connections, you get 8,000, not your newest 2,500. On the plan it re-syncs about weekly, which is how job changes show up.

It tells you who to talk to, and why. Instead of reminders on a schedule you set, wait who? gives you a short daily list ranked for what you're working on (raising a round, finding customers, hiring, partnerships, or keeping in touch). Every suggestion carries a reason built from real signals: they commented on your post on Tuesday, they changed jobs last month, you connected four years ago and never said a word. No reason, no suggestion.

It remembers who engaged. People who react to and comment on your posts are the warmest list you have, and LinkedIn's notifications forget them in a day. wait who? keeps them, with what they said, so you can follow up while it still means something.

It drafts the first message. Pick a person and you get an opener that references the actual reason, in your voice. You edit it and press send yourself on LinkedIn. Nothing is ever sent or posted without you.

It helps you prune. The Clean up tab sorts the connections you could let go of into groups with reasons, and protects anyone you've messaged, noted or who engaged. You remove them on LinkedIn yourself; there's a free LinkedIn cleanup checklist if you'd rather do it by hand.

Searching for a Dex alternative?

It helps to know why. If Dex's LinkedIn side is what let you down, for example because your network is bigger than the sync cap or because you wanted suggestions built from LinkedIn activity rather than reminders you configure, wait who? is worth a look: it's free to connect and see your own network before you decide anything. If what you want is a cheaper or simpler general personal CRM across email and phone, look at the other tools in our roundup of personal CRMs for LinkedIn, which covers Dex, Mesh (formerly Clay), folk and Cloze with dated pricing.

The honest bottom line

Choose Dex if you want one personal CRM for every channel, on your phone, with reminders you set. Choose wait who? if your work runs on LinkedIn, your network is big enough that you've lost track of it, and you'd rather be told who to talk to this week than maintain a system. And if both are true, using them together is a perfectly sane setup.