Heli 🚁

The CRM for freelancers and small businesses.
Private · Lightweight · Powerful · Beautifully-designed

Self-host in 5 minutes or try the hosted version →

Why Heli?

Private by default. Your contacts and the relationships between them shouldn't live on someone else's server. Heli runs entirely on hardware you control, with no tracking, no telemetry, and no third-party SDKs to sign in to. Your network never leaves your server.

Lightweight and fast. One small app, one database file — that's the whole stack. It boots in seconds, idles on almost nothing, and stays snappy with thousands of people, companies, and interactions in your library. Happy on a Raspberry Pi, a spare corner of your home server, or the cheapest VPS your provider sells.

Powerful where it counts. Most lightweight CRMs are pretty but thin. Heli ships the things you'd actually pay for: people and companies side-by-side, an interaction log that follows you everywhere, projects and pipelines with stages you can drag, smart enrichment that fills in details from a single URL, full-text search across the whole graph, tags, collections, statuses, reminders, and a command palette — all running locally against your own data.

Beautifully designed. A calm, distraction-free workspace, keyboard-first navigation, thoughtful typography, hand-tuned light and dark themes, and a mobile layout that actually works. Designed for the "slow CRM."

Private, lightweight, and fast — by design. One process, one database file, one curl … | sh. No external services, no analytics, no heavy stack to maintain. Starts in seconds, happy on a 1 GB VPS. Jump to self-hosting →

Heli in 30 seconds

📇 People & companies

Track individuals and organizations side by side. See who works where, who introduced whom, and what's been going on with each of them.

💬 Log every interaction

Calls, emails, coffee chats, DMs — a running log of every touchpoint so nothing slips through the cracks.

📋 Projects & pipelines

Group contacts into projects and move them through stages. Simple Kanban boards, no complexity tax.

⚡ Fast & lightweight

Boots in seconds, idles on almost nothing, runs on a 1 GB VPS. Fewer moving parts, fewer things to break.

🔍 Search the whole graph

Full-text search across people, companies, interactions, projects, and notes. ⌘K to jump anywhere.

🔒 Own your data

One database file. Take a copy and walk away whenever. AGPL-3.0 — you have the right to study and modify every line.

👥 Work together

Invite colleagues into a shared workspace. Same records, three roles, private reminders.

Feature tour

📇 People & companies

Side-by-side primitives. People and companies are first-class. Link a person to a company, see everyone who works there from the company page, and jump between the two with one click.
Rich profiles. Photo or avatar, role, location, links (LinkedIn, website, GitHub, X, …), free-form notes, tags, and a custom status.
Live brand logos for companies via logo.dev — set PUBLIC_LOGODEV_KEY to enable, leave blank to fall back to initials.
Inline-create rows. Add a new person or company without leaving the list — start typing at the top of the table.
Filter by tag, status, or company. Combine filters; the URL stays shareable so a filtered view is just a bookmark.
No duplicates. Re-adding the same email, LinkedIn, or domain finds the existing record instead of making a new one.

✨ Smart enrichment & bookmarklet

Paste a URL, get a contact. Drop a LinkedIn profile, a personal site, or a company homepage into the save box and Heli classifies it (person vs company) and fills in name, role, company, links, and a photo automatically.
Bookmarklet. Drag the Save to Heli button from Settings to your bookmarks bar — saving any page becomes a one-click action that drops you into the new record. Same-origin only by design (it posts to /api/save with your session), so it works from any tab while you're signed in to Heli.
Tracking parameters removed so shared links stay clean.
Background fetch. Saves are instant; enrichment happens in the background and the record updates in place when it's done.

💬 Interactions

One running log of every touchpoint — calls, emails, meetings, coffee chats, DMs, notes-to-self.
Attached where it matters. Each interaction belongs to a person and optionally a company or project, so the same log shows up in all the right places.
Reminders per interaction. Pin a follow-up to any interaction and Heli surfaces it when it's due.
Markdown-style notes with safe HTML output (sanitized on write, not on read).

