20$/year is still cheap compared to other password managers, but yeah, the lack of transparency is worrying.
Keepass is free?
Thing is, a large percentage of internet-connected users might have two or more devices. The simplicity offered by a cloud (be it hosted or selfhosted) password manager is a huge benefit.
And unless you're already running a syncthing-like service for something else, setting it up just for a password manager when other services provide it out of the box, is not worth the hassle usually.
I use KeePass on like.. I dunno 5-6 devices? They all sync together via Syncthing. No server needed. My keepass db is just one of the things synced this way.
Works pretty well.
These are the apps I use:
Desktop (Linux & macOS): KeePassXC Andrdoid: KeePassDX iOS: KeePassium
The whole ecosystem can be used for free. But like.. tip your open source devs yo.
Syncing happens pretty quickly with Syncthing. So conflicts in the keepass DBs are very rare (maybe once a year if I'm impatient after a change on a different device). But they do happen, I'll give you that. Some restraint (wait for sync) and checking (this is where sorting by modified helps!!!!) what's the latest change helps.
IMO Keepass and Bitwarden aren't exactly the same, as the latter has cross-device sync built-in.
I use one for work and the other for personal. They are both great, with slightly different convenience/security tradeoffs imo. Big fan of both, don't know why it has to be one or the other for an OSS credentials manager
Edit: part of what you're paying for with BW is first-class native apps
Big fan of both, don't know why it has to be one or the other for an OSS credentials manager
On an individual level, you only need one or the other. But which one is best for you may be different than which one is best for me.
I can't think of a reason to choose Keepass over Vaultwarden.
If you can't selfhost, then you can have your keepass file in your personal cloud. Many basic cloud services are free and the password file itself is encrypted so the cloud provider can't access your passwords.
Yeah this is true. FolderSync for cloud and Syncthing for p2p should work nicely.
Wish they handled it better, but I knew about this a while ago, and the price is more than reasonable.
A decade without a price hike is extremely generous, especially at how cheap their plan was.
They are a FOSS company that makes a fantastic product I've been happy with for years, I'll gladly pay less than $2 a month to support them. Their server code is licensed with the AGPL, the strongest copyleft license there is, which gives me a lot of confidence.
Worse case scenario, they enshitify down the road, we are protected via the open source implementations. We've seen this many times in the past, Red Hat > Alma & Rocky Linux, Citrix Xen Server > XCP-ng, Terraform > Open Tofu.
Pay for your open source software, folks 💖
Paying for good software should be normalized again. One way or the other you'll always pay. If you don't pay with your money, you pay with your data.
Wasn't this announced months ago? I know I heard something about it, probably on here even. Either way 20$ a year for Bitwarden is still well worth it.
Lawl I pay for the yearly thing and I’ve never used any paid features, I just wanted to support them. I’m okay with the price increase, but it definitely would have been nice to have an announcement maybe in December or spending the they’re planning that. I wonder if I’m grandfathered into the same price I’ve been paying? Ehhh too lazy to find out. I’ll pay 20, but yah some transparency or forewarning would have been nice for a lot of peeps.
Sadly you're not grandfathered. You'll get a 25% discount for the first year if you're already a paying customer.
Ahhh that’s okay, thank you for the info!
Get yourself a mini pc or old laptop and control your own future: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Would love to selfhost. However, I have no trust in my skills to secure my device in the same manner as a provider, and I do not wish my database to be compromised.
Then use Keepass, which is literally just a local app.
I have used KeePass, but Bitwarden is far more convenient when you have different devices
Eh. Bitwarden is better in that way, but not by much. It's honestly not that bad if you just sync the keepass DB somewhere. Whether that's cloud or syncthing.
Bitwarden's apps are where it's a better experience. But there's still somethings about the apps that are very lacking. Like not being able to sort entries.
I easily sync my keepass db across 5-6 devices.
Would you be okay with synchronizing only when you're on your own Wi-Fi network? If that's the case, you don't have to try exposing anything to the Internet.
