I have been using Bitwarden for around 7~ years. Subscription for this long too, at 10USD p/year. I will be switching due to lack of transparency, and would love to hear others thoughts on this.
The linked article goes into further detail, but here is a small summary that very much concern me / are sus:
- that 10USD per year has gone up quietly . I just checked and I have no email telling me it’s increased. It renews in like 2 months, so this is good timing for me
- Originally Bitwarden had values as apart of the acronym “GRIT”. Gratitude, Responsibility, Inclusion, and Transparency. They have changed the last two words to “Innovation, Trust”
- There is now a new CEO, this was not announced and the only reason people outside of Bitwarden know is that someone saw this change on LinkedIn
- The free tier momentarily disappeared from their product page for about a month (april14-may14). People were likely still able to make free accounts during this period. Bitwarden says it was a marketing mistake
The price hike is one thing, but for me the acronym change is most concerning, which is why I will be looking at another password manger (probably keepassxc)
The CEO apparently is a big private equity guy, and those bloodsucking ticks only know how to do one thing: Suck every last drop of money and goodwill from the company and its customers as quickly as possible.
Breaks my heart, I’ve been a massive Bitwarden advocate for years. Been happily paying for the individual paid plan. I’m now working on setting up KeyPassXC with syncthing.
Does KeyPassXC have passkey and TOTP support?
Yes. For passkey, you need to install the browser plugin and enable support in the preferences.
Both, yes
Do you know if I can get KeePass working on both PC and Android in sync with Syncthing?
I have been using it that way for years and it works well (for this scenario no problem). Only recently I switched from Syncthing to using mounted SMB share. I switched partly because of the Syncthing for Android maintainer switch (though I still think its safe) and because Syncthing sometimes didn’t sync on my Iodé custom rom and I got tired of having to open the app to sync.
Yeah, I switched to KeePass for the same reason. The only way I trust software is if they’ll show me the code, and the only reason to replace “transparency” with “trust” IMHO is because they want to go closed source. Innovation also tends to just mean 'we’re going to be charging you for features that used to be free ’
It much work to get all the names and passwords and stuff from BW moved over to keepass?
Not really, just had to install KeePass on my computer and export my bitwarden passwords BW makes that easy to do) and import them to KeePass. I haven’t set up the browser extension yet, as at a glance it says it doesn’t work with browsers installed with flatpak and that’s how I have LibreWolf installed. Setting up syncthing was also pretty straightforward.
I tested this a few weeks ago, but one thing I struggled with was having custom fields imported. Don’t know if I somehow did something wrong, but while the export data had them as expected, KeePassXC just didn’t import it all? The standard Notes did get imported, but none of my custom fields.
Sweet. Thanks.
I never use browser extension for my pwm anyway. Just the pwm apk on my phone and thats about it. Seems less likely for any shenanigans to happen that way.
Totally agree. I’ve been a multi-year paying customer of bitwarden for the family, always happy with their service, especially when compared with the 1pass I use at work. But that CEO avatar picture alone gives me enough bad vibes, let alone his credentials, the acronym change, so yea I too reckon I’ve been putting off the switch long enough now.
I came from keepass, can’t go back there, even if I now have syncthing set up everywhere. Also, how would that work for the family, you force everyone to set up their own file and hope they manage it well? Highly doubtful.
I saw aliasvault pop up too, this last week. Haven’t looked into it yet, and although a great contender, it’s probably too young to seriously consider.
These are the alternatives according to selfh.st/apps :
- Vaultwarden
- Password Pusher
- KeePassXC
- Passbolt
- Infisical
- OpenBao
- YeetFile
- AliasVault
- OrigamiVault
Anyone here had some bad experiences with any of these?
vaultwarden allows you to keep using the bitwarden client i think, just with your own server. should be the most seamless for the family.
If bitwarden went completely rotten could they cease and desist vault warden?
I’d asked a similar question. Basically, the response I got was: if the something goes sideways, the community can hard fork all their clients and use vaultwarden as a server (their current licenses would allow that).
