Passbolt Community Edition Review đź“°
“ The password manager your team was waiting for. Free, open source, self-hosted, extensible, OpenPGP based.” — this is how Passbolt team identify their product.
There was a clear necessity to improve password sharing in our company, I decided that we need to do something about it. I didn’t know self-hosted solutions exist for password managers at that moment. I was nearly convincing our boss to pay for LastPass team plan when I find out about Passbolt.
After some digging and considering I decided to set up it on our server and start use it in my team. Now it’s half a year when we use Passbolt intensively and it’s time to reveal what I think.
What I love ❤️
Full control
Passbolt is fully open source and it is running on our servers. Database is self -hosted too. Privacy of passwords is in our hands and we can make sure that it wouldn’t be leaked. Backups is also our decision, we can apply our preferences when, how and where make database backups.
Even if Passbolt decides to quit the business our password manager will run further. We are not dependent on their service.
Enhanced security
Passbolt won’t let you enter with just a password, you must have a private key. This elevates security level very much.
Password sharing
Passwords can be shared with teams or with specific users, this was the main reason why I was choosing Passbolt instead of other free alternatives.
Open Source
Passbolt is crystal clear — you can check the code and see how your data is being managed, there is no blind trust. Furthermore you can fork repository and alter source code according to your preferences, or even better — implement new features and share them with community!
What I hateđź’”
Passwords depends on your private key and it’s passphrase
If you lose your private key or forget it’s passphrase you can say goodbye to all your passwords. I know it’s really secure approach, but it’s not user friendly at all.
You have to be IT-savvy to change your passphrase
Changing your passphrase is vital for good security, unfortunately you won’t find “Change your passphrase” feature in the settings. You have to use specific software like PuttyGen to alter your private key and make the passphrase different.
Verdict 9/10 đź‘Ś
Despite some disadvantages, Passbolt CE is a great way to manage your team’s passwords without any expenses and even have full control over it. I highly recommend it not because it’s free, but because it’s open source, flexible, self-hosted and secure.
Thank you Passbolt! 🙏
