5 Best Contact Apps For iPhone (And Why You Might Want To Use Them)

Why would anyone need a third-party contacts app if the iPhone already comes with one built-in? It's actually more useful than you might think. With a standalone app, you will gain access to contacts your iPhone wouldn't have imported otherwise, and you'll be able to manage them easily. Such apps also make it simpler to split your contacts between your personal life and your business, and backing them up becomes a breeze. They can also help you get rid of those pesky spam calls. 

The basic iOS Contacts app does what it says on the tin, but using a third-party app gives you a host of new features. Using such apps is especially useful if your phone is flooded with contacts pertaining to your business and personal life, because hey, you don't want to randomly ring your boss at 6 in the morning when you meant to call your parents! With an app, you can keep those contacts entirely separate, saving you potential embarrassment. There's more that can be done — let's check it out.

If you're only getting one app for managing your contacts, the aptly-named Contacts+ might be the best one to choose. Previously called FullContact, the Contact+ app features everything the previous iteration had, and more. Thanks to its cloud-based system, Contacts+ is able to sync with your Gmail, iCloud, and Microsoft Outlook, meaning that all of your contacts will end up in the same place. However, they won't be cluttered, because the software has some top-notch organization features.

Once you've synced all your contacts, you can rely on the app to delete all of the duplicates. Next, sort them into categories, add company information, social media profiles, photos, and more. All of this will make it easier to dig through them. The app can also fill in the information for your contacts with data it finds on the web — this is useful for businesses. A similar app to Contacts+ is Covve, which also helps you fill out your contacts with extra information and organize them into groups.

Contacts+ comes with a free and a paid tier, but you don't really have to pay for it unless you're exceptionally popular — a free account can help you manage up to 1,000 contacts. However, if you have multiple accounts, you won't make the most of the app with the free tier. Paying $9.99/month ($8.33/month if you pay for a year in advance) unlocks the ability to sync multiple accounts and manage 25,000 contacts. Moreover, premium members can scan business cards right into the app instead of typing in the details yourself.

As a smartphone owner, there are few things more annoying than spam calls. These days, on top of the usual sales calls, many of us also have to put up with automated calls that seemingly lead to nowhere. What's even worse is that the companies that make these calls do so from various numbers, so it's nearly impossible to learn them all. Fortunately, there's Sync.ME and similar apps that help you avoid a large portion of your spam calls.

The app is connected to a database of more than 1 billion numbers. Thanks to that, it can identify your incoming calls and mark them as spam if they've already been flagged as such in the database. You may be told which company is calling you and choose to take the call or decline. Similarly, if you miss a call, you can later look it up in Sync.ME's database to determine if it's worth calling back.

Once you know that you no longer want to take calls from a certain number, you can use the app to block it and not have to hear from it again. The app also comes with some premium features that cost $9.99 per year, with various monthly payment options available too. With the premium plan, the app will help you merge and backup contacts as well as source their pictures from social media, which makes it more of a rounded app than just a scam call detector.

To manage group chats easily, you can download an iOS app called Groups. The app will comply a list of all your contacts and let you sort them into various groups, such as friends, family, and business associates. You can then use the app to text and call groups of contacts without having to go through the trouble of adding each one of them separately for each interaction. The app works with native iPhone groups and enhances them, so you can just make a group chat as you usually would. Your contacts don't need to download Groups in order for you to be able to contact them via email or text.

Groups also has a few more nifty features that make it worth checking out. It'll help you merge duplicate contacts and help you send out group emails. If you tend to forget to call people, you can use Groups to set a reminder to get in touch with a particular person or group of friends. It's a handy, lightweight tool for staying in touch, making socializing and keeping up to date that much easier.

You'd think that emails and smartphones would have replaced the good ole business card, but we're not there yet. In fact, it's often much easier for someone to hand you their card instead of reciting their entire email and leaving you to hope that you don't make a typo while you add it to your phone. 

However, the card will either end up cluttering your wallet, or need to make it into your contacts at some point. If you tend to get many business cards and want to save yourself the trouble, check out CamCard.

CamCard lets you scan physical business cards and automatically creates a new contact with the data it gathered. You can also exchange e-cards with other people who use the app. In addition to that, CamCard has features that other apps on this list provide — it lets you add notes and reminders to your new and existing contacts.

It also helps you look up the news on the companies your business associates work for. All of the data can be uploaded to the cloud for easy syncing across multiple devices, so if you have an iPad and an iPhone, you can share contacts on both.

If you lose your phone and don't backup your contacts, it'll be very to get them back. The most secure way to store your contacts is away from your phone, where no matter what happens, you'll be able to download them again if you need to. My Contacts Backup is an app centered around that concept, and is likely the best option if you want to backup your contacts or move them to your new phone.

The app is simple to use: you don't need a computer to sync with the cloud because the contacts remain in your possession in a secure file. The app packs the contacts into a .vcf file that you can then email to yourself or store in any way you like — preferably in more than one location to be extra safe. Loading up the file on your phone restores all of the contacts. Alternatively, you can export your contacts in .csv format, which is a Microsoft Excel file.

You can set up reminders to backup on a weekly or monthly basis. Unfortunately, the free version can only backup 500 contacts at a time, so you'll need to pay for the Pro version to be able to protect more than that. The Pro version is a separate app and costs $1.99 to purchase.