My Journey With Passwords

Like most people, I used to save my passwords in the browser — both in firefox and chrome — earlier. And not all my passwords were there. So I had the difficulty in remembering the ones that are rarely used and not saved in the browsers. For eg: for filing income tax return, I had to reset the password every year when I do the filing.

This was the story until 2016. That’s when I came across this tool called password manager. And there is a big constellation of apps and services available for that. A simple search will give you a handful of options. Most password managers use end-to-end AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, and PBKDF2 SHA-256.

Thus I started using lastpass.

I have been using lastpass as my personal password manager since 2016. Around the same time, my organisation adopted 1password as its official password manager. So I started using 1password as an official password manager at work. Personally, I liked lastpass over 1password, so I stayed with that for my personal use. The primary reason for sticking with lastpass was, they have a free plan that covers almost all my requirements.

Initially, I was bit concerned about saving bank account passwords in the password manager, but later I started moving everything to lastpass. Since 2017, all my passwords are in lastpass.

During the last 3 years, I have suggested or insisted many of my friends to use a password manager for managing their passwords. As I am using lastpass, I suggested that to most of them.

In the beginning of this year, I heard about another password manager from an ex-colleague of mine — it’s called bitwarden. He told me about it when he started moving from lastpass to bitwarden. But I didn’t feel an urge to change something that I have been using for quite sometime.

Two weeks ago, I just thought about his previous suggestion and thought of giving it a try. I did some research on this topics and I found that many people migrating to bitwarden because of various reasons.

So I created a bitwarden account, installed app on my windows laptop and android phone. Migrated all my data from lastpass to bitwarden. My objective was to try it for sometime and take a decision after that. I would say, I’m still doing my trials.

In fact, bitwarden UI didn’t really impress me until I found an option to enable dark mode. But once I started using bitwarden with dark mode, I started liking it more. Now I’m super impressed with their clean and simple UI.

From my experience so far, most probably I’ll stick with bitwarden and delete my lastpass account.

Initial impression and differences I noticed:

• In bitwarden, the vault displays every entry as a list. In lastpass, you can choose between list and grid views.
• The default listing in lastpass is grouped by folders, but bitwarden lists everything in alphabetical order.
• When you install browser extensions, lastpass shows a widget in the login fields on any webpage with login fields. Bitwarden doesn’t have that. Autofill works with both lastpass and bitwarden.
• Autofill on android is more consistent with bitwarden than with lastpass.
• Password generator in bitwarden is better with an additional option to generate passphrases.
• With every login in the vault, bitwarden keeps a history of passwords. This is really good as we can go back and get the previous password if you accidently overwrites an entry.
• Bitwarden doesn’t support file attachments with free account.
• Bitwarden has security reports, but not for free accounts. It gives only data breach report with free account.

Now lets go through some pros and cons of both bitwarden and lastpass. (This comparison focuses more on the free options of lastpass and bitwarden.)

Bitwarden

Pros:

• It is open source
• Free plan covers all the basic features we expect from a password manager
• Apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS etc
• Browser extensions for all the major browsers
• Simple and clean UI
• Password generator is really good with the option to generate passphrases
• Keeps a password history with every login in the vault
• Option for self hosting
• Premium plan is cheaper (Just $10 per year)
• Frequently audited
• Supports 2FA with authenticator apps
• Has CLI option

Cons:

• Security reports are available only with premium plans
• File attachments are not available for free plan
• 2FA using yubikey, duo push, fido u2f etc are only available with premium plans
• No password sharing option for personal users

Lastpass

Pros:

• Free plan for personal use covers almost all the features a common user needs
• Apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS etc
• Browser extensions for all the major browsers
• Security challenge (a security report of our vault)
• Decent password generator
• Free plan supports file attachments
• One to one sharing with free account
• 2FA using duo push and authenticator apps

Cons:

• History of data breaches
• Proprietary software
• Premium plans are expensive
• 2FA using yubikey is available only with premium plans

As of today, I have 144 logins in my bitwarden vault. I cannot remember all of them if I’m not reusing the passwords. So I won’t say you should use lastpass or bitwarden, but I will surely recommend you to use a password manager. That will make your life a lot easier.