Clay CRM: clay.earth, clay.com, and where Umfeld fits
Searching for "Clay CRM" usually turns up two unrelated products. We sort out the confusion and show where Umfeld picks up once clay.earth stops.
Two products, one name
Search for "Clay CRM" and you will almost always land on one of two products that share little beyond the name. clay.earth is a personal CRM for friends, family, and your wider circle, roughly the same territory as Umfeld. clay.com is a sales prospecting tool: it enriches company data, finds leads, and feeds outbound teams with contact details for cold outreach. Both call themselves a CRM, both are named Clay, and both solve different problems for different people.
This comparison is only about clay.earth. If you need pipelines, lead scoring, or a sales process, clay.com or a conventional sales CRM is the right tool, not this page and not Umfeld, which is deliberately not a sales tool.
If you already use clay.earth and came here for an honest review or an alternative: the rest of this page is exactly that, clay.earth against Umfeld, not clay.com against anything.
What clay.earth gets right
clay.earth is a clean, well-designed personal CRM. You can import contacts, keep notes on people, and the app reminds you of birthdays and other dates worth remembering. For someone trying a relationship tool for the first time, the barrier to entry is low and the interface is genuinely pleasant to use.
The difference from Umfeld shows up not in that first impression, but the moment you ask where your data actually lives and whether an AI like Claude can query it directly.
clay.earth or Umfeld
| Umfeld | clay.earth | |
|---|---|---|
| Server location | Europe | US |
| AI access via MCP | ||
| Price | €6/month or €60/year | paid subscription |
The short version: if a polished cloud app is enough for you and you are comfortable keeping your contacts with a US provider, clay.earth is a solid choice. If you would rather keep your data in Europe than in the US, or want an AI like Claude to talk to your network directly, Umfeld is the more likely fit.
Why data ownership matters here
Personal data about friends, family, and your wider circle is more sensitive than a company address. Where it lives and who has technical access to it is not a footnote for a personal CRM. clay.earth runs its own cloud in the US. Umfeld hosts exclusively in Europe.
Umfeld runs as a hosted service with servers in Europe, see EU hosting. The product is operated by a German company and was built in Germany from the start, not retrofitted for the European market afterward. You can export your data or delete your account completely at any time, and your Google address book stays untouched either way.
What that means in practice
- Servers in Europe instead of a US cloud
- Export or full account deletion, whenever you want it
- Two-way Google Contacts sync, including deletes and merges
- An MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT, which clay.earth does not offer
FAQ
Are clay.earth and clay.com the same company?
Can I self-host clay.earth?
Does clay.earth offer AI access like MCP?
How is Umfeld different from other personal CRMs like Monica?
Read next
Your contacts, hosted in Europe
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