1Password – Standalone licenses vs. new subscription service | Hacker News Reader

1Password – Standalone licenses vs. new subscription service

discussions.agilebits.com

95 pointsdeevus80 comments

Full disclosure, I work for AgileBits, the folks that make 1Password.

I hear and appreciate your collective concerns that we are getting rid of the standalone license option. However, I'd like to assure you that not only are there no plans to get rid of it, we are continuing to develop the standalone version. We know that we have a critical mass of customers who appreciate the ability to store their password data outside of the cloud. And given that we are entirely customer funded, those are customers that we cannot and are not ignoring.

Our subscriptions options remain new and we are still figuring a lot of things out. One of the ongoing issues has been customer confusion between licenses and account. That is why we have made it a bit harder to locate information about licenses on our site. Nothing insidious, just an attempt to make it easier for the majority of our customers to locate what they are looking for without confusing them.

If anyone has any additional questions or concerns, I would encourage you to contact us directly at support+social@agilebits.com.

Best, Eva

It's really hard to believe you aren't moving to a 100% subscription model, especially when the "standard license" is now effectively getting the legacy treatment on your product page. It doesn't feel like another version of your product, it feels like the one that is about to be dead.

As a long time user across platforms who has continued to pay for upgrades and has now licensed a Team and Family. I appreciate the direction you are heading, and I was more than willing to pay a recurring fee given how much the pace of development has picked up.

Since 1Password hasn't had much support for teams and password sharing (e.g., for super admin or disaster scenarios), I have continued to support multiple managers across my clients. Due to their robust support for teams, Dashlane and Lastpass have been the most deployed. While these solutions are simple enough that my clients can make them work, they don't enjoy using them. Quite often, I've learned that they've hit enough obstacles that they don't even trust the tool and keep reusing the same weak passwords all over the web so that they can remember what they need.

I'm rushing to move these same clients over to 1Password before the Teams promo ends. The attention to detail and subtle improvements to UX have been really well received. And today, I will be meeting with a non-profit board to convince them to get on board.

I will take the opportunity to push a few requests (that I know you've heard before ... from me):

1) Many of my clients are required (by law) to provide access to their business records in case of their death. It'd be nice to give my family and employees access to certain accounts as well. Guest vaults with auditing are a step in the right direction, but I'd love to see time delayed access. I have an opportunity to reject access within a certain time frame (configurable). My concern here is that I don't want to rely on the security practices of the people I'm sharing with to protect these particular passwords.

2) Pairwise sharing with teammates and guests. I often need to share a single password/key (not a vault) in a pairwise fashion with several different people. Vaults are too much for one-off sharing, and the guest limits are pretty restrictive here.

3) Revised guest model. I believe Team accounts are capped at 20 guests and Families at 2. Why not cap the number of items in a guest vault (10-15 seems fair) instead? I'm assuming the restriction is there to prevent people from abusing the feature (totally understandable). But there are some valuable guest use cases for power users (and even everyday family users).

I want to set up a vault for my housemates and another for the folks who sublet the extra offices in my lease. 1Password is the perfect place for me to store information about door codes, wireless networks, and a few other sensitive details that may be important if I'm not available. This could also get me off of LastPass/Dashlane completely for managing project-related passwords with clients.

4) Along the same lines, the Pro pricing for Team seems really high. I do need some of the functionality, but I can't imagine paying approx $150/user/year to get it (though maybe a $150/team/year to upgrade the feature set would feel reasonable even for my small team). I also know that I'll never be able to sell my smaller healthcare providers on it, even though the extra functionality would be valuable for compliance.

5) Referral/partnership arrangement. I am constantly onboarding clients onto password management solutions, and handling many of their day-to-day challenges. I'm not just thinking about financial incentives here. It'd be nice to have some partner oriented features in the application, like the ability to move a guest vault out to an independent team or audit-only access.

Hey, I'm a happy 1pass customer, but give me fucking break.

Maybe 1 visitor in 100, visiting your website, would even realize that there's a fixed-price option still available. It's buried way at the bottom of the pricing page, hidden inside the FAQ.

The link itself just leads to a purchase page, with absolutely no attempt to explain or lay out the differences between the subscription and fixed price option.

