A step-by-step guide to setting up your account, importing your contacts, and making the most of Good Contact's features.
Go from zero to a fully managed contact list in five minutes. No need to edit hundreds of contacts one by one.
The idea is simple: import everything, activate what matters, apply settings in bulk, then refine individual contacts later as reminders come up.
Why this works: Instead of spending hours editing contacts individually before you start, you get a working system in minutes. The reminders themselves become your trigger to enrich each contact's details at a natural pace.
Get started in just a few minutes.
When you first open Good Contact, you'll be guided through a simple onboarding process to set up your account.
Important: If you forget your passphrase and don't have access to iCloud Keychain, your encrypted data cannot be recovered. We recommend writing your passphrase down and storing it in a safe place.
Bring your existing contacts into Good Contact.
Good Contact supports multiple ways to import your contacts so you can get up and running quickly.
When importing from a .vcf file, Good Contact imports: first name, last name, company, job title, phone numbers (with type: mobile, work, home), and email addresses (with type: personal, work).
For CSV files, Good Contact recognises these column headers (case-insensitive): First Name, Last Name, Relationship, Company, Job Title, Email, Phone, and Notes. Alternative column names such as "Given Name", "Surname", or "Organization" are also accepted.
If you just want to pull in your Apple Contacts once without setting up ongoing sync, you can use the one-off sync button in Settings.
This is a great option if you want to bring in your existing contacts as a starting point without keeping the two apps continuously linked.
Premium users can enable bidirectional Apple Contacts sync from Settings → Contacts Auto-Sync. Unlike the one-off sync above, this continuously syncs contacts between Good Contact and your device's Contacts app. New Apple contacts are automatically imported into Good Contact, and basic contact details (name, company, phone, email) are synced back to matching Apple Contacts.
Tip: After importing, all contacts start as Inactive. This lets you review them first, then activate the ones you want to manage. See the next section for how Active and Inactive contacts work.
Focus on the relationships that matter most.
Every contact in Good Contact has a status: Active or Inactive. This is a key concept that helps you focus your networking efforts.
| Active | Inactive | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Contacts you're actively managing | Imported, archived, or on-hold contacts |
| Dashboard | Included in metrics and insights | Not shown in analytics |
| Reminders | Can set reminders and engagement plans | No reminders or engagement plans |
| Free tier limit | Up to 10 active contacts | Unlimited |
You can change the status of multiple contacts at once using batch operations. See Section 5: Batch Operations below.
Tip: On the free plan, you can have up to 10 active contacts with unlimited inactive contacts. Upgrade to Premium for unlimited active contacts.
Create new contacts with all the details you need.
To add a new contact, tap the + button in the toolbar.
You can also add:
Tip: Adding a birthday or anniversary automatically creates a yearly recurring reminder so you never forget an important date.
Make changes to multiple contacts at once.
Batch operations let you update many contacts in a single action — perfect after a large import or when reorganising your contacts.
Once you've selected your contacts, tap Edit Selected to open the batch editor. You can:
Set all selected contacts to Active or Inactive. If you're on the free plan and try to activate more than 10 contacts, the app will let you know how many slots are available.
Set the relationship type for all selected contacts: Professional, Colleague, Family, or Friend.
Add one or more tags to all selected contacts. This is additive — existing tags are kept, and the new tags are added on top.
Create staggered recurring reminders for all selected contacts. Choose a start date, interval (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly), and a stagger period (days between each contact's first reminder). This prevents all reminders from landing on the same day.
Example workflow: After importing 50 contacts from a CSV, select all of them, use batch edit to set their relationship type to "Professional", add a tag like "Conference 2026", and activate the ones you want to focus on.
Organise and filter your contacts your way.
Tags are custom labels you can add to any contact. They're a flexible way to categorise your network beyond the built-in relationship types.
Use tags however you like. Some ideas:
Tags are fully searchable. Type a tag name in the search bar to instantly filter your contacts list.
You can add tags to multiple contacts at once using batch operations. Select your contacts, open the batch editor, and add tags — they'll be applied to all selected contacts without removing any existing tags.
↑ Back to topNever forget to reach out.
Reminders help you stay on top of your relationships by prompting you to reach out at the right time.
Premium users can set reminders to repeat automatically. When creating or editing a reminder, toggle on Recurring and choose an interval: Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, Biannual, or Yearly. You can also set an optional end date.
When you complete a recurring reminder, the next one is automatically created for you.
When it's time to act on a reminder:
Meeting, coffee, and meal reminders can sync to your Apple Calendar. When enabled, a calendar event is created automatically, and a scheduling reminder is set 7 days before the meeting to help you prepare.
Tip: Your reminders are organised into Overdue, Today, and Upcoming sections so you can always see what needs attention first.
Structured plans to build and deepen your relationships.
Engagement Plans are structured, multi-step relationship programs that automatically create 8 reminders spaced over 12 months. They take the guesswork out of maintaining important relationships.
Designed for new or developing relationships. Activities are tailored to your relationship type — for example, professional contacts might include follow-up emails, sharing relevant articles, and coffee meetings, while family contacts might include regular calls, sharing photos, and planning family meals.
For established relationships you want to strengthen. Activities focus on quality time, deeper conversations, celebrating milestones, and creating shared experiences.
The plan creates 8 reminders spread across the year. As you complete each one, your progress is tracked with a visual progress bar on the contact's detail page.
You can fully customise the activities and schedule for any plan. If you create a plan you particularly like, you can save it as a template to reuse with other contacts of the same relationship type.
Tip: If you're creating engagement plans for multiple contacts, the stagger feature ensures their reminders don't all land on the same days, keeping your outreach manageable.
