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Comment by levosmetalo | Hacker News Reader

LastPass is a commodity. There are many free or open-source alternatives that are as reliable and as secure as LastPass that provide similar functionality. It's hard to justify even the small price for a commodity service unless you provide the best possible solution, and sometimes even that is not enough.

I switched from LastPass premium that costed 15$ per year a few years ago to Bitwarden because LastPass could recognize password fields on all web pages, while free Bitwarden just works everywhere.

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The functionality is a commodity but what about the UX? MP3 players were fairly common when the iPod came out but the iPod crushed all the competition? Why because the UX was simply better.

Without a doubt the password manager with the best UX is 1Password. Last year ago I got my tech-averse partner to set it up on her phone, the entire process took about 10 minutes and then it was done. She's never asked for me help or support, once she got things working its simply continued to work.

I've since setup it up across my family and my pre-teen child is also using it without a hitch.

From a holistic perspective I love that I can manage multiple vaults. Everyone has a private personal vault that is only available to them and we have a bunch of shared vaults for things like xbox and netflix passwords.

I've never used BitWarden so I cant comment on the UX but $60 a year for 1password is well worth it. I can rest easy knowing that everyone in my family has good password hygiene.

I was a paid Lastpass user who switched to Bitwarden a few years back because of the UX/functionality issues Lastpass had been developing. I've heard 1password has better UX; I'd describe Bitwarden's UX as similar to the Lastpass of 5-7 years ago.

I transitioned to 1Password after many years of LastPass and have been quite pleased.

I continue to harbor some concerns about the emergency workflows (what happens in case of death or disablement) but otherwise it's just been solid. LastPass felt, on the other hand, like it was increasingly neglected.

Same, I was a paid LastPass user and the Firefox add-on was so bad that it was worth negative money. They clearly didn't care.

I really like the 1Password UX. Also, they're new integration with Safari 14 on macOS is also great.

> Without a doubt the password manager with the best UX is 1Password.

I doubt that. Navigating the sync options and finding one that works with Android phone, iPad and Windows PC was impossible.

Throw in two vault formats (with implications for which sync option can work), and it's a mess.

That was the paid standalone version, not the subscription model (that was when I finally jumped ship).

I’ve used 1Password for years.

I would pay more for greater simplicity.

They had self hosted sync with the old vault format. They removed it when they switched to the new vault format. Dropbox always worked. Now they push their own service.

> Dropbox always worked.

No, it didn't. I don't remember the details, but the local sync (starting a sync server on the phone) did not work for me with a normal home network, and Dropbox didn't work across all devices, either.

> Without a doubt the password manager with the best UX is 1Password.

I would agree for the macOS and iOS versions but the Windows version could get some polish. The default title and menu bars still hang around, the font choice isn’t that great, and all in all it feels less nice to use.

>Without a doubt the password manager with the best UX is 1Password

My experience is about 1 year old, but I have to disagree, as a paid 1Password user, my browser plugins and mobile client would fail to fill in the forms I used at least 50% of the time. That's horrible UX, but I agree, their UI looks nice.

Point and click or keyboard UX for this stuff is awful no matter how you slice it.

At most I want a prompt for my unlock password when the password manager sees I’m on a site or in an app it has a password for.

We still externalize way too much orthogonal effort on users.

One of the reasons I like 1pwd is their cli tool. I can put such a call to it in a script, authenticate and stop giving a crap about 1pwd

I've been debating making this switch myself. How time consuming was the transition? Did you have to do much manual data entry or does bitwarden have the ability to reliably import lastpass data?

Looks like it does :

https://bitwarden.com/help/article/import-from-lastpass/

Bitwarden is more reliable at importing data exported from Lastpass than Lastpass is at exporting your data. Export bugs happen, but their forum and /r/lastpass are always quick to come up with workarounds for Lastpass bugs.

Shared passwords aren't included in the Lastpass export, at least at the time I last exported from Lastpass.

The only functionality I do miss from Lastpass is the option to generate the short pronounceable strings I use to create usernames, like the one I'm using now.

I switched around the beginning of the year.

There is a [KB article](https://bitwarden.com/help/article/import-from-lastpass/) about exporting your LastPass vault and then importing it into Bitwarden.

It only took a minute or 2.

The most annoying thing for me is that Bitwarden doesn't have support for all of the extra "credential types" that LastPass has. They are still imported, but everything that isn't supported is imported as a secure note.

So far the only issues I have had logging in anywhere has been logging into my firefox account (in a new browser), and home assistant.

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