To claim this about "preventing customer confusion" seems to me pretty absurd. Be more honest, please.

I think the explanation is reasonable even if you disagree with it, and the world isn't a polarity between "company behaviors I agree with" and "shady, insidious, underhanded behavior by a company that deserves basically openly harassing someone who volunteered to talk about it and questioning their integrity and honesty in a comment." People are too quick to accuse someone of dishonesty these days and I don't think most realize how serious of a charge that actually is. If you said something like that to me in person we'd have a serious problem because at the end if the day, integrity is all anybody really has.

Anyway, completely happy subscription user here and it's actually the reason I went back to 1Password. I used to do the standalone Dropbox thing too and the subscription is just night and day better, and given the value I extract from this product I'm not going to freak out over half a coffee a month nor accuse AgileBits, a company I've tremendously respected for many years with their attention to support and customer experience, with suddenly being the axis of evil as you've done here.

I'll drive this point home: I actually got the standalone licenses cheaper through work way back when and still happily entered into paying for a subscription from my own funds.

I think the people extremely upset about this, including you, are the ones being disingenuous and forgetting how reasonable AgileBits is in everything else they do. I'm not even a fan, it's just been apparent to me for a long time.

Again, this is $36 per year. How much value do you extract from the stuff you store in 1Password? Is it really that unreasonable for a company to move toward more recurring revenue? It's a really weird opinion here, of all places, the "let's build a hypergrowth SaaS" home of the Web.

I'm not accusing them of being evil, or even commenting on the change to a subscription model -- I'm just calling out what to me looks like transparent dishonesty.

I think this is disingenuous because only a month ago Kyle from AgileBits was saying that you are considering getting rid of the standalone option, if customers vote with their wallet and I quote:

> "we don't have any immediate plans to remove the standalone products. However, if a vast majority of our users switch to 1Password Family or 1Password Teams (and as of today, an Individual plan!) then it doesn't make a ton of sense to keep the standalone product around. So, it's probably one of those speak with your wallet kind of scenarios."

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173892

You also got rid of the Mac-only licensing option after introducing 1Password for Families. Unless I don't remember correctly, it was about $20 cheaper than the option that also gives you that old and unmaintained Windows client.

I mean, if it's a contest between the standalone version and subscriptions, it sure looks like the game isn't fair.

I have two standalone accounts (wife and I) and I use the Team subscription for my, well, team. The thing is, I've chosen 1Password for my personal secrets because I don't share them with anyone, ever. I don't need them stored centrally as long as there is the Dropbox option, and I feel like it is precisely this architecture that has kept 1Password mostly out of the headlines unlike some of their competitors.

I'm a customer that has purchased on multiple platforms, paid for upgrades, and recommended 1password to people in person and on social media. I don't ever want to sync my secrets to the cloud. Ever. A subscription model will permanently lose me as a customer.

I think you need to adjust the pricing page graphics to reflect there are three purchase options, not just two subscription options. Many people, myself included, will not use subscriptionware.

I have no problem with your intention to move users towards annual subscriptions, nor offering cloud storage as an optional feature. This would certainly be more convenient for newbies.

I also have no problem in paying you $36 per year for the same functionality that I have today with the downloadable version. I guess between the family version, plus iOS, plus upgrades, I've been paying the same amount every couple of years.

But the moment you start forcing users to use your cloud storage (instead of locally managed options, like ssh, local sync, etc), you lost me forever.

Please make sure you keep these options very separate. Give security conscious users the option to not have their computers "phoning home" to your servers, and to explicitly enable cloud sync only if they want.

I like the separation between services right now. 1Password manages the client, Dropbox handles the storage, because they're experts at that. The same is true for Arq, a popular Mac backup software. Arq handles the client interactions but uses third party storage providers to store the data. I trust Amazon to store my backups.

Granted, backups are not the same as passwords, but they are both important to maintain in terms of data integrity and security. And I wouldn't trust Arq to run their own cloud storage platform and I don't trust 1Password to operate their own cloud password storage solution, either.

Hey Eva, can you pass some notes onto the team for me?

- OSX Desktop app is great. The "[+]" button to add new logins is in an odd location, but no big deal.

- The Android app needs a "Most Recent" view. I end up searching for the same logins, until I remember they can be favorited.