📋 Projects & pipelines

Projects group people, companies, and interactions under one umbrella with their own status, priority, and due date.
Pipelines are Kanban boards — define stages once, drag items between them, and the pipeline tells you what's stuck and where.
Custom stages, custom statuses. Per-pipeline stages; per-workspace statuses with colours you pick.
Priority flags — low/medium/high/urgent — sort and filter every list view.

🏷️ Tags, collections & statuses

Three lightweight organisation primitives — use any or all.

	Tags	Collections	Statuses
Purpose	Flexible labels	Curated groups	Workflow state
Creation	Auto on first use	Explicit, you name them	Defined in Settings
Renaming	Merges on conflict	Simple rename	Edit anywhere it's used
Where they apply	Anything	People, companies, projects	Per entity type

Plus built-in filters for priority, due-soon, archive, and recently active.

🔍 Full-text search & command palette

Searches everything — people, companies, interactions, projects, notes — including records you saved months ago.
⌘K / Ctrl+K anywhere in the app opens the command palette.
Partial matches by default. Type acm and find Acme Corp as well as acmebank.com.
Ranked by relevance, not just date, and results arrive as you type (40 ms debounce; per-process LRU cache keeps repeats instant).
Server-side FTS5 — no external search engine to run, no separate index to maintain.

👥 Shared workspaces

Invite your colleagues by email — or copy the invite link, which works even on a self-host with no mail configured.
Everyone in a workspace shares the same records: people, companies, projects, pipelines, tags and statuses. Reminders stay private to each person.
Three roles. Owners and admins manage the team and the workspace-wide destructive actions (imports, deleting a shared status or tag, deleting a pipeline). Members get full day-to-day CRM work.
Ownership is transferable, and members can leave. Records created by someone who leaves stay with the workspace.
Belong to more than one workspace and switch from the header — your own, plus any you've been invited to.

🔔 Reminders

Pick any future datetime (defaults to tomorrow 9 am). Attach to a person, company, project, or interaction.
The bell icon shows a dot when any reminder is due within 24 hours.
Upcoming reminders live in the sidebar, sorted by time, with click-to-cancel and a generous undo window.

Reminders are stored today; delivery via email/push is on the roadmap.

⚡ Fast & lightweight

Boots in seconds. No warm-up, no background sync jobs, no dashboards to load.
Tiny footprint. One small container, one SQLite file. Happy on a Raspberry Pi or the smallest VPS your provider sells.
Optimistic UI. Toggling a status, editing a note, or moving a card in a pipeline updates the screen immediately and rolls back if the server disagrees.
Streaming SSR. Layout HTML ships before secondary data resolves — first paint doesn't wait for the slowest query.
No moving parts. No external database, no Redis, no message queue. Fewer things to configure, fewer things to break, fewer things to update.
Tunable for tight hosts. SQLITE_CACHE_MB and SQLITE_MMAP_MB let you shrink memory for a 1 GB box or grow it on a beefier server.
Grows with your network. Designed to stay fast as your graph grows into the tens of thousands.

📤 Export your data

CSV export at /api/export — your whole library in a portable format, any time.
Plus the raw SQLite file as the ultimate escape hatch. Open it in DB Browser for SQLite, query it from any SQLite client, or migrate it to a different tool. No lock-in by design.

⌨️ Keyboard-first

Heli is built for people who prefer their hands on the keyboard. Navigate lists with j/k, open with Enter, search with /, open the command palette with ⌘K, toggle status, jump between sections, and dismiss menus — all without reaching for the mouse. Hit ? anywhere in the app to see every available shortcut.

📱 Mobile & PWA

Works beautifully on phones, tablets, and desktops. Heli ships as a Progressive Web App — add it to your home screen from any browser for a full-screen, app-like experience on iOS and Android, no app store required. Once installed, Heli appears in your device's share sheet — save anyone from any app with one tap.

🌙 Dark mode

Both light and dark themes are carefully tuned for long sessions in a CRM. Toggle with one click; your preference is remembered across sessions.

