However, I’d never be entirely sure that the configuration was secure. I don’t doubt my ability to do an adequate job at configuring, backing up, and maintaining a Bitwarden server. All 300 of my passwords need to be kept securely under crypt and key. My password store is the crown jewel of all my digital assets. At least, it would make for something interesting for my blog, right?

I decided to finally look into self-hosting Bitwarden. Regardless, I’m not entirely comfortable relying on anyone for my password. It’s still a for-profit company, but it also has to appease its community of users or risk them taking its source code and spin up competitors. Who knew‽ LastPass isn’t a common good it’s a business.īitwarden is definitely more community-oriented than LastPass. It turns out that not charging for your service isn’t profitable. In the last couple of years, many popular and formerly free services have bait-and-switched in limitations as LastPass did. The change was another blow for the whole idea of free services. To make matters worse, the service didn’t let you choose a device type it arbitrarily picked one for you! Being limited to just one category of devices puts a serious dent in the service’s usefulness. LastPass recently restricted its free service to a tough choice: pay up, or be restricted to using it with either computers or mobile devices.

You could, theoretically, host the backend infrastructure yourself. Even the server-side synchronization component is open source. Bitwarden offers browser extensions and apps for all common operating systems. Three years ago, I migrated to Bitwarden as LastPass just kept cutting features and platform support.īitwarden is an open-source alternative to the proprietary LastPass password manager. I eventually got with the time and started using LastPass. It comes down to keeping my passwords out of the browser, and my setup simple and manageable.įor years, I was (and still am) unwilling to trust hosted password manager services. Here’s why I decided to move my passwords to a KeePass database file instead of using Bitwarden with a self-hosted server.

Bitwarden organization pricing