Access Admin Console without internet / SMTP

Ask the Community Password Manager
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1

Hello everyone,

I’m running Bitwarden Lite on my Raspberry Pi 4, and everything works nicely :ok_hand:t2:

Now I want to share a collection between two users, and I need to access the web-based Admin Console. However, since I use a fully offline deployment (i.e., the Docker container has no internet access and no SMTP is configured), I’m struggling with how to do that.

Is there any option to administer Bitwarden in a fully offline fashion, i.e., without configuring SMTP and exposing the Docker container to the internet?

Thx!

PS: Just for the sake of clarity - by offline, I mean “not connected to the internet, only visible within my network”

2

When you connect your clients to the server, you must specify a Server URL. What happens when you type that same URL into the address bar of a browser?

3

By navigating to https://bitwarden.myraspi, I end up here:

Screenshot_20260103-195445_Firefox
Screenshot_20260103-195445_Firefox1080×2340 98.2 KB

And by navigating to https://bitwarden.myraspi/admin/login, I end up here:

Screenshot_20260103-195514_Firefox~(1)
Screenshot_20260103-195514_Firefox~(1)1079×2050 154 KB

4

OK, so then just enter your login credentials at https://bitwarden.myraspi.

Once logged in to your Web Vault, click the Admin Console link at the bottom of the left-hand side navigation bar, or use the product switcher (꠫) in the upper right corner to access the Admin Console. From there, you can click the Collections link in the side-nav bar:

5

This is how it looks like after the login:

Screenshot_20260103-211807_Firefox~(1)
Screenshot_20260103-211807_Firefox~(1)1078×622 77.2 KB

6

Did you log in using the same Bitwarden username (and master password) that was used to create the organization?

Or — to be clear — has an organization even been created, yet?

7

I never explicitly created any organization. For the sake of completeness, I’m using the free tier of Bitwarden.

All I did was creating the Docker container and do the self registration for my two users.

Seems that I must be missing something, either in doing or understanding :thinking:

8

Yes.

To share items, before creating any collections, you need to first create an organization, as described here:

Please note that there is no self-hosting option for Free organizations, so you will need to purchase a Families, Teams, or Enterprise plan.

After you have set up your organization, you need to apply the organization license in your self-hosted server, as described here:

1 Like
9

Omg, well, there are no nice words for putting this… I completely misunderstood the pricing/role model of Bitwarden in terms of self-hosting :man_facepalming:t2:

Thank you for enlightening me! Very much appreciated :folded_hands:t2:

So, I will buy a Families subscription. Nonetheless, I still find this page confusing/misleading:

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image908×1218 62.4 KB

To me, this reads like: With Bitwarden Free, you have two users, two collections, and you can self-host it.
Imho this at best is a mixture between Free and Free org of what is written here - or at worst, it contradicts/misleads.

10

Yes, I agree that the comparison chart shown in your screenshot could be confusing. The free individual account can be self-hosted, and it can also create a free organization — if (and only if) the account is hosted by Bitwarden. There is no simple way to indicate this nuance the way that the table is designed, but at least they should provide a footnote on the “Free organization” entry in the first row. In fact that entire first row (“Sharing items”) doesn’t make much sense when it comes to the individual plan columns (Free and Premium), because Free and Premium individual accounts can also share vault items via paid organizations that they have joined (or created).