- When I re-install the Android App, it always prompts me to buy the PRO version. Takes a bit to resolve that it's already been purchased.

- Windows app is bad. Really bad. Recommended 1Password to a few friends, and had to later apologize when I realized they weren't in the Mac ecosystem. Slow, janky. Has a bad habit of locking up chrome when I first open the plugin.

- Lastly - yet another subscription service? I want you to be successful, but I likely won't be recommending 1Password anymore, or dropping if the standalone license gets feature locked.

I wasn't aware of this change, so I read the entire linked support thread. Although the company responders did some nice verbal gymnastics, I think it is pretty obvious that this is just mainly just a money grab on behalf of AgileBits.

Additionally, several comments implied that AgileBits was hiding the option to buy a standalone license, so I looked at their pricing page[1]. I have to say I agree; it is not listed as an option alongside the two subscription options. In fact, you have to scroll all the way down, to the end of the FAQ, to even find a mention of it.

[1]https://1password.com/sign-up/

I'll concede that a subscription option might be better for some users, especially those using it on multiple devices, but I think AgileBits should not be hiding the regular license option.

Completely agree.

I personally have no problem using commercial software, but my password manager is one place where I suspect that I should be moving to open source in case I don't want to renew my license over some future pricing disagreement, and I lose access to some of my critically important property (passwords).

It's tempting to think that we'll be able to keep our currently purchased standalone licenses in perpetuity, but I've already been dragged through at least one major version upgrade of 1Password to keep pace with new OS developments (for OS X and iOS). There were no new features that I needed or even wanted, but I paid the $50 (or whatever it was, I notice a new license is now $64.99!) anyway to maintain compatibility.

Unfortunately, the landscape for open source alternatives doesn't seem particularly good. Some of those mentioned here like Keepass [1] look like they're usable, but are quite a far shot from 1Password's quality.

[1] http://keepass.info/

In another comment I mentioned these 3 KeePass ports:

[1] https://keeweb.info/

[2] http://keepass2android.codeplex.com/

[3] https://minikeepass.github.io/

I'm a former 1Password user and these work fine. The Android app is actually better than 1Password, and KeeWeb is better for me because it works on Linux as well and it gives me a full history of all edits (not just the password field). Plus being just one file, it is also easier to go back in time using Dropbox's version history.

What you'll miss is the fancy browser extension, but for me that's fine, because a browser extension represents a huge security risk, and selecting a field in KeeWeb is painless as it has keyboard shortcuts. 1Password also has the capability for local network Wifi sync, which is really cool, but at least in my opinion they are moving away from this model and that feature will be gone.

So you'd rather copy and paste passwords because KeePass doesn't have browser extensions? No, thanks. How are extensions security risks? You still need to enter your master password to decrypt passwords. And extensions are siloed by the browser.

For example, Lastpass recently had an exploit in their extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171547

I see nothing wrong with copy/paste. On Android it is a security risk, because apps can get notified and wake up when it happens, but Keepass2Android that I mentioned provides a keyboard for input which works better than 1Password.

And on desktops, I just don't think it's a real threat. Bruce Schneider doesn't thinks so either, while at the same time he recommends against auto-fill: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/09/security_of_p...

But even so, KeeWeb and KeePass give you this "auto-type" facility that types the password for you in any password field, without going through copy/paste. It's not much, but it works if you're worried.

There are browser extensions that interface with KeePass to do what you are asking.

I don't use them, I simply use KeePass' autotype feature.

I'd like to see websites make copy/paste easier by allowing you to enter user name and password in a combined field. Have separate fields that can be used the normal way, but also allow submission with the username field left blank and the password field containing username:password.

The fancy browser extensions are important in protecting you from phishing. They will refuse to fill in your password unless the domain matches exactly.

As a multi device user, it's definitely better for me. I have 2x windows desktop, a Mac laptop, an iPhone and an android tablet. With the current non-subscriptioin pricing model, it will cost me 65 dollars for the two desktop apps, plus another 20 dollars for the android + ios apps - that's a fairly hefty upfront fee. 3 dollars a month (after 6 months) is far more appealing really.

