{"id":42223,"date":"2021-06-30T10:34:56","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T10:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=a4388fd7ef1b5c6aac333321fd321fd2"},"modified":"2021-06-30T10:34:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T10:34:56","slug":"bitwarden-review-worth-paying-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/bitwarden-review-worth-paying-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitwarden review: Worth paying for"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n K.G. Orphanides<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
30 Jun, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe competitively priced newcomer is at the forefront of password management<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Price <\/div>\n
\n
$60 <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Lastpass hasn\u2019t earned itself many supporters recently<\/a>, and Bitwarden<\/span> is coming for its password management crown with a massively feature-packed, cross-platform free consumer tier. It\u2019s also almost unique in having a free business tier which, while limited to two users, is an obvious choice for micro-businesses and partnerships. The main drawback is that it has more limited 2FA options<\/a> and lacks support for advanced features such as attaching encrypted files to entries and password vault health reports.<\/p>\n

Bitwarden<\/span> Teams expands on this free two-person tier, with an API<\/span> for easy automation, event logs, user groups, a directory connector to automatically manage users when they\u2019re added to your corporate LDAP<\/span> server, extra two-factor authentication options, password vault health analysis, and the ability to grant emergency access rights to trusted users.<\/p>\n

For larger businesses, Bitwarden<\/span> Enterprise is very competitively priced, supports SSO<\/span> and granular policy control, has the transparency benefit of open-source code and the convenience of a fully managed service. It\u2019s also priced comparably to the mid- or entry-level tiers of many rivals, and if you want, you can even self-host it on your own servers with no additional licensing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bitwarden<\/span> review:\u00a0Client features<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The web-based incarnation of Bitwarden\u2019s<\/span> vault and settings are more functional than beautiful. Everything\u2019s pretty easy to find, although we\u2019d have liked download links to the critical Bitwarden<\/span> apps to be more clearly signposted. You\u2019ll find them on the pull-down from your profile icon at the top right, and at https:\/\/bitwarden.com\/download\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dedicated desktop apps are available for Windows<\/a>, macOS<\/a> and Linux<\/a>. Mobile apps cater to iOS<\/a> and Android<\/a>, with the open source F-Droid store hosting a copy for de-Googleised<\/span> Android devices. An extensive range of browsers are covered, including Firefox, Safari, Chrome and browsers that share their rendering engines, even with the unusual addition of Tor Browser.<\/p>\n

Bitwarden\u2019s<\/span> command line tool (which primarily exists to make automation easier) is available for bash and PowerShell<\/a>, and can be found via a number of package managers including NPM<\/span> \u2013 the recommended install<\/span> path if you\u2019re already using node.js \u2013 Homebrew<\/span>, Chocolatey and Snap.<\/p>\n

The client is eminently easy to use and does exactly what you\u2019d expect from a password manager. Corporate users of Bitwarden<\/span> get a free personal account, which they\u2019ll log into to access their corporate password collection. When they save a password, they’ll be prompted to choose whether it belongs to their personal account or in the business\u2019. Business passwords have to be in a collection, and the collections that each user is given access show up in their clients and online vault.<\/p>\n

The Google Play Store version of Bitwarden\u2019s<\/span> Android client was recently found to include two trackers<\/a>, which the company has convincingly justified<\/a> as required for push notifications and crash reporting; if you\u2019d rather avoid them, they are not included in the version distributed on F-Droid.<\/p>\n

Bitwarden<\/span> review:\u00a0Management features<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Users can be invited with standard, limited privileges to access items in collections that have been assigned to them and, if they are given write access, to add, edit and delete passwords and secure notes from those collections.<\/p>\n

Managers have the power to assign users and groups to collections, as well as to create and delete said collections. Admins can create and assign users to user groups, invite new users, manage policies, check event logs and export the organisation’s vault data en masse, making this a role of trusted authority.<\/p>\n

Only the owners can control billing, subscriptions and integrations for third-party applications and services. However, custom roles can also be created, providing granular control over exactly who gets to do what. Additional permissions are available to Enterprise admins via the Bitwarden<\/span> Business portal.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not too keen on this division between the main management interface and this dedicated portal for making policies and SSO<\/span>. It\u2019s easy to use, and we like the addition of features such as the ability to deny personal password ownership for organisation users and mandate specific security and password options. However, there aren\u2019t quite as many settings here as you\u2019ll find in comparable services from Dashlane<\/span>, Keeper, and LastPass<\/span>, and relatively few options are spread across rather too many pages.<\/p>\n

Bitwarden<\/span> review:\u00a0Verdict<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bitwarden\u2019s<\/span> Free Organization<\/span> tier has limited features, but is entirely free. For those who need more than two users and two collections, Bitwarden<\/span> Teams costs $36 per user, per year or $4 per user, per month and the Enterprise tier costs $60 per user, per year or $6 per user, per month if you don\u2019t want to commit to a full year.<\/p>\n

This puts it among the cheapest business password management services around, and the Enterprise tier, with its fine-grained policy control, would benefit businesses of almost any size, even if they don\u2019t need SSO<\/span>. Furthermore, Bitwarden\u2019s transparent, audited, zero-knowledge approach to security<\/a> is solid and thoroughly documented<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although its admin interface isn\u2019t the most polished around, Bitwarden\u2019s<\/span> excellent feature set and well-designed range of cross-platform clients, as well as its low prices, make it our favourite business password management service.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

K.G. Orphanides<\/p>\n

30 Jun, 2021
\nThe competitively priced newcomer is at the forefront of password management<\/p>\n

Price <\/p>\n

$60
\n Lastpass hasn\u2019t earned itself many supporters recently,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42224,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42223\/revisions\/42224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}