How Heli compares

	Heli	HubSpot / Salesforce	Notion / spreadsheet
Setup	5 min, one VPS	Sales call, weeks of config	Minutes — but you're building from scratch
Cost	Free (self-host) · free for solo on heli.so	$$$/seat/month	Free–$$
Footprint	One process, one file	SaaS-only	SaaS-only
Relationship graph	Native (people ↔ companies ↔ projects)	Yes, but heavy	You build it manually
Pipelines	Yes, lightweight	Yes, sprawling	You build it manually
Collaboration	Shared workspaces, roles, private reminders	Yes, per seat	Shared doc, no roles
Privacy	Your server, your data	Their server	Their server
Lock-in	None — SQLite file you own	High	Medium
Best for	Freelancers & small teams who want a CRM that gets out of the way	Enterprise sales orgs	"I'll just track this in a spreadsheet" people

Two ways to use Heli

	☁️ Cloud (heli.so)	🏠 Self-host
Setup	Sign up — zero config	One-line installer, 5 minutes
Storage	Managed, encrypted	Your database file
Updates	Automatic	Automatic (Watchtower) — or manual
Backups	Automated, offsite	Your cron, your volume
Cost	Free for solo during beta	Free (you pay for hosting)
Privacy	Hosted by us	Never leaves your server
Best for	"I just want a CRM."	"I want to own every byte."

Both run the exact same open-source code.

☁️ Cloud — heli.so

Heli is available as a managed service at heli.so.

What you get:

Everything in this README, zero setup
Managed updates and security patches
Automated offsite backups
Same AGPL-3.0 code, just hosted for you
Free for solo use during beta

Get started →

🏠 Self-hosting

Heli runs as a single process with a single database file. No database server, no Redis, no queue, no external dependencies beyond Node. That's what makes it lightweight enough to self-host comfortably on modest hardware.

Option A — One-line installer (recommended)

SSH into any Linux VPS with a public IP and run:

curl -sSL https://heli.so/install | sh

The installer asks for two things:

The domain you want Heli on (e.g. crm.example.com) — must already point at this server via a DNS A record.
An email for Let's Encrypt renewal notices.

Then it installs Docker, installs Caddy, generates secrets, pulls the Heli image, configures HTTPS, and waits until https://your.domain is serving. Total time: ~3 minutes on a fresh VPS.

Recommended host: Hetzner CPX22 (Ubuntu 24.04, ~€7/mo, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM). Anything with ≥ 1 GB RAM works.

Full guide, including Cloudflare, performance tuning, and Resend email setup: SELFHOST.md.

Option B — Docker Compose

Requirements: Docker 20+ with Compose v2.

git clone https://github.com/heindewilde/heli.git
cd heli
cp .env.example .env

Open .env and set ORIGIN to the public URL you'll serve from (required in production):

ORIGIN=https://crm.yourdomain.com

Start it:

docker compose up -d

That's it. Heli is running on port 3000. Data lives in ./data (SQLite file + uploaded avatars) and survives restarts and upgrades. A bundled Watchtower sidecar checks GHCR every 6 hours and rolls Heli to the latest image automatically — comment out the watchtower: service in docker-compose.yml to disable.

Change the port: edit the ports: mapping in docker-compose.yml. Remember to update ORIGIN to match.

Option C — Docker run (no Compose)

Prebuilt multi-arch images (amd64 + arm64) are published to GitHub Container Registry on every push to main:

docker run -d --name heli -p 3000:3000 \
  -v heli-data:/data \
  -e ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000 \
  -e DB_PATH=/data/heli.db \
  -e AVATARS_DIR=/data/avatars \
  ghcr.io/heindewilde/heli:stable

Pin to a specific release by replacing :stable with :1.2.3. To build from source instead, clone the repo and run docker build -t heli ..

Option D — Node.js (from source)

Requirements: Node.js 22+ (per package.json engines).

git clone https://github.com/heindewilde/heli.git
cd heli
npm ci
npm run build
PORT=3000 ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000 node build

PORT and ORIGIN must match — PORT is what the server listens on, ORIGIN is the URL your browser uses. Data is written to ./data/heli.db by default (override with DB_PATH).

