Disappointed

Ask the Community Password Manager
10

I personally believe it all depends on your needs from a password manager and what you’re willing to sacrifice. Comparing Bitwarden to LastPass it is very clear that even though they are both password managers, their similarities are only on the surface and in the core idea of keeping your passwords in an online vault and syncing them to other devices.

Most of the disappointments I believe come from the false advertising that people are doing around, claiming that Bitwarden is the best there is and there are no drawbacks when it comes to switching to it. Just looking through the feature request forum, it’s clear that the drawbacks are plenty.

Most often I see it compared to LastPass, people claiming that it is better and it’s the perfect replacement, when it’s clearly not. Take the sharing functionality for example, which can be considered as a bad joke. If sharing passwords is important to you, depending on how you want to achieve that, you should not even consider Bitwarden.

Generally speaking, if you’re a normal user and you want to share passwords, you do not care about organizations… you do not care about sophisticated terms like collections… and in all fairness, collections seem more like a restrictive thing for the functionality than anything else. Extra fluff, less functionality, more inconvenience. When you say “share”, I guarantee you that most will never think that it means to give ownership away and possibly end up with losing the credentials from your own vault.

Now if you are a company, you just don’t care about it since you’ll just keep credentials together by access levels and decide who can view them or not at any given time. As a company you don’t care if John lost the ownership of his credentials… they were never his credentials to begin with… that’s what the contract signed said… they were belonging to the company.

If you come to Bitwarden expecting to have the same functionality that LastPass did, you’ll be greatly disappointed. There’s plenty of things that need a lot more work or simply missing. I can totally see why someone would be disappointed, when Bitwarden was advertised to them by some random person as being better.

It all comes down to what you need to achieve with it. Sharing for the past two years has been a big NO for the typical user, unless you wanted to get into bad practices, or enjoyed the hassle that comes with it. UI/UX didn’t change that much either and that’s something very important for a typical user. Functionality wise… it is progressing, but slowly, and mostly enterprise oriented. But the issue is not the slow progress, because if it had the essentials, you wouldn’t care that much about it… The issue is it needing more features and adding them way too slow.

Thinking about it from a logical point of view, LastPass, while it does have practices like tracking pretty much everything about you and not encrypting everything, when you buy the family package, you get about all you need in it. And your credentials stay yours. You pay a bit more, but really, it’s not that much, and the user experience is better. They sell you comfort and convenience in their package, which Bitwarden doesn’t compared to it.

Compare changing passwords or adding new credentials. LastPass detects those things far more often than Bitwarden. And even if you don’t rely on that automatic function, given that you can’t keep the extension open for complex credentials for either, LastPass lets you open your vault to a new item with far less effort than Bitwarden. Syncing is also done almost instantly with LastPass, while Bitwarden takes its time, and more often than not you have to manually sync it. Password filling is troublesome as well in Bitwarden, compared to LastPass.

@dangostylver I ensure you, no matter how much time you’ll give to someone who shares credentials on a daily basis, that person will never get a better opinion. If anything, it will only get worse because of the increasing hassle that they have to deal with. Also, a password manager is not such a complex piece of software. One day is more than enough to get a good idea about it if you’re truly testing it.

@Peatrick Some of the differences from the top of my head, in no particular order are:

  • The biggest difference is the sharing option which you should test for yourself if it is important for you.
  • Another difference which you probably are accustomed to is the ability to detect new credentials or password changes and filling credentials, which are weaker on Bitwarden.
  • There is no in-extension vault, which means you need to enter your master password every time you go to your vault.
  • Syncing is also better in LastPass and here you have to manually sync the extension if it wasn’t closed when you changed your vault. It’s about the same with the mobile app, as you just swipe down.
  • Searching does not return organized results by folders, you can’t move items around and changing an item “refreshes” partially the web vault.
  • Can’t seem to be able to fill identities, and no buttons in the fields for quickly select the credentials to fill (you have to either right click and go to Bitwarden context menu, or go to the extension).
  • Accessing the web vault is more difficult as you need to go through more clicks.
  • You get no floaty windows in android, meaning that apps which reload when you leave them will give you a headache, especially when autofill does not work.
  • Bitwarden has the ability to search in a single folder, but it can’t search subfolders.
  • You can’t search folders, including when adding items.
  • You can have multiple folders with the same name, but only the first created will have subfolders.
  • You can generate bigger passwords (128 characters), with about the same options as LastPass.
  • You can edit items directly in the extension, without opening new windows which can be a plus or a minus depending on what you’re doing (clicking away will close the extension as a browser limitation).
  • You can lock the extension with a PIN so you won’t have to type your master password.
  • For free, you can’t use Yubikey, but you can if you buy premium. In premium, both have password leak detection and other similar features.
  • Bitwarden does not track everything you do unlike LastPass (read TOS)
  • Bitwarden encrypts everything in your vault, which LastPass doesn’t (because TOS). Even if extensive information is not available about how this was managed during the previous hacking events, at least LastPass can have access to plenty of information about you and your vault, while Bitwarden can’t.
  • Bitwarden offers custom fields for credentials, while LastPass doesn’t.
  • Minor issues with Bitwarden UI/UX, like when you add custom fields, you can drag them up and down, but you can’t select with the mouse the text from them because you will trigger dragging them.
  • You can create in LastPass custom templates for items, but Bitwarden makes up for it with custom fields for any item
  • It is easier to access the content from your vault in the extension of Bitwarden
  • Searching seems better and faster in LastPass, but not by much
  • Bitwarden premium and family plans are cheaper (by one McDonald’s meal a year, depending on how much you eat)
  • Bitwarden offers TOTP for cheaper than LastPass
  • Bitwarden has by default a TOTP field… whether that is good or bad
  • LastPass has a password change function in a few clicks, although it works with a limited number of sites

There’s probably more, but those are some of the more obvious differences that came to my mind on the go.

  • You can’t individually log out devices from your vault with Bitwarden, as you need to log out all of them, unlike LastPass.

This was incorrect. I can’t exactly remember what made me think that, perhaps I confused it with something else. Looking at it again, the Bitwarden session deauthorization is something that I don’t see on LastPass. The closest thing LastPass has to it is removing trusted devices (only when you’re using 2FA), and removing mobile devices.

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Mihai, you are forgetting why Bitwarden was recommended. It’s free. Previously, the only two well known password manager that were decent features and have multiple device syncing was Last Pass or Bitwarden. Most of the other password manager have limitations like restriction on number of items, being able to use 1 device at a time or no syncing. For people who don’t use the advance feature in Last Pass and want to stay free or at least not pay $36 a year, it’s a no-brainer. There are other nice password managers like 1password or Dashlane, but they are either similar in price as last pass or more expensive. In those cases, you should probably stick with last pass because it’s the devil you know, but people want to switch because they feel Logmein had betray them.

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@paulsiu I’m not forgetting why it’s recommended.

In fact, the people recommending it are forgetting that the price is the main argument, then they proceed to inflate all its features. Disappointment comes from those high expectations.

Bitwarden has other strengths, but they’re not as appealing to a normal user compared to the competition. While any person thinking about it logically can ignore the small differences and hassles, the big differences are not things can can just be worked around or overlooked if they are important.

As I said before, it all comes down to your needs and what you’re willing to sacrifice.

LastPass gives convenience, but you sacrifice privacy. Most of the services are similar, but depending on how you use it, your need to sacrifice more money.

Bitwarden gives privacy and money value compared to LastPass. But depending on how you’re using it, you lose on convenience and the ability to share in a normal and expected way.

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13

Well, yeah.

If you switch from a PC to a Mac don’t expect the Mac to work 100% like the PC. Yes, they’re both OS’s but they also work differently.

Your whole post seems to be about how bad sharing is but again, Bitwarden is not LastPass. The way sharing works on Bitwarden is like how 1Password does it. It’s also how it works in the real world, if I share my phone charger with someone it’s out of my possession.

