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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 💖
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!
Time to self host
To save $10/mo?
$10/year
Wasn’t this announced months ago? I know I heard something about it, probably on here even. Either way 20$ a year for Bitwarden is still well worth it.
Selfhost.Vaultwarden.
Boy am I glad I self hosted … but sadly this means they’ll likely put a stop to that too eventually
vaultwarden != bitwarden. VW is a complete rewrite. they can’t stop vaultwarden.
What makes you think this? Server costs have gone up, Bitwarden has increased their pricing. It’s a big jump, but it’s also still very very affordable (less than $2/mo). How is this indicative of them changing behavior in the future to start trying to take down legally licensed open source projects like Vaultwarden?
It’s open source, there will be forks. I’m not worried at all.
I just picked up a NitroKey to have as a backup too but like others have said its open source. Its nice to use the official client now but if there’s demand I’m sure an alternative will be implemented.
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…
I get an email very close to renewal.
Not a great move in terms of transparancy. :/
Yeah, not handled well. They’re doing slimy corpo bullshit.
On the other hand, I like that they’re open source and don’t block stuff like vaultwarden.
I hope they can take the extra money and make the product better. Cuz I definitely don’t love Bitwarden, but it’s a better alternative than 1Password.
On the other hand, I like that they’re open source and don’t block stuff like vaultwarden.
YET
Quite easy to fork the client.
Getting it to install through the various stores? Probably not.
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
Why do you need to sort at all? Just search for your password… what am I missing?
You can’t fathom why someone would want to… sort a list…?
I don’t know how to answer this. I think you’re serious, but I can’t tell. Want to read that community post I linked where over 600+ people voted for the sorting ability?
If anyone needs an alternative in a hurry and can’t be bothered to self host feel free to use https://pass.bitnet.dev/
I spun this up for me and my family but I don’t mind sharing with my extended online friends
You can also DM me if you want some space in our nextcloud instance, I’m pretty limited right now but I’m planning storage expansion pretty soon
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.
Everyone has some kind of cloud service tho no? The database is encrypted so you can even sync it over googles cloud storage if you dont have nextcloud or syncthing.
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What? I think you dont understand at all how this works. The database of any password manager is an encrypted file. When you open your password manager and type in the master password it opens that file and decrypts its contents for you and only saves them to memory. It doesnt actually decrypt the file on the drive. When you close the application it doesnt need to be encrypted again. This is exatly the same for all password managers, the only difference is that with web based ones the database file sits on bitwardens server instead of on your harddrive. You are just changing the location of the database, nothing else. Keepass also automatically saves a backup version of the database to a location you can specify and even if you dont you still have better redundancy than with bitwarden because the file sits both in your cloud storage and on each of your devices.
only one password to rememebr as the keepass master key is the encryption key.
keepass database is just a file that you sync using dropbox/gdrive/onedrive/nextcloud/seafile/owncloud/etc.
I run mine on a free dropbox account. its faster to set up than downloading keepass…
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.
Big fan of both, don’t know why it has to be one or the other for an OSS credentials manager
20 bucks are kind of a reason tho?
It is a reason, and a fine one. I certainly don’t pay for a subscription for my work stuff. I’ve told them we should have enterprise secrets management and shown them what that looks like. Not my problem anymore, and I have KeePassXC to handle everything I’m responsible for for work
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.
(Edit - I misread as Bitwarden and went off on the wrong tangent. Vaultwarden is not centralized, my bad.)
The person you’re replying to already gave you one: it’s free.
Second: its not a prime target for attack like centralized, hosted webservices are. See: LastPass being cracked and people’s login data stolen… Twice.
Yes, it is cryptographically superior to LastPass, and attempts to design around their flaws - but the threat still exists because its a very tasty target on the open internet for cybercrime.
My little Keepass DB synched over personal VPN by Syncthing? Much harder to find a vector for attack. But it does require more moving parts and maintenance.
Each have their pros and cons.
I think you misread. Lastweakness was talking about Vaultwarden which is a 100% FOSS reimplementation of bitwarden that you self host.
Yeah i totally did. My bad.
🫠
Vaultwarden is open source: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Every pro you listed is applicable to Vaultwarden as well. But I assume you misread it as Bitwarden.
Ah yes, I absolutely did.
My bad.
Vaultwarden, self-hosted is free as well. And since it’s not using the Bitwarden infrastructure, you’re only as exposed as your own network anyway.
