Rethinking Password Management: Dashlane’s New Offer Sparks Competition

Previously considered a more expensive option, Dashlane, a password management platform, unveiled its Essentials plan at a cost of $35.88 per annum on Wednesday.

Approximately one month following a substantial price increase by a popular password management service, another competitor has introduced a significant discount.

As a result, selecting an encrypted service to protect and synchronize passwords across various devices and applications may become more straightforward. Currently, three out of the four services mentioned above also provide family plans. These include Bitwarden at $40 per year, LastPass at $48, 1Password at $59.88, and Dashlane at $89.99 (which encompasses Premium features, as the Essentials option does not offer multi-user capabilities).

Prior to March, both LastPass and Bitwarden offered unlimited free versions (albeit with less polished interfaces compared to 1Password and Dashlane). However, LastPass subsequently restricted its free edition to either mobile devices or desktops and laptops.

Dan DeMichele, the Vice President of Product at LastPass, stated, “We provided users with an opportunity to upgrade to Premium or Family plans at a discounted rate, and hundreds of thousands of users have opted for this conversion.”

The subsidiary of LogMeIn, an enterprise software company based in Boston, reported having over 25 million users in March.

Conversely, 1Password has maintained consistent pricing despite previous increases by LastPass, experiencing a 50% surge in new accounts the week following the latest changes by LastPass.

CEO Jeff Shiner remarked, “It was never logical for 1Password to offer industry-leading security features across desktop and mobile platforms at no charge.”

It’s worth noting that this Toronto-based company made its service free for journalists in 2019, prompting me to adopt 1Password while still maintaining free accounts with the other three services.

Meanwhile, Bitwarden continues to offer its basic service at no cost for use across multiple devices, which the Santa Barbara, California-based company claims to sustain by charging for premium features such as password strength alerts and USB security key verification.

CEO Michael Crandell affirmed, “Our business remains robust, and we have no intentions of deviating from this approach.”

Despite the competition among these services, the primary adversary isn’t each other or even the free password services provided by Apple and Google. Rather, it’s poor password management practices, such as using weak passwords or reusing them, which increase the risk of a security breach.

A survey commissioned by Bitwarden and released on Wednesday revealed that 56% of respondents in the United States relied on their memory to store passwords, while 55.8% reused passwords across at least five different websites.

As Sherman from Dashlane remarked, “Our real competition is individuals who write down their passwords or use the same one repeatedly.”

Rob Pegoraro, a technology journalist based in Washington, D.C., can be contacted for tech inquiries at [email protected]. You can also follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.

The four leading services now offer nearly identical pricing structures.

Once regarded as a more expensive option, Dashlane introduced its Essentials plan at $35.88 per year on Wednesday morning. This plan provides access to the same password management tools available in its $59.99 per year Premium service, excluding features such as Virtual Private Network security and online identity theft monitoring.

Dashlane CEO JD Sherman explained, “Very few users actually utilized all of these features. There are essential features that everyone should use, and these do not include VPN or dark web monitoring.”

With this new plan, New York-based Dashlane is now in line with LastPass ($36 per year for individuals on unlimited devices) and 1Password ($35.88 per year for solo use on unlimited devices). Bitwarden, on the other hand, still offers a free tier without limitations on saved passwords or synced devices alongside a premium service priced at $10 per year for individuals.