As an aside, it's extremely difficult to find out how much the android pro feature currently costs, I ended up finding it in the comments sectino of one of their posts rather than the google play store or on their website.

But the idea behind a password manager is that you effectively use it in perpetuity. I bought 1Password in 2013 for $50, and the iPhone app for $9. I use it several times a day, and don't see that changing at any point in the near future. At $3/month, I would have be approaching twice what I actually paid, with no prospect for being done with that payment. I get why AgileBits is going to a subscription model; I'm sure they would prefer that I had paid them $96 by now, rather than $59, and that I would go on to pay them another $36 per year every year forever. But the idea that you, as a consumer, are looking at this and seeing an appealing deal suggests you haven't really thought it through very well.

I'm seeing a more appealing deal than putting out 80 dollars up front. The amount of software that I have paid for up front, and continued to use for longer than 2 years I can count on one hand. I wouldn't be surprised if in 2 years time I had moved to another service. Given that 62 + 20 is the break even point, that's 27 months paid, plus the 6 months up front, just shy of 3 years.

Out of curiosity, when new versions of iOS and macOS get released over the next several years, are you willing to pay for the upgrades the developers will have to inevitably release in order to maintain compatibility with the OS?

Or do you expect your initial $59 purchase in 2013 to truly last in perpetuity?

You will definitely not pay again for the Android / iOS apps, unless they release it with another name in the app store, or they introduce another paid option, hiding new features under some switch in their code, otherwise for both Android and iOS it's a pay once model.

I've also had 1Password 6 for at least a year. Nothing new happened since I first bought it. And the Windows client still sucks so horribly that indeed that price isn't justified.

But btw, for 3x desktop licenses I don't think you'll get away with 3 dollars per month ;-)

Well I haven't paid for it, I'm currently using lastpass. Why wouldn't I be able to use their $3 plan for 3 desktop machines? They're all my machines (work desktop, personal desktop, personal laptop) and amount of time I am using more than one at a time is minimal.

You're right, you can use it on all three. Btw, the OS X version is great, more than great, it's the best, but the Windows version is old and kind of unmaintained. Make sure you like it.

Eh, I don't consider it hidden as much as they just rolled out this brand new version of the product (the subscription version), so of course they're going to emphasize what's new.

As a 1Password user, I actually prefer this model. Many of us believe that subscription service pricing leads to more sustainable software companies, and for that reason I'm happy to see the AgileBits team take a forward looking perspective.

I have been a paying customer since 2010 or so. We have done a trial of 1Password Family, but I just don't see the advantage for customers. You just get locked into someone's data silo and you cannot purchase upgrades anymore at your own leisure. I agree with those who say that it primarily benefits AgileBits.

Sadly, my experience with other products that switched to a subscription model has been that at some point all kinds strategies ('incentives') are applied to get people to move to subscription licensing. So, I am carefully watching the situation as it unfolds.

I know this question comes up time and time again, but as it seems a good fit here: What are the best password managers out there that do not force you to use their "cloud" for syncing between devices and are available on all major platforms?

I am a very happy 1Password user up to now because of it's local wifi sync feature, but I think with this announcement the writing is on the wall: The standalone sync will go away sometime down the road to "improve" everyone's user experience by moving them to the cloud sync and the accompanying subscription revenue. So it might be a good time to explore (open source?) alternatives...

I've been pretty happy with Enpass. Runs on pretty much everything, syncs to your choice of cloud services.

This looks like a great alternative. Thanks! I will def keep this one in my back pocket in case 1password does indeed start to deprecate or mess with the standalone offerings.

I'd be surprised if any features were removed from the current standalone version. So basically, until need a software upgrade, either for compatibility or feature reasons, there are no issues.

1password major versions always cost money, so the only added cost is that of switching. With the current data-format of 1password being open-source, that shouldn't be that hard.

As for alternatives, last time I looked (~3 months ago, when I was in the market for a password manager) I chose 1password because of their superior browser plugins. The contending alternatives were: - keepass (open source) - lastpass - dashlane

I wouldn't be surprised if features were removed in a version or two. The have negative incentive to maintain working dropbox synching code, since now it's competition for their main product.

Even if they don't remove the feature, what are the odds it gets any love and continues to work well?

