Bitwarden Review

Last month, my password manager, Lastpass, announced that they were changing their terms of service such that I basically had to pay to use their service. Not wanting to do this, I went looking for alternatives that I trusted. I found Bitwarden.

I use products made by both Apple and Microsoft, and these two companies naturally provide password managers that provide most of the normal features. My hesitation with using these services, however, was the fact that the operators of the services inherently had access to my passwords. I know that both Apple and Microsoft are very good about security, but all the same, I wanted a solution that I knew I could really trust.

I looked briefly at 1Password, but decided I did not want to pay for service. I am not against paying for software services, but it seems to me that paying $3 USD per month is a little steep for a password manager.

After a little reading and research, I discovered Bitwarden.

Bitwarden caught my eye because their software products are all open source and available on GitHub. That’s pretty cool. As you know, I really like supporting open projects (Like Signal!).

The level of service offered by Bitwarden is very high. They provide a full suite of tools that help you manage and secure your passwords.

Wondering about security?

Lock your passwords and private information with end-to-end AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, and PBKDF2 SHA-256. -Bitwarden.com

For those of you who are not into cryptology, that sentence above means that your passwords are very secure. If you still are not sure about Bitwarden’s security, take a look at this report. The company hired an independent security firm to analyize their products for security bugs.

Outside of the password management field, Bitwarden has been working on a secure file sharing service called Bitwarden Send.

According to the Bitwarden website, the free tier provides these features:

• One-to-One Text Sharing
• Unlimited Vault Items
• Sync Passwords Across All Devices
• Secure Password Generator
• Self-host Option

Then, if you want even more value, you can pay $10 USD per year for the premium tier with provides, among other things, these features:

• Bitwarden Authenticator (TOTP)
• Emergency Access
• Encrypted File Attachments (1GB)
• One-to-One Text and File Sharing
• Two-step Login with YubiKey, U2F, Duo
• Vault Health Reports

In this article, I won’t go into the setup process, but if you want to get started, click here: Download | Bitwarden

I absolutely love Bitwarden, not only because I know my data is secure, but also because I know that I can support the company’s open-source push.