ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Bitwarden gives limitless safe password administration without cost, with further premium options accessible for $10 per 12 months for people or $40 per 12 months for households with as much as six customers.
- Bitwarden encompasses a easy person interface that’s constant and appropriate throughout a number of platforms, and its premium plan is extra reasonably priced than different paid password managers.
- Some Bitwarden options, like password era for brand spanking new logins, are much less intuitive than these on different platforms.
When choosing a password manager, you will in all probability need to weigh the options you want towards how a lot it will value to maintain your knowledge safe and have entry to it when it is advisable log into an internet site or app. Bitwarden already tops our record of the best free password managers, and its paid plans provide premium options at a extra reasonably priced worth than related companies.
Bitwarden has three account tiers, together with a completely free subscription that does the whole lot you want a password supervisor to do: create, retailer, and sync an infinite variety of passwords accessible on an infinite 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 be appropriate with extra gadgets and working programs than most. Along with the net 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 will must enter your electronic mail tackle and select a 12-character (minimal) grasp password — this cannot be recovered should you neglect, so be sure you reserve it someplace. Bitwarden additionally lets you create a grasp password trace and examine in case your chosen password has been revealed in a recognized knowledge breach.
The very first thing to familiarize your self with is the net vault, which is essentially the most totally featured model of Bitwarden accessible. You may add particular person logins, bank cards, identities, and notes or import knowledge from different password managers or your browser keychain in a wide range of file codecs (equivalent to .csv, .xml, and .json). The online vault can be the place you will handle safety settings like enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) to your vault, altering your grasp password, and logging in with passkey.
After orienting to the net vault, add the Bitwarden extension to your browser, which is able to allow you to autofill logins and kinds, and obtain the cellular and desktop apps to your gadgets. Be aware that to make use of the Safari and DuckDuckGo extensions, you have to even have the MacOS app in your system.
Whilst you can in all probability get by with out the desktop app in any other case, it does will let you be logged in and swap between as much as 5 accounts at a time (the place the net app is proscribed to at least one). The browser extensions — Safari excepted — and cellular apps provide this similar characteristic, which is useful should you use Bitwarden for each private {and professional} functions or are additionally a member of a shared household or staff account.
Bitwarden fundamentals
Bitwarden saves and autofills credentials in net 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’t create a customized merchandise like a passport or medical file except you retailer the knowledge in a observe (which can’t autofill). Vaults are straightforward 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 once 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 travel between the extension or app and the login web page to repeat and paste.
Bitwarden makes use of sturdy AES-256 encryption and is open supply, so its code is out there for anybody to evaluation for safety points. The platform is zero-knowledge and your vault may 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 of get well your knowledge should you lose your login. Bitwarden helps a number of multi-factor authentication choices for securing your vault, together with electronic mail, authentication apps, or FIDO2 WebAuthn credentials — paid subscribers may use YubiKey and Duo Safety.
For premium customers, Bitwarden gives vault well being studies, which present passwords which are 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 net app, and people on the free tier can solely see usernames which have appeared in knowledge breaches.
Distinctive options (and the way properly they work)
Bitwarden Ship permits customers to securely share knowledge (and information, for these on premium tiers), even when the recipient would not have a Bitwarden account, by way of textual content, electronic mail, AirDrop, or different methodology of messaging. Ship is out there 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. Whilst you can share particular person vault objects with different Bitwarden customers should you arrange a company, you can’t accomplish that exterior of the platform.
Whereas most password managers have a built-in password generator, Bitwarden may generate distinctive usernames in all of its apps and extensions. As a substitute of utilizing the identical easy username or your private electronic mail for each login, you may create a plus-addressed or catch-all electronic mail or a random phrase (relying on the location or service’s necessities). Bitwarden additionally integrates with electronic 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 mechanically be granted after a configured wait time when you have not accepted or rejected their request. This can be useful if you’re incapacitated or within the occasion you lose your personal grasp password. Be aware 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 can even 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 in search of a extremely safe software to create, save, and fill sturdy passwords with limitless storage and syncing. A paid subscription additionally gives many advantages at a low value in comparison with different premium password managers, with emergency entry, further 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.