Bitrot is a real thing. Most software needs a little bit of love to continue working as the world around it changes.

I use this everywhere and I've been slowly migrating all of my passwords off of 1password:

http://genpass.supergenpass.com

Bookmarlet and mobile app and I don't need to store any passwords anymore. I also save passwords in the browser to save time after they're generated.

I recommend Keepassx.

I'm a former 1Password user and switched to KeePass ports.

On the desktop I use KeeWeb [1], which works great on both Linux and OS X, and I assume on Windows as well, on Android I use Keepass2Android [2], which is actually better than 1Password on Android btw, and on iOS I use MiniKeePass [3]. This last one is a little weak, but it works. All 3 are open source btw.

And seriously, it works better than I expected for $0.

What made me switch is their move to a subscription model. They pretend that the old licensing model will still be around, but if you pay attention, that's not true. The first thing they did for example is to get rid of the Mac-only license, in order to make subscriptions seem more competitive. And they also stopped developing standalone features. I'm a Linux user as well, I would have liked a Linux port. And the only sync option is Dropbox, but Google Drive or other options would have been nice.

On cloud syncing, I do syncing by means of Dropbox, but my Dropbox directory isn't a big target for hackers and at the very least I know how KeePass and GPG work, what ends up in my Dropbox being just an encrypted file. I don't know how LastPass and 1Password work, even though they claim the encryption is only client side, and frankly I don't care anymore.

[1] https://keeweb.info/

[2] http://keepass2android.codeplex.com/

[3] https://minikeepass.github.io/

KeePass comes with built-in security flaws, so that's the main plus over 1Password! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9727297

KeePass is not the same as KeepassX, or KeepassDroid, or any of the other clients.

> What are the best password managers out there that do not force you to use their "cloud" for syncing between devices and are available on all major platforms?

The definition of "best" is subjective, and eventually up to your desires.

With that said, at least Password Gorilla (https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki) is open source and has some built in 'sync' ability that does not _require_ any cloud service (it is manually driven, but it highlights most 'merge conflicts' for you to resolve) . It is also available on Linux, Windows, and MacOS, and while not itself available on Android there are several Android apps. (and maybe an iOS app or two) that inter-operate with the encrypted file format it uses.

Yes it might have been a valid question a few years ago. These days the ReadySignOn iOS is unquestionably the best password manager all around. Actually it's the only one that I ccould trust. Its recently released source code of KeePass plug-in shows it actually uses a million key derivation iteration count and additional direct key xors on top of ASE256.

What does ReadySignOn cost? I can't find any pricing information on their website.

On their App Store web page it just says "Free" without the usual "Offers in-app purchases".

On closing the tab I saw something about "purchases" and this is what I see in the lower left corner:

Top In-App Purchases

English website te$5.99 English website te$0.99

This might be a great program but I feel like they're so shifty about pricing that I don't feel comfortable with them.

I understand they can't completely control the way that the App Store presents things and maybe it's more clear if I load iTunes.

The app is free, no pay-to-unlock features. I think the IAP packages are for additional templates which are really not necessary at all. If I need a similar record for the same site I just duplicate then modify, it's actually easier than templates. The only limit that I found is there is no Android version.

F secure key don't force you to sync. Actually that's the difference between the paid and free version (sync cost, the rest of the features are free).

Their pricing fell a bit decisive as well:

$2.99

and a bit smaller: "per month billed annually"

I know breaking it down to the month is popular, but it makes 0 sense for me if the only way I can pay is anually and there is no way to pay monthly (even for a premium).

Sorry, but I'm now over to Dashlane (clear $39.99/year)

Thanks for recommending this. We currently use 1password for our business but and while the Mac client is ok the teams website leaves a lot to be desired and no Linux client at this point is embarrassing. It's expensive too! You get the feeling that agile bits is ok at developing Mac and Windows software but basically has no idea about developing software for the web.

Try http://genpass.supergenpass.com ! :)

Woops! I actually meant to post super gen pass but at least the website I referenced points directly to super gen pass so it wouldn't be too hard to figure out I would hope!

This was also my decision to go with Dashlane. I spent some time testing different managers but Dashlane was the easiest to use and pricing was straightforward. I am working on different laptops/servers at customers I wanted one price with unlimited devices.