To run as a service, wrap node build with systemd, pm2, or your supervisor of choice.

Upgrading

The bundled Watchtower service rolls the container automatically when a new image is published. If you'd rather pin and upgrade manually, comment out watchtower: in docker-compose.yml and run:

cd /srv/heli
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Schema migrations are applied automatically at startup. Your data is untouched during upgrades.

Backups

The whole app lives in data/heli.db plus data/avatars/. Back them up however you'd back up any SQLite file.

Live backup (no downtime):

cd /srv/heli
docker compose exec heli sqlite3 /data/heli.db ".backup /data/backup-$(date +%F).db"
tar czf backup-$(date +%F)-avatars.tgz -C data avatars

Daily cron:

0 3 * * * cd /srv/heli && docker compose exec -T heli sqlite3 /data/heli.db ".backup /data/backup-$(date +\%F).db"

Offsite: pipe to restic, rclone, or rsync to your destination of choice.

Reverse proxy

Point your proxy at port 3000, forward Host and X-Forwarded-* headers, and set ORIGIN to your public URL.

If you're behind a proxy and want the auth rate limiter to see real client IPs (rather than the proxy's IP), also set ADDRESS_HEADER=x-forwarded-for and XFF_DEPTH=1 on the Heli container. Increase XFF_DEPTH if you have more than one proxy hop.

Caddy

crm.yourdomain.com {
    encode zstd br gzip
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

nginx

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name crm.yourdomain.com;

    # SSL config (certbot, Let's Encrypt, etc.)

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Traefik (labels on docker-compose)

labels:
  - "traefik.enable=true"
  - "traefik.http.routers.heli.rule=Host(`crm.yourdomain.com`)"
  - "traefik.http.routers.heli.entrypoints=websecure"
  - "traefik.http.routers.heli.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
  - "traefik.http.services.heli.loadbalancer.server.port=3000"

⚙️ Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables (or a .env file).

Variable	Default	Required?	Description
`ORIGIN`	`http://localhost:3000`	Yes in production	Public URL the app is served from. Must match the domain users hit.
`PORT`	`3000`	No	Port the Node server listens on.
`DB_PATH`	`./data/heli.db`	No	Path to the SQLite database file (local file mode).
`DATABASE_URL`	—	No	Remote libSQL / Turso URL. Overrides `DB_PATH` when set.
`DATABASE_AUTH_TOKEN`	—	No	Auth token for remote libSQL. Required when `DATABASE_URL` points to a remote instance.
`DATABASE_URL_EU` / `_US` / `_APAC`	—	No	Per-region libSQL replicas for advanced multi-region setups. Writes go to `PRIMARY_REGION`.
`ADMIN_SECRET`	—	No	Shared secret required to call `GET /api/admin/stats`. Set to any strong random string.
`ENABLE_REGISTRATION`	—	No	Set to `1` to keep public sign-ups open. Self-host closes them automatically once the first account exists, so set this if you want an open instance.
`DISABLE_REGISTRATION`	—	No	Set to `1` to block new sign-ups outright. A hard kill switch — it wins over `ENABLE_REGISTRATION`. The first account can always be created, so you can bootstrap with this already on, and a live invite still admits its addressee.
`SQLITE_CACHE_MB`	`16`	No	SQLite page-cache size. Raise on bigger boxes for more in-memory query hits.
`SQLITE_MMAP_MB`	`64`	No	SQLite mmap window. Raise on bigger boxes.
`PUBLIC_LOGODEV_KEY`	—	No	logo.dev publishable token for live company brand logos. Leave blank to fall back to initials.
`RESEND_API_KEY`	—	No	Required for password-reset email delivery. Without it, reset links print to the container logs.
`EMAIL_FROM`	`Heli <noreply@heli.so>`	No	Override the From address used for outbound mail.
`EXTENSION_ORIGINS`	—	No	Additional origins allowed to call `/api/v1` cross-origin, e.g. `chrome-extension://<id>`. The published extension's own origin is built in, so this is only for a build you loaded unpacked or a fork. Credentials are never sent, so an entry here cannot expose a session cookie.
`SCHEDULER_DISABLED`	—	No	Set to `1` to stop the background scheduler that polls subscribed calendars. Use if you'd rather drive syncs from your own cron.