I found LastPass disappointing and the way it works horrible so I switched. Everyone is propping up LastPass as the gold standard but it was horrible and confusing to use, just compare the settings of both password managers and see LastPass is all over the place. In LastPass, I had to click extra buttons to just see the password in the mobile app, which is super annoying to me. The password updating popup never worked perfectly for me so I had to be sure to copy the password to the clipboard beforehand which is I find more annoying than doing it the Bitwarden-way. I can create a whole list of why LastPass is worse than Bitwarden.

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Thank god neither of these first 2 ‘features’ are in Bitwarden… the first is annoying and doesnt work that well… and the second locks you out of just about every site you use it on as LastPass changes it but then fails to save the change in the vault.

The third item is an improvement to security, so I have no problem with it.

  • Bitwarden has the ability to search in a single folder, but it can’t search subfolders.

Works fine for me, if I search from the top it searches all folders and subfolders.

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I agree. No follow-up either.

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I am often wonder why people evangelize a particular product. I suppose there are those who push a open source agenda (a political stance), but I often wonder why one would evangelize a particular product. The only thing I can think of is to validate that their choices is not wrong. Frankly, products are ultimately things run by corporation who just want our money, so people should adhere to a more pragmatic stance of using a product because it’s just happen to have the right combination of feature and price. I have never found a product that is for everyone, except air, water, etc.

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Most people defending Bitwarden do have a pragmatic stance, you can search anyone’s voting history and feature requests to confirm they want to see changes.

The problem is that we have people coming here who have used LastPass for years and expecting Bitwarden to work exactly like LastPass. They don’t even give Bitwarden a week before complaining or attempting to change to the Bitwarden-way of things.

Many of us moved away from LastPass because we did not like it and making Bitwarden more like LastPass is not what we want.

Half of the complaints we get can be fixed if they just do it the Bitwarden-way. I don’t know if they don’t know about it or they’re so set in their ways they refuse to learn anything new and if it’s the latter I’m afraid no password manager but LastPass will work for them.

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Yes, the search in all the items does search in all the items. I’m talking about when you go to a specific folder and search inside it. Even though it has subfolders, it will not search in them. It is an implementation logic, those folders functioning more like tags rather than folders. That being said, LastPass does not have the option to search in folders, but it shows the results organized by folders.

I used the first one quite a lot and it was rather convenient for those applications that reload every time you open them, as I couldn’t get all the info I need in one go, and some even cleared the clipboard when starting. If it got annoying, I could instead disable it and use it like Bitwarden. As for the second one, I prefer to be in control, so I never trusted it and I never used it. Some people like it, others don’t, but it’s there.

@Peatrick @sambartle It seems like I remembered this wrong, so I will correct it. LastPass can remove individual trusted devices (2FA only), and mobile devices, but it can’t deauthorize sessions on every type of device (only mobile). So yes, it is an improvement on the side of Bitwarden.

It is not about how bad sharing is in Bitwarden. In fact, depending on your needs it can be exactly what you need. I’m not sure how much you read from it or how attentively you did, but that was never the point. For example, if you are an enterprise and you own all the logins and they are all meant to be shared (as I already explained already) it can be what you’re looking for. The sharing functionality is used as an example to make the point, because it is just so limited and focused on companies.

Just because this is how you see it in real world, it doesn’t mean this is how it really works and how it should work. Also, your comparison is flawed. Just because you share something, you don’t lose ownership to it. If I share my car with my neighbor to go on a trip, does that mean I lose ownership? Although my neighbor is driving my car and I’m the passenger, does that mean that the car is not in my possession? Moreover, with Bitwarden you don’t lose possession, but ownership. Although you can lose both if someone else desires to, irrevocably.

I simply said that as a normal user which is not a company, I do not care about the way a company deals with credentials. What you do at the company it’s with the company’s property. When you put a credential in a company vault, you’re expected to put it for the company to use, not so you can take it back.

I don’t understand why you defend this logic. Could you explain how you are benefiting from the current sharing implementation more than the expected one? Let’s take LastPass for comparison since it’s in the topic. I’m not simply using LastPass as the “golden standard” here, I’m just using it as a reference because it got the system closer to me being in control of my credentials. It’s by no means perfect, but it allows me to revoke my sharing and to keep others from deleting what is mine. If you dislike LastPass, we could use Dashlane for reference then.

