Hah. With the gimmicks, tricks, and dark patterns this company has pulled with consumer, what are the chances professionals would trust them with something like this?
1Password originally operated on a licensing model, but has since switched to a membership model.
It is still possible to purchase a single license, but they make it very difficult to do so. The option of a standalone license is not mentioned anywhere on their pricing page: https://1password.com/sign-up/
As I understand it, only once you have downloaded the app and are logging in do they mention that standalone licenses are available. (But, at least on Mac, this option is only available on the version of the app downloaded directly from their site, and not the version downloaded from the Mac App Store.) This support thread shows some users' frustration with this, and their support team's insistence on pushing users to the subscription model: https://1password.community/discussion/102412/where-do-i-buy...
I'm not entirely certain of the differences between the subscription model and the standalone version, but I believe the primary difference is that the subscription model will automatically sync your passwords between multiple devices.
You can achieve similar functionality with the standalone license version by storing your vault (1Password's password file) in iCloud or Dropbox, and relying on that for syncing. I use the Dropbox version and it works incredibly well, even on iOS! I think they also support Google Drive for syncing on desktop, but not on mobile. Certainly the syncing offered through their subscription model is valuable, but for users who have other options, it's just doesn't make sense.
I gladly paid for a standalone license, and have purchased licenses for my parents as gifts; the product is incredible. The Chrome extension works great, and the app can be your 2FA device, so it will automatically fill in password forms and copy the 2FA code to your clipboard. It works just as well on iOS too.
We always built 1Password for ourselves. It is so much easier to develop a product that you use yourself every day.
I haven't used the standalone version of 1Password for over 5 years now. The same is true for pretty much everyone working at 1Password.
Why? Because the service is much much better and more than just simple syncing of data:
- Account recovery for family and business team members
- Easy sharing of passwords and documents
- Vault permissions
- Item history/automatic backups
- Free family accounts for businesses
- Travel mode
None of these features are possible without a server doing its part.
Roustem Founder of 1Password
I'm not overjoyed at "having to" pay a subscription for a password manager, but your points are good ones.
Paying you annually saves me and my family (four people) a lot of time and energy in managing passwords, sharing passwords, etc.
Just wanted to throw out one "+1" for the 1Password subscription offering being a worthwhile expense from my perspective.
I do wish you'd figure out the Chrome extensions on macOS, though. I don't understand why I have to choose between excellent browser integration OR more seamless integration with the native app and fingerprint support in the browser extension.
We're efforting on that! Thanks for the feedback. We currently have better integration with our 1Password for Linux beta, and that will be rolling out to other platforms as well.
- Ben, 1Password
I use 1Password for family and LastPass for work, and vastly prefer 1Password's UI and feature set.
I pay yearly for a subscription and sync via 1Password.com
I don’t pay a subscription because I think that it’s important or necessary to sync via 1Password.com, though. I’d happily sync via Dropbox (though it sounds like that has been broken for years and isn’t getting fixed) or iCloud.
I pay because I know it costs money to keep software working nicely with its surrounding environment and to keep it secure.
Apart from the item history - which I disagree needs a server - the other feature you list aren’t of interest to me. So while I’m a big fan of the product, and I might be an outlier, I hope you’re keeping a keen eye on your users’ motivations for starting or continuing to pay for subscriptions.
I've been using 1Password for my personal accounts for probably close to 10 years and have been happy with it. There are some things I feel are clunky, but I've never felt like I was being tricked or deceived by the company.
If you really want to complain... complain about how they keep pushing for their subscription, making it harder and harder to find a one time purchase.
Or their massive issues with multiple browser extensions that are a complete mess for the average person.
Or how their usability has decreased substantially.
Or how they're less a consumer product and more a business product these days.
As far as I remember, I've paid for several versions and upgrades until they forced their crappy subscription service on us.
Not sure about OP but I can see a clearly dark pattern by hiding the non subscription option to the point where I had to google how to acquire one. At this point I simply gave up and choose other option.
If I have to pay yearly at least bitwarden gives me fair price and comparable service. Maybe 1pass is better than bitwarden but it's certainly not 4x better.
You can still get stand-alone licenses, but they do suppress that. Part of that I believe is not running afoul of App Store rules, and also because most people are finding it via the iOS and Mac app stores.
I'm still using standalone licenses quite happily, and have no issue with buying new licenses when major versions get bumped.
I'd never heard of 1Password before they were fully SaaS, but as I understand it, some of the original users were pretty upset with this move. Either way, I used to be a 1Password customer, and their product, at least on the Mac, was the most polished password manager.
They finally fixed many of the objections with the "family" SaaS subscription and it just works and the price may be "low enough" that I don't bother figuring out a way out of it - but it is still pretty much the perfect example of "locked in".
I switched to Bitwarden because it's open source, and because they have a good enough Linux client. Their browser extension and desktop client doesn't come close to what 1Password provided on Mac, but it does the job.
Bitwarden isn't without its issues, but at $10 a year, and its open source nature, it's worth every penny and then some.
https://blog.1password.com/1password-for-linux-beta-is-now-o...
I hope you can give us another chance.
—Dave 1Password Founder
My kids have started accumulating more passwords than they can memorize (and their memorized passwords were terrible), so I wanted a family password manager. I considered using "1password for familes" which I have access to for free from my day job, but if/when I leave the company then I'll have to go back to paying for it. So far I greatly prefer the experience of bitwarden over 1password. I use the web vault, the native mac app, and the linux command line app (through a janky homegrown dmenu/xclip shell script), and I have no complaints at all.
Even moving from one-time to subscription isn't a 'dark pattern', its a business model move to shift to recurring revenue, which we know is something that businesses need to keep the lights on. You can debate the merits of it, but it's not a dark pattern in and of itself. HOW they execute that might be, but the change itself isn't. You just have a personal preference to not want to pay for it in a particular way.
Family plans are in my eyes. They log users more into the platform and makes it very difficult to switch. If you want to move away from Spotify, you now have to convince enough of the others to make it feasible.
> Even moving from one-time to subscription isn't a 'dark pattern'
I did not claim that it was one. I also was not even mad about recurring payments, to me the problematic change was that the data was now hosted on some other machine owned by the company who is producing the software (e.g. in theory single point of entry).
As far as where data is stored, which sounds a bit like a different argument, I guess what you're advocating for is some kind of peer-to-peer sync solution across family member devices that would work anywhere. That's cool but I think it may a lot of technical complexity vs a cloud solution, and it still doesn't change the fact that you still have the issue above about switching as a group.
It might be worth reviewing what dark pattern actually means - UI tricks to get people to do things they don't want to do. If people like a product enough that they convince others to use it as well, that's ... a good product? I get the data storage concern though.
A slight gentle correction. I criticize them elsewhere in this thread, but in fairness I have to point out that this isn't quite correct yet. It's still possible (though they've buried it) to buy a standalone perpetual license for the latest 1Password, run purely local vaults, or keep syncing via Dropbox, iCloud, or manually over WLAN. There isn't any hard tie to the 1Password.com service yet.
Perhaps they'll put the kibosh on that in the future. And they can be and I will criticize them for not having better local sync options, which they clearly stopped bothering with in favor of their own cloud offering. But for the time being I've still got a fully local 1Password 7 license that works the same as every previous version.
Now you're forced to buy the new version just for the integration that has always worked fine.
In my opinion, it's not a dark pattern, it's just softly winding down the old app. That's not an unreasonable thing to do. If you want a traditional app, there are other choices.