You can also purchase a server online to install it on, but you're going to get saddled with some kind of monthly fee there.
free tier is totally fine for 99% of people. if i want a cloud, i pay for a cloud. hike was totally forseeable. its an ass move tho to birry info in a blogpost noone ever read.
yeah i was like, shit 0 times 100 is 0, with a 0, carry the 0...
Time to self host
To save $10/mo?
$10/year
TIL theres a paid version of Bitwarden.
Out of curiosity, what services do you use for sharing?
Lol for years I have been wanting to switch from KeePass to Bitwarden. Mainly cause the UX/UI felt nice to me.
My initial hesitance was that I didn't love the idea of my passwords being on someone else's servers. But I found out about Vaultwarden. So I kept my eye on it's development and longevity. Now that it's well established, I'd say I trust it now. Next I figured out a way to selfhost without exposing Vaultwarden to the public. Everything seems to be lined up for me to switch.
A few months ago, I decided it was time. After moving my passwords over and getting a flow working, I went to sort by most recent.... Oh wait. You can't sort by date. You can't sort lol I sat with this for a few hours and reverted back to my trusted and working KeePass flow.
EDIT: This is one of the most voted feature requests. Also, it's just table stakes! It's crazy they don't have this feature 😂
https://community.bitwarden.com/t/sorting-options-by-date-of-modification-addition-last-use-etc/2484
The link is from February 1st, about a blog post in January. I clicked here thinking Bitwarden just raised their subscription price again haha.
TBH, $10/year is a small price not to have to get my wife to change again after lastpass. She is not equipped to deal with enshittification.
While the increase is not a huge deal because the total is still cheaper than alternatives, the thing that irks me is how they did indeed just announce it via a blog post titled "Bitwarden launches enhanced premium plan: Complete online security for everyone". This reads like there's going to be free, premium and premium+ at best, and "we are just adding more stuff to the premium" at worst, not implying a price bump, at least to me. I did not get my renewal email yet, so can't confirm whether or not they don't even mention the annual price, but rather just the monthly one. Another thing that kind of bothers me is that they list "Vault health alerts" as a new thing, while it's always been there. While "Phishing blocker" just seems like a feature outside of the scope of a password manager.
All in all, double the price in exchange for x5 more storage and x2 more hardware keys is fine to me, but I hope they improve their communication and actually properly inform users of upcoming pricing changes.
Bitwarden has a paid version?
Yes, it includes things like a TOTP manager, text file storage, family sharing, etc… Nothing super groundbreaking, but it’s some quality of life stuff that plenty of people have been happy to pay less than a dollar per month for.
Can someone please help me understand why you would want to have your passwords in the cloud? I've been using Keepass for about the past 15 years. I always just sync the db between computers/mobiles. Its never been an issue. Is having it in the cloud really that big of an advantage?
Syncing is a problem without a seamless solution. The official syncthing app for Android is abandoned and syncthing-fork isn't trustworthy and feels vibe coded. Nextcloud is way too bloated for simple vault syncing.
I'm personally warming up to the idea of using pass.
Not interested in selfhosting and risk a data breach.
It's imple: Who is better equipped to combat a hack? You or Bitwarden?
Definitely me.
there's also the fact that hackers probably don't know I'm hosting it. Where as bitwarden hosted makes for a very very juicy target
Natural disaster -> no longer can access everything you have online, including bank and insurance accounts, at precisely the time you most don’t want to deal with that.
Personal disaster as well.
If something happens to me and I am incapacitated, or worse, my wife or my brother can request access to my vault and without any action in my side for a week they will have access to my vault. (Emergency access feature in bitwarden)
So it does not add the stress of needing to call ALL the utility companies, bank, school ... To reset passwords or request emergency access.
I saw that first hand with my brother in law who had an accident and went into a coma. We were lucky that his computer wasn't locked and all his password accessible on it.
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