I've hit subscription model overload at this point. I've long-since stopped using most of the software and services in my life which are subscription based. I'm likely to just go back to an encrypted text file, and cutting & pasting passwords.

You are not netflix, and I am not your personal ATM.

Seriously. I get that's it's good for business - but it's like mobile apps. I only have the capacity for a few, and all others are past saturation point.

I am a long time 1Password customer and have recommended the software to family and friends. This new subscription model was confusing when it launched and I am now more uncomfortable with the company's explanations and backtracking.

There are other options for password management out there. If Agilebits are not super transparent about everything, users will leave for the competition. I am much less comfortable with Agilebits than I was pre-subscription model.

The standalone version should be promoted equally on the website, not as a small link in the FAQ.

I stopped buying Adobe products when they went to subscription as well.

Have they actually removed the standalone option?

I'm perfectly happy with it (using iCloud sync) and will continue to be a happy 1Password user unless/until they force me to subscribe.

It's a bit hidden but you can still license a standalone version.

I've been waiting for a way to access my 1Password data on the web, e.g. from a Linux machine (no 1Password Linux client exists) so I'll gladly pay the subscription fee now that this exists.

Also the quality of the software (in terms of user experience)---both on the desktop and on iOS---is fantastic. Also the ability to contact a human for support is excellent. In general I like to support high quality software using $.

I am however nervous about the idea of storing all my passwords on someone else's server. If there ever were a security breach, imagine the consequence.

Instead of "change your password, we've been hacked" it would be "change ALL 100 of your passwords, we've been hacked". Ugh.

> I am however nervous about the idea of storing all my passwords on someone else's server. If there ever were a security breach, imagine the consequence.

This doesn't necessarily follow, depending on the security model of the software you're using. If encryption/decryption is handled on the client, then a breach yields encrypted data rather than anything of use. (You can then attack the encryption on that data, sure, but that's a tall order to do wholesale.)

Also, 1pass is (was? I haven't used it for a few years) handy for command-line access and it runs on Linux.

https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass

a security breach on the server wouldn't mean that your passwords are compromised.

with the subscription model, they're protected by both your master password, and your account key (128? bit key generated at account creation).

neither of those leave your computer.

https://icculus.org/1pass/

I've been watching this carefully, because the subscription model has zero benefits for me and both Chrome and Safari have started to implement basic password management solutions that already do cloud syncing. They're weak and obscure, but usable, and 1Password's benefit is that it's smarter and prettier.

However, I'm not keen on cloud sync that I don't control or that I can't audit somehow. So no AgileBits for me in the new model, ever, and if they drop the Dropbox sync option, I'll move everything to KeePass.

Shame, though, the UX and integration with other apps in iOS is pretty nifty.

But to be honest, I suspect AgileBits' market share to shrink significantly over time as browser and OS-based password managers become better.

I wonder if they would have met this resistance if they had started as SaaS from day one. I mean, I get the benefit to them of recurring revenue, but from a customer standpoint this is right up there with Adobe trying to force everyone to creative cloud (albeit handled much better imho). People viewed it as something you pay once for, and not something that warrants paying in perpetuity. Customers fully realize that increasing LTV for AgileBits means a massive price hike for them over multiple years if you do the May on percentage increase.

> I wonder if they would have met this resistance if they had started as SaaS from day one.

Day one for Agile Bits was in 2006, and a SaaS model just wouldn't have worked at that time. People would've just laughed at "renting software for a personal computer" (Mac OS X).

The idea of using a cloud-based password manager has always sounded rather bizarre to me. For low priority sites I just use the PasswordMaker browser extension, and the KeePass app for the important ones.

The data format of 1password is open. There open source packages out there that can read and manipulate the vault which confirms this specification is true.

The format has attracted quit a bit of scrutiny, and no-one has found a weakness. If the underlying crypto'd be broken your passwords are probably useless anyway.

It's not cloud based. It's a locally installed app with optional cloud syncing.

Does AgileBits being a Canadian company mean that the NSA and/or the FBI has full legal authority to intercept communications with the service without regard to the locality of the servers? Presumably they would be limited in what could be done on scale based upon the use of encryption for transport and of the vault itself, but does this change the threat profile vs Dropbox sync with respect to legal process?

