Password managers are one of those tools that people don't tend to swap around because it can be a real pain. I have hundreds of credentials and going through the process of setting up new passwords is something I don't have time for, and only consider when my password manager has an outage. Like today.
We set up our password manager years ago and now I'm wondering if it's time to switch to something else. What are your suggestions?
Below are two open source password managers I'm looking into:
buttercup
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buttercup-desktop
🔑 Cross-Platform Passwords & Secrets Vault
Buttercup Desktop
Buttercup for Desktop - Mac, Linux and Windows
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About
Buttercup is a free, open-source and cross-platform password manager, built on NodeJS with Typescript. It uses strong industry-standard encryption to protect your passwords and credentials (among other data you store in Buttercup vaults) at rest, within vault files (.bcup). Vaults can be loaded from and saved to a number of sources, such as the local filesystem, Dropbox, Google Drive or any WebDAV-enabled service (like ownCloud or Nextcloud ¹).
Why you need a password manager
Password management is a crucial tool when you have any online presence. It's vital that all of your accounts online use strong and unique passwords so that they're much more difficult to break in to. Even if one of your accounts are breached, having unique passwords means that the likelihood of the attacker gaining further access to your…
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Top comments (130)
I am very happy with LastPass
I also use LastPass and I like it!
Currently on the premium subscription (bought through a makeuseof deal) and I can say the android app improved over time.
Sometimes there are apps or views where LastPass can't manage to show the configured overlay with autofill but they made a handy tile for the notification bar to trigger the LastPass autofill dialog manually so this isn't painful anymore.
Do you use it on Android?
Last I remembered, it wasn't working well (buggy Auto fill), and so I disabled it completely and used Google's native AutoFill and only drop into LastPass when it's not saved in my Google also.
Curious if you experienced similar things at all?
Sometimes, yes. I then have to go to the app and copy paste manually
I use it on Android. It used to get disabled a lot so I had to keep re-enabling it but that seems to have fixed itself since I updated my Android to Oreo.
Oh... Good to know. Now if LG would only update my phone from 7.0...
I love LastPass as well. Except for this morning, the outage is driving me nuts!
status.lastpass.com/
This is where I would recommend Bitwarden, works well offline with synced data and once online syncs with my desktop app as browser addon, but the only problem I had was when i imported all of my browser passwords and disabled auto save within Chrome and Firefox, Bitwarden has become a bit slow ever since but its normal to be slow when you've got nearly 8K logins including yours and other peoples
yep, this is a problem with any services. The only solution I know is to have an offline password manager with multiple copies of the db, and sync it with devices through dropbox or something like that. But then what about handy browser extensions..
Buttercup actually allows you to sync via Dropbox, so you can host your vault file there and let DB do the sync'ing, and Buttercup has clients to allow you access to these sync'ed credentials on all major platforms (including within Chrome+Firefox using an extension). Disclaimer: I'm the author.
Neat! I'll have to look into that now. I'm currently a very happy LastPass user (though not for work, so I actually got by without knowing about the outage). But that does sound like an interesting solution.
Reading comments and thinking to try something else, maybe there are better solutions.
Did you know that LastPass has been hacked completely at least twice?
Yes, but can't decrypt anything.
Ok, I'm migrating tonight.
Take "hacked completely at least twice" with a pinch of salt.
Unsure about twice but here is an official post by LastPass themselves.
From my experience, I'd recommend BitWarden as the free version will suffice on Android/iOS will suffice for most people along with proper sync between desktop / mobile apps along with being quite user-friendly.
1password is amazing product. I used LastPass but switched to 1Password.
I think that's my best features I use every day in 1password
None of these features (apart from the name of the family plan) are unique to 1password, as far as I'm aware.
I've switched from Lastpass to Bitwarden because it wasn't working on Firefox (which I also switched out of to something else). Bitwarden is so much smoother and less intrusive on the browser. I also like it a lot that Bitwarden is open-sourced.
I am also thinking about the switch, one for the open-source nature of BitWarden, and second I think LastPass was just bought over by LogMeIn, heard that it was a rather dodgy company.
Anyway, couple questions - how much hassle was it? How does it perform on mobile? (Android Auto fill etc)
Not OP, but I made the same transition and IIRC it was as close to a one-click operation as you can reasonably get. AutoFill has not failed me yet on Android.
Cool man! That's exactly how it went down, it was one click for me!
I'm going to be trying out BitWarden for a bit.
Part of me says if LastPass isn't breaking, there's no need to change. The other part says open-source :p
That's more or less how it happened for me, yeah
Bitwarden has ties into the new Android autofill stuff, which makes it super smooth to use on Android. I believe it has the same for iOS.
The switch was super fast. Would recommend! Yes auto fill works very well but you might need to manually enable it
I'm a LastPass user, I'll definitely consider the switch!
Switched to Bitwarden Premium, my LastPass Premium expires in a month anyway :D
I'll decide then which one to keep.
Let me know what you decide on!
I'd never heard of it, but it looks interesting.