But you can still use all the standard Bitwarden apps and extensions on any device, you just need to point it at your server. Easy to set up for friends and family as well. No need to try and teach them about VPNs, setting up syncthing, etc.
Thanks, I appreciate the clarification. I misread as Bitwarden.
Vaultwarden sounds like it resolves any concerns had about Bitwarden.
I can.
I realise now that I can think of one too. Which is that you don’t need to host it anywhere if you use something like Syncthing.
Also available offline, all the time in your hands.
Bitwarden works offline. Obviously can’t save to the server, but reading from what’s already on your local machine works just fine.
Isn’t it easier then just to use a (keepass) file? Also we carry phones around where we need secrets, too etc.
I set up a simple sync service with FolderSync (similar to Syncthing) on Android for my family, that preserves their mobile files on a server hosted SMB share. Haven’t even looked at storage encryption though. You can’t underestimate a simple yet effective solution, sometimes so simple it flies under the radar.
I can’t think of a reason to choose Bit/Vaultwarden over Keepass.
Shared passwords
Easy to do on Keepass
Not really and not nearly at the same level
Yes and more easily
so is bitwarden. i dont get your argument here. bitwarden does a lot more for free than keepass
Person I replied to said it’s 20 bucks tho.
for premium features that do more than passwaord vaulting. the free version of bitwarden does more thsn the keepass
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.
This might be a good option for you: https://elfhosted.com/
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.
Plus you’ll still have to pay at least some attention to security if you get a server.
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.
There’s a plugin that lets you store your database file in the cloud to solve this. Although I only used it for work because I use ProtonPass.
Or want to share a subset of passwords with someone.
Use Tailscale. Don’t expose the port to the public. You’re good to go. On iOS, the Tailscale app allows for on demand joining of your Tailscale network (when you’re off from your home network for example). This makes it easy. On Android it’s not as direct, can use Tasker to achieve this, it’s not great. But there’s a feature request on their repo too.
Alternatively, there’s Netbird which behaves similarly. I haven’t tried it, but have read good things about it.
Neither are US based as well if that’s a concern for you. Tailscale is Canadian, and Netbird is German. Netbird is completely open source. With Tailscale, the CLI and Android apps are open source, and there’s an open source alternative to the control server called Headscale. But honestly, using their free tier is probably enough (for both services).
I’ve had my VPS exposed to the internet for a while and never been pwned. No professional experience. Use SSH keys, not password authentication. Use FDE if physical access is in your threat model. Use a firewall to prevent connection on internal-only ports.
Vaultwarden will store your passwords encrypted (obviously) so even if your database does get stolen, the attacker shouldn’t be able to read your passwords without your master password.
If you use Tailscale or Netbird, you can avoid exposing your VPS to the internet completely.
I never get this excuse except for ignorance (not being mean to you)—you can export your entire db as a text file then encrypt it if you wanted. Also, if your server goes offline its offline first on all devices
I mean that I don’t have the necessary knowledge to make sure no one can get into my network and server, and having my entire life thus possibly vulnerable is too risky. Heck, I can’t even get Caddy to work properly.
My view on this is that I also do not trust a company to properly secure something so if it’s going to be a hack job I might as well attempt it myself!
Understandable! However I’d rather have the provider tell me that they were hacked and my data compromised than me being hacked and never finding out because I have no clue to look 😆
Unless you go out of your way to make it available to the internet, it will only be available on your local network, and you’re a much smaller target than the cloud provider.
Right there with you! Selfhosting Vaultwarden would be cool, but I barely know what I’m doing. I trust Bitwarden’s security knowledge and abilities way more than my own.
TIL theres a paid version of Bitwarden.
Out of curiosity, what services do you use for sharing?
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.
I had my renewal email come through today. Here is what is says: Your Bitwarden Premium subscription renews in 15 days. The price is updating to $1.65/month, billed annually. As an existing Bitwarden customer, you will receive a one-time 25% loyalty discount for this year’s renewal. This renewal will now be billed annually at $14.85 + tax.
Interesting. I also had mine come through but it had a different message:
Your Bitwarden Families subscription renews in 15 days. The price is updating to $3.99/month, billed annually.
Questions? Contact [email protected]
It seems there’s a few variants of the message depending on which product you have and not all of them mention the annual price.
That’s the one I got too.
Just note if your company uses Bitwarden enterprise, you’re eligible for a free personal license. (Unless they changed that)
The link is from February 1st, about a blog post in January. I clicked here thinking Bitwarden just raised their subscription price again haha.
Sorry!
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.
Yes indeed.