$600 for 10 years is a bit much for a password manager. I think may switch to readysignon (https://www.readysignon.com/) which is compatible with keepass.

How do you get $600?

$3/month is $36/year. At 10 years, that's $360.

Where do you get another $240 for the standalone product?

Multi-user option, at $5 a month.

Is this why texting people passwords from one password does not work anymore? This shits whack, that was the one reason why I tried to get other people to use app, we could share passwords.

Over this app, looking for something else.

I recently switched to Enpass[1] and am reasonably happy with it: it might be an alternative for you to consider as well.

It's very much a 1Password ripoff, which I mean as a compliment: the UI will be familiar to you. It's not nearly as polished as 1Password, but there don't seem to be many native password managers that are. Their desktop clients are free, and their mobile clients are flat licenses (actually free downloads with limited functionality as a demo, and in-app purchase to unlock, but whatever).

Sync options are actually a bit better than 1Password I think: the usual suspects like Dropbox are there, but you can also sync over your own webdav server if you want to.

I switched because I wanted something that had a decent Linux client. If 1Password is going the way of subscription pricing, it seems like I made my switch none too soon.

[1]: https://www.enpass.io/

Wow! Thx for the link, cant believe why i skip over enpass in my search.

Thanks dude I'll look it over. Wonder if there's any migration tool....

oh well.. there's so many apps that do this nowadays, i got used to it by now. As soon as the 'non-subscription-model' of the app is no longer actively developed i just dump it and switch to another app. There are plenty alternatives anyway.

In the recent past it definitely has seemed like AgileBits is struggling for revenue or looking at new and steady streams of revenue, which is where the subscriptions fit in.

Although AgileBits has had responsive customer service (not always necessarily the same as useful or good customer service), it has made at least one prominent mistake that it had to backtrack out of after a long time. One was putting 1Password on the Mac App Store (MAS) and saying it would be "MAS only" (like Pixelmator) and refusing to provide a separate AgileBits store option, with the justification that MAS simplifies things (it probably did remove some overheads) and that it didn't want to maintain its own store, payment processing, etc. What was hypocritical of AgileBits was that it still had to maintain its store, payment processing, etc., for its Windows version of 1Password. Many customers complained, and complained quite a lot, on their forums, but AgileBits' attitude and response were very poor and seemed downright obstinate. After a long time, AgileBits realized that MAS wasn't that great (not sure of the reasons) and brought 1Password (Mac) to its store while retaining MAS as an option.

The current push of a subscription model, while stating that standalone licenses continue to remain (although obscured on the site "to avoid confusion"), seems to be a repeat of history. The outcome is unknown at this point in time. Maybe a lot of people will find the subscription easier to use and force AgileBits to shutdown the standalone licensing model. Most people who belong to the consumer segment (those who do not make money with the software they use, like in the case of Adobe products) do not prefer subscriptions and like the flexibility of "owning software" (license) and having the freedom to choose when they would upgrade and at what price (in many cases waiting for some special discount sale).

Hopefully, AgileBits will remove the obscurity of the standalone licenses and provide it prominently, because the current scheme just doesn't fit with what AgileBits as a company always aims to be. It's too cheap of AgileBits to do something like this. Also hopefully, the subscription models will continue to be optional (with standalone licenses available at reasonable prices) and perhaps segmented differently (with lower price points?) to attract customers for specific features that are of value to them.

It would also be better for AgileBits to get into making other kinds of software applications instead of trying to squeeze more and more out of password management and shared password systems.

I'm an occasional 1Password user on Windows, but I switched most of my passwords to the built-in browser based password management (since I mostly use only one or two browsers). For some other purposes, I use KeePass and KeeWeb (though 1Password's browser extensions, where they work, are quite convenient). I personally don't see a lot of value in getting 1Password anymore, and as for a subscription, that would be inappropriately wasteful.

Why pay for a password manager when keepass is free, more secure, and offers better features than all of the alternatives?

http://keepass.info

Because "offers better features" is subjective, and to some people the design polish and UX of 1Password outshines that of KeePass.

Because free software that doesn't offer the feature set and platforms out of the box actually costs me a lot of money in convenience and features that I use? YMMV.

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