🏗️ Architecture at a glance

For the technically curious:

Single-process SvelteKit app, server-rendered with adapter-node. No separate API, no microservices.
One SQLite file for everything via libSQL. Local by default; remote Turso supported if you want it.
Full-text search lives inside SQLite (FTS5) — no separate search engine to run or maintain.
Optimistic list cache + service worker on the client; streaming SSR for layout-level data that shouldn't gate first paint.
Multi-region via Turso replicas + an email_routing table; a single PRIMARY_REGION handles writes, replicas serve reads near each user.
Background enrichment. Saves return instantly; URL parsing, logo fetches, and classifications run in the background and the record updates in place.
Startup janitor clears source='parsing' rows that were stuck mid-fetch when the process died.
Session auth with bcrypt-hashed passwords and httpOnly cookies. Every user's library is fully isolated.

🧰 Tech stack

SvelteKit 2 + Svelte 5 (runes)
Drizzle ORM + @libsql/client (SQLite / Turso)
node-html-parser — fast, dependency-light HTML parsing for enrichment (deliberately not jsdom)
Tailwind CSS v4 + @tailwindcss/typography
lucide-svelte — icons (pinned to 0.577.0)
bcryptjs — password hashing
CUID2 — primary keys
sanitize-html — notes are sanitized on write, never on read
Optional: Resend for transactional email, logo.dev for live company brand logos

🗺️ Roadmap

Not promises — a rough direction. Open an issue to vote or propose changes.

Server-side reminder delivery (email + push).
Inbound email — BCC or forward a thread to your Heli address and have it logged as an interaction. Nothing is built yet.
More importers — HubSpot CSV, Notion DB exports, vCard, Google Contacts.
Two-way calendar — writing back to the calendar. Reading from it now works: subscribe an .ics URL in Settings and meetings become interactions, linked to attendees you already have. No account connection required.
Native mobile shell — wrapping the PWA for App Store / Play Store distribution.

🤝 Contributing

PRs, issues, and discussions are all welcome. Heli is a small project and a friendly one — come as you are.

Quickstart:

git clone https://github.com/heindewilde/heli.git
cd heli
npm install
npm run dev          # dev server on port 5173

Before opening a PR:

npm run check        # type-check with svelte-check + the classification linter — the primary correctness signal

There's no test suite yet; npm run check is what CI would run, and the quality bar is 0 errors / 0 warnings.

Conventions:

Svelte 5 runes ($state, $derived, $effect, $props) — no legacy Options API.
Scoped <style> blocks with CSS custom properties — no Tailwind utility classes in component markup.
lucide-svelte@0.577.0 for icons (specific version pinned — newer versions break Svelte 5 stable).
New dependencies (not devDependencies) need to justify their footprint — Heli is meant to stay lean enough to self-host on a 1 GB VPS.

Where to start:

Browse good-first-issue labels.
Join Discussions for design questions.
Anything on the roadmap is fair game — say hi on the relevant issue before starting large work.

❓ FAQ

Why another CRM? Because the good ones are either enterprise SaaS (HubSpot, Salesforce) priced per seat per month, or "Notion with a contacts database" that you have to build and maintain yourself, or a spreadsheet that doesn't model relationships at all. Heli aims for the middle: real CRM primitives — people, companies, interactions, projects, pipelines — without the subscription, without the data surrender, in a package light enough to run on a Pi.

How does it compare to HubSpot / Salesforce / Notion? See the comparison table above. Roughly: Heli is feature-par on the CRM essentials (contacts, companies, deals, activity log, pipelines), but cheaper, lighter, and yours. It's not trying to be a marketing-automation suite — if you need lead-scoring, multi-touch attribution, and a sales-ops team, HubSpot is what you want.

