Hi, our family is new to password managers. We’re looking at Bitwarden and DashLane. The reviews suggest Bitwarden maybe isn’t as intuitive and easy to set up or use as DashLane. Any thoughts on Bitwarden’s ease-of-set up and use, especially since there’s no realtime customer support? Thank you.
First of all, here is a topic that proves that everyone can use Bitwarden:
In case that you did not click the topic mentioned above to read it completely let me show you my favorite part of it:
And here probably is the way to go for you:
Take a look, try it out and then in a few days you might want to return to rephrase this:
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I completely forgot to react on this:
It’s better over here: There is us - the Bitwarden community. We do not have “closing times” like a support center. Instead we are spread out all over the world.
Phrase your question(s) and give as many details as possible. Then you probably will not only get a single reaction, but usually several. Some confirming what someone else already wrote (even if it is only through a like), others pointing out their opinion and sharing their ideas. So you get a broader perspective.
And if we cannot help ? Do not despair! There are also some Bitwarden employees roaming through this board.
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Thank you, Peter. This is all very helpful. My son used Bitwarden and loves it. But he’s much more technical than I, so I wanted to make sure I’d have the support I need to use it. Looks like the user community is pretty helpful. Again, thank you for the encouragement and the tips.
I’ve tested most (if not all) of the widely used password managers. Bitwarden is one of the easiest, DashLane not so much. Some DashLane users will argue because they are used to it, and in fact some will throw that Bitwarden is so simple it lacks on functionality. Clearly this is an optics situation.
The core of all password managers is the same: a secure and centralized place to store passwords. Depending on the provider the functionality will differ. Now that you’re starting I recommend Bitwarden over the competition for numerous reasons but specially so you get acquainted with the concepts.
Once you get all the nitty gritty, you can start trials of the others for you to compare what’s more of your liking. Besides some advanced functionality I don’t foresee you choosing anything over Bitwarden as it has all that’s needed (with the obvious lack of X and Y feature we all wish on this and that, and it’ll happen with the others too).
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Thank you. This is very helpful.
My opinion is that Bitwarden does a few things well. I much prefer that to some of the bloatware alternatives, where so much has been added to the basic functionality that you can get lost in options.
Having realised that I really needed to improve on my previous practices with passwords I tried a few of the alternatives, but never thought them worth paying for. I tried the free version of Bitwarden and liked it. After some months of trying it to see what it was like I purchased a subscription, mainly so that I could use security keys with it but also as a small way of saying thankyou to those who made and sustain it.
As well as this forum and reddit Bitwarden have a superb help system, which can offer help to people with any level of experience. I sometimes look the answer up in the help system and post the link to it here. That annoys some people, who seem to want to be spoon-fed answers, but I don’t apologise for doing that. It hopefully encourages them to do the same thing themselves next time.
I have worked in advice. In one role, as a telephone adviser, I used the internal information system to call up answers and relay that information to the caller. It wasn’t a matter of reading the answers from the screen. I gave advice based on what it said, but sometimes I did read out what was in it word for word where precision was necessary. Most of the information available to staff, who have logged into the system, is also available to the public without login.
Were Bitwarden to provide telephone support then they would need to setup the same sort of thing. I have no idea if Bitwarden do something like that for their commercial customers but providing it does cost money for the staff concerned. I would rather the price was kept low, particularly for individuals, as that means more people will be less susceptible to the woes weak passwords tend to bring sooner or later. I think the current setup is jut about the best compromise in an imperfect world.
The only other thing I would say is to be organised and have several copies of the master password and the other recovery things needed to recover from mistakes. In a corporate setup there are system operators to hold your hand almost no matter what you do.
We all make mistakes, I managed to delete all my passwords through my own stupidity. When I had stopped yelling at myself for my stupidity I restored a backup. I had made the backup by reading the great information in the help system and acting on it. I did not assume that anyone would be able to help me recover from my own stupidity, as would be the case in a corporate system.
Like any hing new there are things to learn. You can’t get a knowledge injection that makes you an instant expert.
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