Another suggestion was that you can always use the web ui bundled with vaultwarden directly (heh, I’ve been using vaultwarden for years and I don’t think I ever used the web ui - just the applications, CLI, browser extension).
They could, but probably it’s more likely they would just introduce changes that break compatibility a little at a time.
Good point, that is a big factor indeed, ease of migration. Vaultwarden should get bonus points for this, so I’ll be sure to add it to the list of alternatives to try out. Thanks!
Switched from keepassxc to vaultwarden a while ago (mostly due to the horrible syncing experience, and to use the same password manager as my family so I could help out better).
It’s a selfhosted and open source version of the Bitwarden server, you’ll use the (open source) Bitwarden clients. So its all features of Bitwarden plus full transparency
oh so if Bitwarden eventually locks down their app, the folks over at vaultwarden could just spin up their own f-droid app?
Yes, the clients (Desktop, Web, Browser, Mobile, CLI) are published by Bitwarden under GPL3 license, so you can always fork them.
Bitwarden could delete the repos, but the code is out there.
still in beta (stable) but im using aliasvault for a couple of months now and i don’t have any issues
still in beta
any idea when they will release a major version?
Is AliasVault here for the long term?
Yes. We build AliasVault with a long-term vision, not with a quick exit in mind. The product is never “done”; we keep developing, improving, and refining AliasVault continuously to give users the best possible experience over the long term.
Our spiritual predecessor, SpamOK.com, has been running since 2013. That is more than 13 years of uninterrupted service helping people fight spam and protect their privacy online. The same long-term mindset applies to AliasVault.
That does inspire confidence, so I’ll add it to the list!
vaultwarden has an uncertain future with the new bitwarden management – we would need bitwarden apps that use vaultwarden apis rather than bitwarden. I suppose if bitwarden breaks api compatibility that might happen.
KeepPassXC is what I was using before – it’s like keepass. It has browser integration, but syncing is problematic, and it doesn’t have biometric unlock.
if bitwarden breaks api compatibility that might happen
I should think so too. I’d expect a big race to start, like with the kbin/lemmy apps after the reddit api fiasco.
I’m using boost for lemmy btw. It was a great reddit client back in the day, and when the api change was announced they switched to lemmy pretty quickly.
I agree, syncthing syncing is problematic which is why i was looking ar vaultwarden.
It got bought by a company owned by Vista Equity partners, a private equity firm.
The loss of values happened at Citrix when it was Vought by Vista. They installed Tom Krauseasthe CEO to gut it from the inside out.
Everybody should have an exit plan ready to be able to leave bitwarden
If you or someone you trust happen to have a home server, just install Vaultwarden, which is the community fork of Bitwarden without any fees, shady stuff or reliance on Bitwarden infrastructure.
If you look real close side by side there is a subtle difference…
Suuuper easy to stand up, took me about 20 minutes to get it up and running
Well, when u say supereasy to set up, i don’t know. The need for reverse proxy was driving me nuts. For someone that doesn’t expose anything to the outside world, the need for a reverse proxy is overkill in my opinion. But i did hive up fairly easily, so i’ll have another go in the future when i have time. For now my Syncthing + Keepass setup will have to do but i do find its not 100% robust. If i have keepass open on both mobile and laptop, i’m at risk of loosing changes. If the change is made on one device and i close after change, i won’t see the change until i close keepass on the other device. But by then syncthing thinks that the latter is the most recent change and marks the file of first device as conflict file. So the chsnge is not lost but its not in the most “recent” version of the database.
If you have several, it really is convenient to set up an internal reverse proxy for all your internal-only services. One place to set up let’s encrypt and set up subdomains or different paths for the different services. No need for URLs with different port numbers or IP addresses.
I know this options exists, but honestly I don’t think I have reliable enough infrastructure. It’s hardly ever offline, but my backup game is super weak, and I have had to rebuild from scratch once in the past three years.