Can I run this on a Raspberry Pi? Yes. A Pi 4 with 2 GB RAM handles a single-user library of thousands of records comfortably. The Docker image runs on both arm64 and amd64.

Is my data truly private? Yes, with one nuance. Heli only reaches out to the internet for three things: (1) fetching pages you ask it to enrich, (2) fetching favicons and avatar/logo images those pages reference, and (3) if you set PUBLIC_LOGODEV_KEY, fetching company brand logos via logo.dev. No telemetry, no analytics, no third-party SDKs. Leave the logo.dev key blank and the only outbound traffic is to URLs you explicitly save.

Can I import my existing CRM data? CSV is supported today. Native importers for HubSpot, Notion, and vCard are on the roadmap. In the meantime, most exports can be massaged into the CSV schema with a spreadsheet or a few lines of awk.

Does it work offline? The app shell, your most recent lists, and avatars are served from the service worker, so the UI loads and lets you browse what you've already seen. Saves, search, and enrichment need network access.

What happens to my data if I stop self-hosting? You have the database file. It's a plain SQLite database — open it in DB Browser for SQLite, query it from any SQLite client, or export to CSV via /api/export. No lock-in by design.

🙏 Acknowledgements

SvelteKit and Drizzle teams for building tools that make small projects feel powerful.
Turso / libSQL for taking SQLite seriously as a production database.
lucide for icons that look good at any size.
logo.dev for the brand-logo API that makes company lists look alive.
Resend for a transactional-email service that's a pleasure to integrate.
Caddy and Watchtower — half of what makes the one-line installer feel magic.
Everyone who self-hosts, files issues, and keeps the open web open.

📜 License

AGPL-3.0. See LICENSE for the full text.

In plain English:

You can run Heli on your own server, for yourself or your family or your company, forever, for free.
You can modify the source code however you like.
If you offer modified Heli as a network service to others (i.e. you build a paid hosted version), you must publish your modifications under AGPL-3.0 too.

This is deliberate — Heli is and will remain open. If AGPL concerns you and you'd like different terms, open a discussion.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.claude		.claude
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
e2e		e2e
extension		extension
mobile		mobile
scripts		scripts
src		src
static		static
tests		tests
.dockerignore		.dockerignore
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
.npmrc		.npmrc
API.md		API.md
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
Dockerfile		Dockerfile
GOOGLE_INTEGRATION.md		GOOGLE_INTEGRATION.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
MOBILE.md		MOBILE.md
README.md		README.md
SELFHOST.md		SELFHOST.md
docker-compose.yml		docker-compose.yml
fly.toml		fly.toml
install.sh		install.sh
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json
playwright.config.ts		playwright.config.ts
svelte.config.js		svelte.config.js
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json
vite.config.ts		vite.config.ts
vitest.config.ts		vitest.config.ts

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Heli 🚁

Why Heli?

Heli in 30 seconds

📇 People & companies

💬 Log every interaction

📋 Projects & pipelines

⚡ Fast & lightweight

🔍 Search the whole graph

🔒 Own your data

👥 Work together

Feature tour

📇 People & companies

✨ Smart enrichment & bookmarklet

💬 Interactions

📋 Projects & pipelines

🏷️ Tags, collections & statuses

🔍 Full-text search & command palette

👥 Shared workspaces

🔔 Reminders

⚡ Fast & lightweight

📤 Export your data

⌨️ Keyboard-first

📱 Mobile & PWA

🌙 Dark mode

How Heli compares

Two ways to use Heli

☁️ Cloud — heli.so

🏠 Self-hosting

Option A — One-line installer (recommended)

Option B — Docker Compose

Option C — Docker run (no Compose)

Option D — Node.js (from source)

Upgrading

Backups

Reverse proxy

⚙️ Configuration

🏗️ Architecture at a glance

🧰 Tech stack

🗺️ Roadmap

🤝 Contributing

❓ FAQ

🙏 Acknowledgements

📜 License

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