LastPass

Available everywhere, LastPass is offered as standalone desktop software, and much more importantly, as a browser extension. Even iOS and Android have LastPass available as an app, with Android offering integration throughout most apps on your mobile device.

For personal use, I shy away from subscription-based software. I'd rather pay once and get to use it. Luckily LastPass for personal use can be used for free. For a business, the subscription however pays for itself in terms of productivity gains and reducing headaches and trouble tickets for your IT staff.

Very simple and easy to setup and deploy. The browser extension and phone apps make using LastPass a easy way for most people to have secure access to all of there passwords from any device they might use, the autofill options will eventually result in making the entry of secure unique passwords easier than manually typing in a short non-unique password. LastPass has a free tier of service so it is possible to explore what they offer before commuting money.

The free tier is only usable with 1 device so to get any real value out of LastPass compared to other free options you will need to pay. The yearly subscription can be pretty expensive for the service they provide. The passwords are stored in their own cloud service which some may not consider a feature depending on your level of paranoia.

A password manager helps you manage all your passwords. Each password is unique and is protected with a master password only you know. That means you can use unique, strong passwords for every account without having to remember them. This is extremely important for accounts with sensitive information like your email or banking account. Lastpass has done a great job up until recently.

I loved using LastPass, and had been using it for over a year. After they changed their pricing model to pay for a subscription I decided to see if there were any other great password managers out there. I'm not against paying for services, but I don't like how they pulled the rug out of everyone who relied on the free version, where they get so used to the software as apart of their daily life, that it forces many to just pay the fee (many of whom would likely have never signed up in the first place if it were not free). So to me, it feels like a bait and switch, where they had this planned all along. So it's the principle for me.

The smarter way (to strengthen, and not harm their brand), would have been to all along offer a freemium version and offer other extra features that a small percentage of all users are willing to pay for. Essentially they trapped people into using the free version, and are forcing people to pay to now use on multiple devices. It feels shady and left a bad taste in my mouth towards their software and brand.

I've decided to look more into Mozillas free password manager. There are also those from the likes of Google's and Apple's built in password managers. After testing other products, I believe google or mozilla are the way to go, since apples is too proprietary (*they are a closed ecosystem - you can't as easily use cross platform and on other browsers)

The browser extension and mobile app just make Lastpass so easy to use. I love that I will never have to think of another strong password as long as I have access to Lastpass as the generator is great for this. Knowing my personal vault is completely secure, but that I can also add any password in to a shared folder to enable collaboration across a team is great. And there is no better feeling than only having to log in to one application and know that wherever I browse to if I have an account the credentials simply populate from Lastpass automatically.

I find provisioning users a little labour intensive - but that might be because I haven't ever looked to see if there is an easier way. And if you have a login page which asks for more than 2 credentials e.g. account name, user name and password... but as long as you put the account name in the secure notes of the password entry on last pass it's still easy to find.