I'm quite happy with KeePassXC.
I use KeePassXC too, with it's browser plugin. And KeePass2Android on mobile. And very happy with that couple!
I love KeyPass2Android, glad I switched from KeePassDroid which just lagged behind feature-wise.
KeePass has a nice chrome extension too, though initial setup is a minor pain.
Which one do you use? I was using CKP - KeePass integration for Chrome, but it doesn't work since I started to use KeepassXC instead of the original (and mono-built) keepass
I use chromeIPass with the original Keepass app. I hadn't heard of KeepassXC before but it seems to be popular on here so maybe I should give it a go
Ooh, movement in the KeePass world - I might move across from KeePass2 myself :)
I was really happy when it came out! I'd had to buy MacPass to get a good kdbx-compatible password manager on OSX (nothing against it as a product but I prefer open source), and the less said about dealing with the Mono version on Linux the better.
Amusingly I use the mono version on Linux the most, then KeePassDroid on my phone. I even re-wrote Andrew Schofield's excellent HIBP plugin in so it would work on Linux/mono despite that not having TLS1.2+ support :)
github.com/phlash/keepass_hibp
I'll just chime in here regarding Buttercup (I'm one of the authors) - There are a lot of great comments here (nice seeing so much opinion in the password manager space) and I thought I'd quickly cover our product and why I wrote it and why I'd recommend it.
Buttercup is a password vault that's available on every major platform - we have a desktop application on Windows+Mac+Linux and a mobile app on iOS+Android. We also have a browser extension for Firefox+Chrome (with more browsers on the way). We use vault files to store an encrypted copy (AES-256, PBKDF2 derived keys, GZIP compression) of your passwords and secrets in a variety of locations (Dropbox, NextCloud, ownCloud, WebDAV supporting services, the local file system). Buttercup's browser extension also allows for form filling and login actions via its UI. Buttercup is also free and open-source, so you can see how it's put together and what we do at every turn. It'll remain free and has a very long-term roadmap so we'll be busy building it for the foreseeable future.
We have our own hosting service planned as well (will land most likely in Q1 2019), which will become a source of revenue to keep our company afloat. We'll offer free personal hosting so that everyone can take advantage of storage-agnostic vaults.
You may have a new user 😃. For now, is it self hosting? Does one have to set up the app apis too?
That'd be swell! We're a friendly bunch I promise. "Self-hosting" yes, but you can simply host it in a free Dropbox account to get started - No need to run up any servers yourself. In our opinion Dropbox is perfectly fine for this use, and because it has file versions you're even better protected against overwritten values etc. (we have an in-built history system in our vault files which will soon be exposed to the user - kinda like time-travel).
No need to set up any complex APIs etc if you don't want to. I personally use an ownCloud server where I host my vault. Others have used everything from Box through to Yandex (WebDAV services).
thank you, I would be happy to give it a go. Will test-drive it over the weekend 😃
+1
I used the free version of LastPass in the past, but I have switched to 1password for a few reasons:
How do you use op to get 2FA tokens?
Go to the account in question > edit > click add new one-time, then you can point the camera at the qr code or type the secret manually.
My question wasn't clear enough. I was asking about point 5. the 2FA tokens in the 1password CLI
LastPass does everything in your list except the faceID (I don't know if it does that).
Pass is also kinda cool (passwordstore.org/). Synchronized via git. Minimalist Unix philosophy & design.
Thanks - that's my TIL for the day!
I use 1password. Although I have tried others I have found a better experience with 1password. It might just be a personal preference.
However, the standout feature for me using 1password is its iOS integration. Not the app (although it's related) but the
AutoFill Passwordsintegration. 1Password is nicely integrated with using that feature and it's probably the way I use it the most.I can't compare/contrast, but I've been using BitWarden for over a year and have no complaints. Importing from LastPass was a breeze and I was able to set up my YubiKey for 2FA in maybe five minutes. The mobile app is performant and consistent with the browser plugin. I tell everyone who will listen to use it.
What happens if you lose the YubiKey? How do you backup it up?
This is what keeps me from using YubiKey as a single 2FA token and having an alternative 2FA method like cell phone kind of defeats the whole purpose :/
But me and my GF have each a YubiKey. On lastpass you can set a backup YubiKey, so I can use hers, in case my own are gone. In addition, you can print a list of OTP and use that.
Dont know what BitWarden offers, tho.
That's great to know! I believe BW lets you do this too, though I'm not positive. I know it offers the printable OTP list - they're very similar products, really.
I do have it backed up by cell phone 2FA. I see what you're saying, but I don't feel that undermines the advantages. I have my YK attached to my car keys - if I lose those, I've got all kinds of problems.
Importing from LastPass may be what gets me to switch over much sooner.
1Password. A subscription also gives you up to 5 family accounts where you can have shared vaults. Multi domain for an account. Pretty solid UI. And the killer is if you're on iOS, you can now use it instead of.the default key chain, which means it's super easy to enter username /password for apps too.
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