20$/year is still cheap compared to other password managers, but yeah, the lack of transparency is worrying.
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Get yourself a mini pc or old laptop and control your own future: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
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 support@bitwarden.com
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)
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 💖
They put a couple things behind the paywall of US$19.80/y: the ability to securely share files instead of just text, and to host TOTP authentication. As it is I prefer using other services for sharing, and while TOTP auth is nice I'm happy with Aegis.
Edited to fix Bitwarden's price obscurity
I use NextCloud for informal shares as its GUI is very similar Microsoft or Google's -Drive and is easily adoptable. I also host a private pastebin instance for code or guides I think may be helpful, and Matrix for personal stuff. But I do like how Bitwarden/Vaultwarden's share works -- it feels more secure, like WeTransfer. It still has its applications. And Vaultwarden file share is free, size limit is adjustable in server config, and is not limited to what the Bitwarden clients say!
free tier is totally fine for 99% of people. if i want a cloud, i pay for a cloud. hike was totally forseeable. its an ass move tho to birry info in a blogpost noone ever read.
Wasn't this announced months ago? I know I heard something about it, probably on here even. Either way 20$ a year for Bitwarden is still well worth it.
Boy am I glad I self hosted .... but sadly this means they'll likely put a stop to that too eventually
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?
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.
If you do any sort of self-hosting, take a look at Vaultwarden. All the premium functions for free.
Before my entire network setup changed recently for unrelated reasons... I had Vaultwarden running on my home server (TrueNAS) and a free Cloudflare account with a tunnel to my home server and a $5/year domain. Worked for my parents easily and no longer had to worry about the big infrastructure being targeted.
Possibly but the main thing we find useful is the OTP generation. This means we can both use shared accounts without having to ask the other for a code. That's probably an edge case, and not enough sites support it, but it's really nice for the ones that do.
I doubt that is available in self-hosting but I'd be happy to be wrong about that. I have a raspberry pi serving up a couple of local things and I could register a domain if I had a use case for connectivity outside the house.
That is totally available self hosted. Nothing is blocked. In fact that's why I originally switched, reducing unnecessary monthly costs.
OTP codes for websites as well as all the MFA options for Vaultwarden itself. It also supports organizations, so you can share info between multiple accounts on your server. Emergency access, and even a web vault client.
Everything the paid Bitwarden does as far as I'm aware.
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.
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?
The link is from February 1st, about a blog post in January. I clicked here thinking Bitwarden just raised their subscription price again haha.
Bitwarden has a paid version?
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.
Yeah...they've been making a lot of changes to the client, too. I'm not sure what form it will take yet, because idk enough about bitwarden as a company, but get ready for enshittification and forks.
I got worried the first time they started giving the UI all the rounded corners and more clicks to get anywhere or get anything done. Now there are corpo-cute little waving hand graphics and stuff in the UI. I've been migrating to local "pass" because these are always bad signs for a product
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?
convenience. its integrated into the browser and easy to get going. I personally use it for "unimportant" logins. Mainly things that are not government or financial or such. My improtant ones I keep on an external drive that I only pull out for when im doing that type of stuff.
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.
Pretty much this. Cloud storage isn’t perfect, but it sure does make proper 3-2-1 backup hygiene easier. 3 backups, on 2 different mediums, 1 of them off site. Cloud storage accomplishes both the 2 and 1, because it is both a different medium and off site.
The fact that you can automatically sync remotely is a big bonus too, because off-site backups historically have a problem where they fall out of date without active attention. For instance, if you have a tape backup system stored in a warehouse across town, those tapes are only as up-to-date as the last time you took the time to drive across town and update them. But with cloud storage, you can automatically sync your folders to keep things up to date in near real time. Plus, your traditional off-site backup is only as secured from things like natural disasters if you’re willing to travel fairly long distances to make them. Those tapes in a warehouse across town won’t survive if the entire town is hit by a natural disaster like a wildfire or flood.
For instance, maybe I make an update on my laptop, and then want to access it on my phone. Even with SyncThing, my laptop and phone won’t sync with each other unless they’re able to find each other on the same network. If I’m not on a trusted network at the time, (e.g. I’m at work on my employer’s WiFi, or traveling and using hotel WiFi) that makes syncing difficult. But with cloud storage, they can both essentially use that as a relay. My laptop updates the cloud, and then my phone pulls that update. Now both devices are up-to-date without actually needing to discover each other on a trusted network.
I'm currently (for the past 5 or six years) using a nextcloud server (remote) where I store the master. My desktop is typically where I make changes but sometimes on my mobile devices. No mater where I edit the database it gets synced. Knock on wood, but I've never had as issue.
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.
You can have both and keep a local copy via export once in a while. If the cloud goes down the also most likely your bank website. If you're talking about other types of secrets then the first sentence will apply
Natural disaster -> no longer can access everything you have online
Meant as a negative to cloud vaults?
In that case: Bitwarden (as an example) can work offline and records can be exported from it.
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.
False sense of security.
The moment to fuck up certificate issuing and don't use a wildcard certificate, the subdomain is public and will be probed to hell and back. And due to regex, probably by bots specialized to probe password vaults.
Wish you best of luck and security.
But I'll stay here :)
You do realize that a keepass db is simply an encrypted file, right? Its not a web server.
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
Please point me to where keepass is mentioned
Besides that:
Yes, keepass is only an encrypted database-container but that comes with it's own downsides.
Syncthing can manage the syncing with stun-servers circumventing the port forwarding issue but it's also a burden to manage it.
Btw a geuine question:
How does keepass manage simultanious access by two devices? Is the database write-locked during an editing action?
