ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Bitwarden presents limitless safe password administration free of charge, with extra premium options obtainable for $10 per 12 months for people or $40 per 12 months for households with as much as six customers.
- Bitwarden contains a easy consumer interface that’s constant and appropriate throughout a number of platforms, and its premium plan is extra inexpensive than different paid password managers.
- Some Bitwarden options, like password technology for brand new logins, are much less intuitive than these on different platforms.
When deciding on a password manager, you may in all probability wish to weigh the options you want in opposition to how a lot it’s going to value to maintain your knowledge safe and have entry to it when it’s worthwhile to log into an internet site or app. Bitwarden already tops our record of the best free password managers, and its paid plans supply premium options at a extra inexpensive worth than comparable companies.
Bitwarden has three account tiers, together with a wholly free subscription that does every little thing you want a password supervisor to do: create, retailer, and sync a vast variety of passwords accessible on a vast variety of gadgets, safe sharing and textual content sending, and a few primary safety monitoring. A premium account (which prices $10 per 12 months) comes with extras like emergency entry, vault well being studies, and precedence help, and a household account ($40 per 12 months) extends these options to as much as six customers.
Bitwarden can also be appropriate with extra gadgets and working techniques than most. Along with the online vault, there are browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Courageous, Opera, Vivaldi, Tor, and DuckDuckGo (on MacOS) in addition to desktop apps for MacOS, Home windows, and Linux and cellular apps for iOS, WatchOS, Android, and F-Droid. There’s additionally a command line interface.
Additionally: The best free password managers: Expert tested
Set up and setup course of
To arrange a Bitwarden account, you may have to enter your e mail tackle and select a 12-character (minimal) grasp password — this cannot be recovered in the event you overlook, so ensure you put it aside someplace. Bitwarden additionally means that you can create a grasp password trace and verify in case your chosen password has been revealed in a identified knowledge breach.
The very first thing to familiarize your self with is the online vault, which is essentially the most absolutely featured model of Bitwarden obtainable. You’ll be able to add particular person logins, bank cards, identities, and notes or import knowledge from different password managers or your browser keychain in quite a lot of file codecs (reminiscent of .csv, .xml, and .json). The net vault can also be the place you may handle safety settings like enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) in your vault, altering your grasp password, and logging in with passkey.
Simply import your knowledge to Bitwarden from different password managers.
Screenshot by Emily Lengthy/ZDNET
After orienting to the online vault, add the Bitwarden extension to your browser, which can allow you to autofill logins and kinds, and obtain the cellular and desktop apps to your gadgets. Notice that to make use of the Safari and DuckDuckGo extensions, you could even have the MacOS app in your system.
When you can in all probability get by with out the desktop app in any other case, it does let you be logged in and change between as much as 5 accounts at a time (the place the online app is proscribed to at least one). The browser extensions — Safari excepted — and cellular apps supply this identical characteristic, which is useful in the event you use Bitwarden for each private {and professional} functions or are additionally a member of a shared household or workforce account.
Bitwarden fundamentals
Bitwarden saves and autofills credentials in internet browsers and apps, suggesting logins already saved in your vault or permitting you to create a brand new file. Bitwarden’s credential varieties are restricted to logins, bank cards, and identities, and you can not create a customized merchandise like a passport or medical file except you retailer the knowledge in a word (which can’t autofill). Vaults are simple to entry with biometrics: Face ID and Contact ID on iOS and MacOS, fingerprint and face unlock on Android, Home windows Hiya on PC, and system authentication on Linux.
There are just a few Bitwarden options that may really feel clunky. My vault did not join instantly between desktop and browser after I entered a brand new credential — I needed to manually sync earlier than my login confirmed up. And the place different platforms will auto-suggest and save newly generated passwords in type fields, Bitwarden’s password generator requires you to shuttle between the extension or app and the login web page to repeat and paste.
Bitwarden makes use of robust AES-256 encryption and is open supply, so its code is offered for anybody to overview for safety points. The platform is zero-knowledge and your vault will be opened solely along with your grasp password, so except you might have emergency entry arrange with a trusted contact, you will not be capable to get better your knowledge in the event you lose your login. Bitwarden helps a number of multi-factor authentication choices for securing your vault, together with e mail, authentication apps, or FIDO2 WebAuthn credentials — paid subscribers can even use YubiKey and Duo Safety.
For premium customers, Bitwarden presents vault well being studies, which present passwords which can be weak or have been reused or uncovered in breach, saved logins for unsecure web sites, and lacking two-step logins. These studies are solely seen within the internet app, and people on the free tier can solely see usernames which have appeared in knowledge breaches.
Distinctive options (and the way nicely they work)
Bitwarden Ship permits customers to securely share knowledge (and recordsdata, for these on premium tiers), even when the recipient would not have a Bitwarden account, by way of textual content, e mail, AirDrop, or different methodology of messaging. Ship is offered in all apps and extensions, and you’ll arrange expiration and deletion dates, entry counts, and passwords to maintain your knowledge from being accessible to simply anybody or for too lengthy. When you can share particular person vault gadgets with different Bitwarden customers in the event you arrange a company, you can not accomplish that outdoors of the platform.
Whereas most password managers have a built-in password generator, Bitwarden can even generate distinctive usernames in all of its apps and extensions. As an alternative of utilizing the identical easy username or your private e mail for each login, you may create a plus-addressed or catch-all e mail or a random phrase (relying on the positioning or service’s necessities). Bitwarden additionally integrates with e mail alias companies like SimpleLogin and Fastmail.
On its premium tier, Bitwarden has an Emergency Entry characteristic, which helps you to select trusted contacts who can entry your vault if wanted. Trusted contacts can have both viewing or enhancing (takeover) permissions, and entry will routinely be granted after a configured wait time when you have not accredited or rejected their request. This can be useful in case you are incapacitated or within the occasion you lose your individual grasp password. Notice that your trusted contact(s) should even have a Bitwarden account.
Lastly, premium customers have entry to an built-in authenticator, which generates time-based one-time passwords (TOTPs) for multi-factor logins, in lieu of third-party authentication apps. Bitwarden’s built-in authenticator will generate and autofill your TOTPs, which you too can view contained in the vault file or the verification code part of the cellular app.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
Bitwarden stands out with its free tier, which simply meets the wants of customers searching for a extremely safe software to create, save, and fill robust passwords with limitless storage and syncing. A paid subscription additionally presents many advantages at a low value in comparison with different premium password managers, with emergency entry, extra multi-factor authentication options, and extra sturdy safety monitoring. Bitwarden is an particularly good worth for households, with a premium plan coming in at lower than $7 per individual, per 12 months.