What happens if I fuck up again and have to rebuild? Just feels like a massive potential failure point.
Your backup is all your clients. Every client has a blob. If you loose it export and then import. That is if everything else fails.
Bitwarden app is fully compatible with Vaultwarden and stores copies of all your passwords for offline access, so as long as you have access to the app somewhere, you’ll have them.
Also, Bitwarden can export your passwords as a file in several formats, readable by Bitwarden, KeePassXC etc. You can have that stored somewhere safe.
How do you use it on mobile? I didn’t find an app version
Use the Bitwarden app, it is compatible. Under the email field, choose a custom server and set it up there.
Disappointing, but I’m still going to be running the free tier of Bitwarden for the time being. Thanks for the heads up.
In the same boat as you.
I don’t like how it’s changing, I also don’t like how the UI is changing and, sadly, as a EU citizen I can’t trust it any longer since it is made in the USA.
But I’m no hurry to switch. I mean, I won’t rush or worry about paying one more year subscription if I have to. I’ll try alternatives as long as I have too. So far, there is
- the Canadian 1Password and
- the non-synced/local but free to use KeepassXC that are standing out.
Both work with Linux.
non-synced/local but free to use KeepassXC
I sync it with Synching with no issues.
Interesting! What do you use to open it on your phone?
KeePassDX-libre
Migrated to Keepass shortly before the price increase ( not because of it) just for the reason of wanting my vault fully offline. Seeing these changes at BW still makes me sad, was a long time paying user & truly enjoyed it
Keepass is fantastiic, my vault is pretty static so just manually copy to other device as needed. And of course, have your full backup plan in place as with all things
I guess it’s time to move on, I’ll check PrivacyGuides for a better alternative while I compare by myself too.
I’m not gonna allow a quiet price hike, this is scummy and anti-consumer.
The price hike was announced months ago iirc and brings bitwarden in line (still cheaper) with all the other services after being the same price over years and years of inflation.
I got my eyes on em because of the vc money but the price hike isn’t out of line.
As a former subscriber since today, I didn’t get an email about it so it’s wasn’t announced enough imo.
Idk what to tell you, the price hike was announced months ago and I had to field a lot of questions from people I help with computers about it.
Another person posted the receipts for when emails got sent out and I remember warning people about this when it first “hit” the news cycle in January.
What would have been enough announcement?
Great resource. However, I remember one of them recommending straight up poor advice (and I think suspected sponsored recommendations), and the community shunned them for it. I just can’t remember if its https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ or https://www.privacytools.io/
The bad one is privacytools.
Thnx
The price is still reasonable for me. I don’t want to switch services because they might enshitrify someday.
Bitwarden was taken over by private equity just before these changes btw
price almost doubled; it’s $19.80 a year now. Still cheaper than 1pass or lastpass, which are $3/month. I don’t think they would increase to that much, because 1pass is objectively better.
Out of a desire not to switch, I’m going to ask what I know to be a naive/dumb question: what’s the worst that can happen? It’s a mature gpl codebase
They become another LastPass.
Was LastPass open source to the same degree that Bitwarden is? It’s super easy to run your own Vaultwarden server already, and it shouldn’t be a problem for the community to fork and maintain unofficial clients either. Doesn’t seem like there’s much Bitwarden as a company could do about that, even if they wanted to.
I’m surprised that nobody has (meaningfully) forked the clients yet, it seems like all the warning signs are there
When the clients start changing for the worse I’m sure there will be forks…
Yeah for sure, I’m just thinking that it can be a little rocky to get governance and contribution processes set up, sometimes those last minute forks flop because the person who decided to advertise their fork ends up being ill equipped to handle running the project. If we can get a libre warden client project working before hand then it’ll make the process a lot more seamless when issues with bitwarden arise.
I don’t remember last pass being open source.
hello, quit using centralized services
Yep seems to be the way 🙏
I’ve been very happy and impressed with Proton Pass.
That’s it. Thank you for your service until now.