And how does it combat silent corruption?
I’ve been using Keepass for about the past 15 years.
When you jump into the middle of a conversation, this is what happens. In fact, I already answered your question. Even though you seem to be acting in bad faith, and you're trying to get a "gotcha" out of me.... I'll elaborate a little
I use a Nextcloud Server (there are other network sync tools as well). I have the Keepass file on the server which syncs with my remote devices. If I make changes to the database, it syncs with the cloud server which pushes the changes to the other devices. I have NEVER had a situation where I needed to make changes to the databases on two or more devices in parallel, nor can I think of a use case. My guess is that in such a situation, whichever file was saved last would be the one last saved by Nextcloud (overwriting the other edit). So your "gotcha" is valid but rare. The other option is to use the web app for Keepass in Nextcloud (not sure if it's still being developed though, it's been a long time since I used that).
Anyway, the point of my question was to understand why people use a cloud service for this when it can be easily done (and be safer) than relying on a 3rd party cloud. From what I can tell it's "convenience".
You need to turn down your suspicions.
Can't ask questions without drawing the wrath of some users here...
Anyway:
I thought about it but in the end went with Bitwarden just because it's convenient and didnt feel like entering the security minefield.
Same was for pictures (kept them on my PC and that was backed up to another drive) and E-Mail.
As my gear improved I started to use Immich.
E-Mail is still outsourced as I can't and don't want to deal with getting put on spam-lists and having to deal with getting of of it (had the pleasure of getting my domain already marked by google safe browsing).
The "gotcha" about conflicting (as you put it and trying to infer further bad faith conversations) was more about edge cases biting you in the ass.
Not fun having to search accounts if you expect them to be securely saved in the vault but not being there.
Anyway, the point of my question was to understand why people use a cloud service for this when it can be easily done (and be safer) than relying on a 3rd party cloud. From what I can tell it's "convenience".
That's mine and being under the assumption a corp that is specializing and programming a security product is probably better at it than me.
And so far the behavior from Bitwarden after being audited and their current breach-history gives me enough faith for now.
They had some oof-moments like master-password are used to encrypt the vault and weak encryption protocols with weak encryption parameters on top
But they werent enough to start a transition elsewhere.
You need to turn down your suspicions. Can’t ask questions without drawing the wrath of some users here…
Do you not see that you are being aggressive? Who are you to tell me I have to turn down anything?
Reread the the thread where you came out swinging about insecure servers and then continued over complicating the solution. It's so condescending from the start:
Not interested in selfhosting and risk a data breach. It’s imple: Who is better equipped to combat a hack? You or Bitwarden?
All Ive been talking about is literately an encrypted file which is synced between various devices (regardless of sync method). You started talking like that before you even knew what you were talking about!
Making yourself some kind of victim will not change that.
I thought about it but in the end went with Bitwarden just because it’s convenient and didnt feel like entering the security minefield.
This is all I was asking for. thanks for the feedback.
The “gotcha” about conflicting (as you put it and trying to infer further bad faith conversations) was more about edge cases biting you in the ass. Not fun having to search accounts if you expect them to be securely saved in the vault but not being there.
As I have said, I have been using this for about 15 years. There is no adge case. I was not even trying to convince you to switch from whatever password service you were using. I simply was looking to understand why.
...under the assumption a corp that is specializing and programming a security product is probably better at it than me. And so far the behavior from Bitwarden after being audited and their current breach-history gives me enough faith for now.
I have zero trust in any corporation. I will always take responsibility for my own security as much as I can. Being dependent on corporations, esp., digital tech corporations has led us to where we are today. Keepass is a zero trust solution for me. I don't have to worry too much about where I place it (even Onedrive or Google Drive if needed).
I have no issue with Bitwarden as a project, but I wouldn't trust any server that is tasked with managing my passwords. I will do it myself.
For what it's worth, Keepass has been audited multiple times, including from the EU and I think the EU has (had?) Bug bounties for it. Germany and France definitely audited it.
It's convenient, but not much moreso than keeping the encrypted file in your google drive or whatever and pulling it down once in a while.
I've tried storing encrypted blobs including a keepass database on Google drive and I always end up with hundreds of conflict copies
Put the keepass database in a folder and use syncthing to sync that folder.
I just run syncthing on every device that needs my password and they all always have an up to date copy of the database.
What do you use to encrypt the files to begin with? For apps that don't have an encrypted backup option built in.
Keepass encrypts the database with AES-256 by default so there is already a layer of encryption protecting your passwords.
If you use keepass and want to use a third party service to store your files there's a way to setup an untrusted mirror which will encrypt the files before sending it to that client. That way you still have your files elsewhere (often on a VPS, seedbox or other host) but that host doesn't have the unencrypted sync folder just in case you decide to put non-encrypted files in there too.
That's very helpful information, thank you! I'm using bitwarden but looking into switching.
If you use keepass*
I mean if you use syncthing.
Syncthing is what has the ability to set untrusted hosts. You set a password and the files are encrypted with that password before sending it to the untrusted computer.
I kept procrastinating on self hosting it, but now i will do it tonight and migrate to my own instance.
Problem solved.
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
I migrated from the US servers to the EU servers and while looking through my settings I noticed that my renewal was $19.80 instead of $12 last year. At first I thought that the EU servers are much more expensive and was upset that support didn't tell me before migration, but it turns out that's just the new price.
Better off using keepass or literally a Linux hosted Notepad at this point.
product: We don't have syncing. We're focused on being a password manager User: Boo hoo I cri hard why you do this???? All the other password managers have itttttt
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