By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

The best Nat app alternative depends on where your next deal starts. Nat is a strong pick if it starts in a Gmail thread you forgot to answer; FRONT OF MIND is the better pick if it starts with a broker, banker or owner you have not texted in months, because it tells you who to reach today and why.

Full disclosure: I built FRONT OF MIND. I will be straight about where Nat wins.

Here is the scene. You get back from a week of diligence. Your inbox has 400 unread. Somewhere in there is an email from a CPA who mentioned, three weeks ago, that a client was thinking about selling. Nat is built to dig that thread out. Now picture a different scene. The CPA never emailed. You met her at a dinner in June, swapped numbers, and nothing since. No thread exists to find. That is the gap this page is about.

What is Nat, and who is it built for?

Nat is a personal CRM that lives on top of Gmail and Google Calendar. Its homepage calls it a “Personal CRM for relationship building” and says it is designed for consultants, company owners and freelancers who value relationships above everything else. (Nat homepage)

According to its site, Nat does four things well:

• Finds the follow ups in your inbox. Its algorithms scan your inbox to surface conversations you still owe a reply.
• One click follow ups. It is built to clear a batch of follow ups in seconds, with you clicking send.
• Notes inside Gmail. You save notes about a meeting without opening another app, and you get an email for every meeting so you can add notes before or after.
• Losing touch alerts. Contacts are sorted automatically so you can see which relationships need attention.

It imports email and meetings from all your Gmail and Google Calendar accounts, your contact book, and customer data from Stripe and Segment.

What does Nat do better than FRONT OF MIND?

Nat is better if your relationships already live in email. Here is where it wins plainly.

• Email native. If you run deals over long email threads with bankers and lawyers, Nat reads that history and tells you which threads went quiet. FRONT OF MIND is built around texts, not inbox triage.
• Meeting prep in your inbox. An email for every meeting, so notes happen where you already work.
• Customer data. If you also run a business with paying customers in Stripe, Nat can pull that in. FRONT OF MIND does not.
• Simple, one plan. One price, a ten day trial, and prorated refunds per its pricing page.

If your day is Gmail from 7am to 7pm, try Nat. Do not let my comparison talk you out of it.

Where does Nat stop for a deal maker?

Nat works from conversations that already exist. Deal flow often does not. The broker you met at a conference, the owner you had coffee with, the banker who changed firms: most of them never sent you an email worth finding.

Say you know 800 people and email maybe 60 of them in a given quarter. An inbox tool watches those 60 closely. The other 740 are invisible to it. That is illustrative math, but the shape is real for most operators. The people who will hand you your next off market deal are mostly in the 740.

Two other limits are worth knowing before you buy:

• No Outlook. Nat’s pricing page says it supports Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts, and that it does not offer Outlook integrations. (Nat pricing)
• Annual only. The one listed plan is billed yearly.

What does FRONT OF MIND do differently?

FRONT OF MIND opens every morning on your 10 minutes for today. It does not wait for a thread. It picks the people.

• A reason for every name. They posted, it is their birthday, you met at an event 12 days ago and never followed up, a follow up is due, a pipeline deal has been quiet 7 days or more, their company was in the news, or they are going cold.
• A text, not an email. Every draft is 40 words max, written like a text to someone you know. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from your edits.
• Only real signals. A post is shown only if it is confirmed to belong to that person.
• Capture at the event. Say a name and a sentence out loud, snap a business card or badge, or take a selfie together. It is filed under the event.
• Ask your network. Ask Liala out loud, “who do I know that is an M&A advisor,” and get the right people with why.
• Intros to make this week, with dated proof on both sides.

It runs in your phone’s browser, and you can save it to your home screen. There is no native iPhone app yet.

Nat vs FRONT OF MIND: side by side

As of October 2026, from Nat’s pricing page and our own:

	Nat	FRONT OF MIND
Starts from	Your Gmail inbox and calendar	Everyone in your network
Daily output	Threads to follow up on	The few people to text today, with a reason
Message format	Email follow ups	Text style drafts, 40 words max
Sends without you?	You click to send	Nothing sends without your tap
Event capture	Notes on meetings	Voice, card, badge or selfie, filed by event
Price	$370 a year, billed annually	$29 a month
Free option	Ten day trial	Free for first 25 contacts and 1 intro
Refunds	Prorated, per its pricing page	Refund if nothing worth reaching out to shows up within 72 hours

The annual math is close. Nat is $370 a year. FRONT OF MIND at $29 a month is $348 a year, paid monthly. Students get Nat for $97 a year. Concierge setup for FRONT OF MIND is $500 one time if you want it done for you. Prices change, so check each page before you buy.

The guarantee, word for word: If FRONT OF MIND doesn’t surface people in your network worth reaching out to within 72 hours, we’ll refund you. No questions asked.

Is FRONT OF MIND the right Nat app alternative for you?

Answer one question: where did your last three deals or referrals start?

If they started with	Pick
An email thread with a banker, lawyer or client	Nat
A text, a dinner, or a conference hallway	FRONT OF MIND
A broker you had not talked to in months	FRONT OF MIND
A team pipeline with stages and handoffs	Neither. Look at a team CRM, see FRONT OF MIND vs folk
A mix of email and in person	Both. Nat for the inbox, FRONT OF MIND for the people outside it

Here is how I would run the mix. Let Nat clean up the inbox once a day. Spend 10 minutes in FRONT OF MIND on the people who are not in any thread. Those are the ones who drift to whoever texted them last.

If you are weighing a tool that writes for you, read will AI drafted texts sound like me first. For every head to head in one place, see personal CRM comparisons, or the full field in best personal CRM for deal makers.

See who comes up first

Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who FRONT OF MIND puts at the top of today’s list. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them, and you can export and delete anytime.

See how it works