Right, so I’ve been wanting to use a password manager for quite a while, but have been putting it off. As I’m getting a new desktop in a few days, I think this is the perfect time to finally take the plunge. I want something that I can also use on my android phone, that’s reasonably easy to use, and doesn’t cost too much.
I’ve been doing a little research and have ended up with either KeePass or LastPass. I’ve also been looking at 1Password, but it costs three times what LastPass does, and doesn’t seem to have any significant additional features, so I don’t know why I’d pick that.
KeePass seems particularly popular with tech people, which I’m sadly not, although if it’s not too complex I might use that anyway. LastPass seems the most straightforward and easy to use, and at $1 a month, I can’t complain about the price. I know they had a security breach last year, but afaik no user passwords were stolen, and it seems likely that their security is pretty strong now (or so I would think).
Anyway, which password manager do you use, and why? And which password manager would you recommend that I use, for the needs outlined in the beginning of this post?
My wife and I use 1Password and love it. We have the Family account which is $5/month and the desktop and mobile apps then are free to download. It’s a great service, in my opinion. We have multiple vaults. For example, we have a shared one, and I have a personal one and a work one, neither of which she can access. It allows us to keep credentials logically separate.
We use 1Password on our Macs and iOS devices. It’s expensive but seamless and easy to use. In our case we chose the perpetual license instead of subscription.
LastPass. It’s easy, has way more features than I use yet, supports both my mobile devices and has a very handy Chrome extension (and desktop app, although I tend to just copy passwords via the extension and then paste into apps instead, possibly not best practices). And it’s cheap. I don’t have any experience with the others so they might be good as well, but LastPass suits me well enough not to care.
PS : with the Android version they’ve got a neat way of popping up matching logins as you hit login fields. iOS won’t let that work but you can have it as a side window and it supports touchID. (I assume it has similar support for Android phones with fingerprint sensors but mine does not.)
Sadly, I don’t have a wife, and although I hope to marry and move in with my girlfriend soonish, we’re not quite there yet. Even then, we could get two LastPass accounts for $2 a month, which is still significantly cheaper than 1Password.
I use KeePass v1. I personally think it’s pretty simple to use, but I’m a technical person, so YMMV. I’m also not sure how good its mobile ports are - I only use the desktop version.
I think I could probably manage just the desktop, but I really would like to also be able to use it on my phone, at which point it looks like it becomes a bit more of a hassle. You’ll also have to store your database online then, which kind of defeats one of the main selling points (imo).
That’s interesting. So you can activate and de-activate your premium account to fit your traveling schedule? I think I’d prefer to just keep the premium account activated, since it’s pretty cheap and I do occasionally like to sing in to websites and the like on my phone.
Another happy Lastpass user hoping their breach doesn’t ever mean all my shit ever gets stolen.
The mobile app is decent, but a little buggy. It didn’t always recognize login fields, and it played havoc with the accessibility settings (which it uses to allow it access to any running app to provide password assistance) on an older version of Android.
On desktop, it’s pretty great and surprisingly featureful, if you’re interested into delving into all the widgets and whatsits
A lot of people fled LastPass when they were acquired by LogMeIn, which some people feel has a shady reputation. I can’t comment specifically on that, since I never used LastPass. I’m super happy with 1Password, though.
Regarding logmein, if they start messing around, I can always just export my data and take it to 1password or whatever. Lastpass data is encrypted locally– the company couldn’t get at your confidential info if they wanted to.
Well, unless they sent an updated version of the browser addon to steal it, I suppose. But that would immediately kill the company.
As you use Android, Keepass2Android is excellent (it also has a quick-unlock feature which I really like). I would definitely use the 2.x variant of Keepass–I was on 1.x for years, but 2.x has more managers, it seems.
I’m sure there are reasons to pay for a password management service. But Keepass has worked very well for me.
1Password is excellent. I have a standalone license and use DropBox to hold my vault, so my passwords are everywhere and I don’t pay a subscription. I never paid full price for the 1Password apps (I have it on iOS, Mac, and PC), always waited for a sale. So in that respect, 1Password was the cheapest route for me compared to other password managers.
As much as I love 1Password on the iPhone, Mac and PC, the Android app was pretty terrible the last time I tried it. Agile Bits is an iOS/macOS focused company. If I were an Android user, I’d probably go with LastPass.
1Password and Dropbox here, too. I dallied with LastPass back in the day, but wasn’t thrilled with the fact that it wasn’t an app, just a browser widget. It didn’t make sense to me to go into Chrome for my Steam password.
Lastpass Premium, w/ 2 factor authentication of course. Lastpass on Android is hands down the best password manager / mobile platform combination. 1Password, on either platform, doesn’t support app autofill as seamlessly as Lastpass on Android. And yep, it works great w/ fingerprint readers for authentication.
I’ve been using Master Password for a year or so, and couldn’t be happier. The fact that no secrets are stored anywhere really soothes my security paranoia. :)
