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Comment by swozey | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I've spent an absolute fortune on 1password over the last decade. I'm pretty sure it was, what, $70 when I got it 6+ years ago? Now I'm paying monthly (2.99 or 4.99/mo x .. 3-5 years?) which is pretty ironic considering a lot of us initially left LastPass to go to 1pass because it was 100% offline (I'm aware you can do local vaults still). At least the QOL updates have been coming faster lately, especially with Android.

Anyway, very curious what this means. I'm sure there's a ton of features I've not thought about in years it could use (like LastPass's IP/region blocks) but 1password has never felt like it was a fast moving feature company. Maybe this will get us that.

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Kinda feels like the Wal-Mart episode of South Park, where they burn it down and all go back to shopping at a Mom-and-Pop shop: the M&P shop grows to keep up with demand, gets too big, and then they burn it down again.

It seems that the fate of every decent Password Manager is to be acquired by some rent-seeking company and have its userbase gouged.

I suppose we can all start packing up to make the move to Bitwarden. Until it's bought.

Then LastPass just buys them all and we're back to that

Very frustratingly, there's no Linux client and they recommend 1PasswordX for Linux users, which doesn't allow offline vaults, pretty sure it _requires_ 1Password's online service.

I was actually really impressed with 1passwordX, it made me switching off of OSX almost a non-issue but you're right, I didn't realize it didn't support offline vaults. They really don't like that.

I switched to Bitwarden three or four years ago because of the lack of a native Linux browser plugin. I used their Windows plugin via Wine but it was just a crappy option. Bitwarden does a good job.

It also does not allow you to export, so unless you're willing/can use the osx/windows version, you won't be able to migrate away from it. I personally solved this by writing a short bash script that uses the 1password cli client to dump the json of everything for my backups.

What is the draw to pay a subscription for a product that you have to write scripts to use, when there are free/open-source alternatives that offer a full client (like KeepassXC)?

I pay for 1Password to have the sync to work between Android, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Windows and macOS which is the systems I usually use. KeepassXC and alternatives mention nothing about syncing passwords or tells users to self-host their syncing. I'd rather pay a company to do that for me, at least because they will probably be able to do and maintain that setup better than me.

Although, it does carry the trade off of me being reliant on a third-party for my password-sync and that I have to pay. Currently it's worth it for me.

Bitwarden offers sync and have a Linux client.

I currently use KeepassXC hosted on Dropbox, which takes care of the sync for free. And mobile apps like Keepassium or Strongbox integrate them directly.

I bought the family plan (5 licenses, I think) for $100 back in 2013. I can't upgrade past 1Password 6, but I'm ok with that. It works well enough that I can't justify a subscription just to get a few of the newer features that I probably will never use.

I'll probably have to switch if/when the firefox plugin stops working, but hopefully that won't be any time soon.

1Password always seems expensive until I remember how much one major password compromise is likely to cost me.

There are open-source alternatives which are just as secure. You're not paying for the security, but for the polish and convenience.

An unpolished, inconvenient app often doesn't get used.

> I feel like I've spent an absolute fortune on 1password over the last decade. I'm pretty sure it was, what, $70 when I got it 6+ years ago? Now I'm paying monthly (2.99 or 4.99/mo x .. 3-5 years?)

Our pricing intuition around software is so weird. That's $370 over six years. If you went to a theater and watched a movie alone every couple of months, you spent more on tickets than you did on 1Password in that time.

I mean one is giving me tons of entertainment and one is opening an encrypted file on my machine and has a lot of alternatives and was already considered overpriced. If you asked me 6+ years ago if I'd pay for $370 worth of 1password for 5 years I'd laugh you out of the room.

It's a lot easier when it's a monthly fee to get that money out of me.

And it’s no wonder they are trying to kill the offline and non-subscription options.

Saying that $370 is not a lot of money shows just how far removed the tech bubble is from the rest of the world.

"Four in 10 adults in 2017 would either borrow, sell something, or not be able pay if faced with a $400 emergency expense." https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor..., page 21. That's a lump sum expense, not paid over time, but I think it illustrates quite well that $370 is a lot of money for something most people don't even know they need.

4/10 is surprisingly low. Most of us would borrow to pay a $400 emergency expense. Are there really that many people out there paying with cash or check instead of “borrowing” by paying with credit card?

The question is not if you're carrying $400 in cash, but whether you can afford that expense. A credit card paid off in full is considered cash-equivalent: "When faced with a hypothetical expense of only $400, 59 percent of adults in 2017 say they could easily cover it, using entirely cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement (referred to, altogether, as “cash or its equivalent”)" (from the same page of that report).

The technicality of making the payment by cash or cc is beside the point, the point was that there is not 400 of savings available to immediately pay down the CC

I've read 4/10 a couple of times now, and all I hear is my math teacher yelling "reduce your fraction".

Me too, but when I think of 2/5, it is a little harder to picture. I don't know if that's just because I already let 4/10 get into my head though.

This is not an unexpected, one-time $370 expense. It's $370 spent over six years.

According to CBS [1], the cheapest city to live in in the US Harlingen, Texas. The Nacho Supreme at Pepe's "homey" Tex-Mex "joint" [2] is $9.95. If you can afford to treat yourself to a plate of those nachos once every two months, then you could have afforded to secure all of your passwords.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/10-cheapest-places-to-live-... [2]: http://pepesrgv.com/

> then you could have afforded to secure all of your passwords.

You can secure all your passwords for free (with Keepass or Bitwarden for example).

1password doesn't have to justify its price versus not securing your passwords, but versus open-source password managers.

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