You have mentioned 1password, but that one still has more options when it comes to sharing and lets you unshare, although it lacks 1 to 1 sharing, and the ability to keep your vault intact without having to duplicate items when sharing. Given that Bitwarden is similar to 1password in this feature, it’s still falling behind, not allowing you to simply un-share as in 1password, not to mention it lacking the granularity of permissions 1password offers. If Bitwarden had implemented similar functionality, I wouldn’t have too much to complain about, besides the things I just said, since I prefer to be in control of my vault and not move my items out of it just to let someone see my credentials for a few moments.

Given that disappointment seems to be the topic, care to elaborate? You made me interested in your list. Since Bitwarden has similar, but more toned down functionality for the general user, I’m really curious what you found disappointing with LastPass instead but Bitwarden does better. Hopefully you’ll offer something objective, not subjective.

What exactly can you fix by doing the Bitwarden-way? And what is so specific to Bitwarden to be called the Bitwarden-way?

And where exactly do you draw the line? Emergency access? Require master password “re-prompt” for some items? Soft delete items to “trash”? Overlay popup interface? Add more pre-defined item types? Drag and drop into folder?

There is an entire “Feature Request” section saying otherwise. And not only about LastPass, but other password managers as well. I see plenty of people talking about wanting features that other password managers have, and you saying that sounds as if Bitwarden will never improve, or at least you don’t want to.

As far as I know, as a customer, you most of the time move to where you can get the most value, depending on your needs. As a PO, you’re changing the product to better fit the larger base of customers. A product that doesn’t evolve when the need arises, will lose customers.

I don’t think that making the software more like one or another is necessarily bad, as long as you know what to take and what not to. Giving more options to the users is not a bad thing, as long as they are properly implemented.

@dangostylver Also, who is this “we” you are talking about? You’re starting to sound like you’re paid for this by the way.

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Some good points, however, I hate that dotdotdot that LP has.

I’d hate to see BW try to mimic LP in every way. I really like it’s speed and simplicity.

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I wish Bitwarden paid me.

You’ve written a novel, my dude.

I want to answer you but I don’t want to write a novel myself and I feel it would go nowhere and we’ll just keep going in circles.

I wish you the best and I hope Bitwarden eventually works out for you.

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I agree with all of your points, OP, but most strongly with the first one. My workaround has been to generate a password and paste it in Notepad, then either manually enter the login in Bitwarden or, as you said, immediately log out and back in again.

In another thread, they linked to this video that shows you how to create the Bitwarden entry first, then use it to create the account on the site your registering on.

Also agree with your statement that Bitwarden is a fantastic product, and I will continue to use it happily. These are simply feature requests for future development. (Questioning my decision to post this in a thread named “Disappointed”)

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@roggeberg
I have to say that it might be that LastPass has it’s advantages, but I honestly have to say. When I tried to evaluate other alternatives to 1Pass which I really digged before Cloud-Versions the only (by far) suitable solution was Bitwarden. With the additional nice to have (for me must-have) that I could run it self-hosted.

The only thing that really bugged me until it was fixed (and it was fixed) is that there was no soft-delete option in earlier versions. That was one thing I couldn’t understand as this seems like such a normal thing to have that it really bugs when it doesn’t exist.

So I did incr-backups in shorter time periods. Problem solved.

And one really nice thing here is, that the developers work on this continuously and consider and implement feature requests which is far from normal especially in this quality.

So, it might be, that LastPass has its functionality that is better (which in my opinion is more gusto-based than really functionality-based).

It has its ways where it can (and obviously does) improve, and I personally cannot ask for more in a product that is very affordable, self-hostable, requestable and maintained. Just regarding the free-features set which is insanely valuable and huge.

So I think it is nice work and the few perks are absolutely acceptable.

Additionally when giving feedback just saying. It’s not like … so I don’t like it …
That is no feedback, that is a child’s temper tantrum.
Feedback is accompanied by information like what is missing and why it is important. That is constructive and everybody can work with that. Your “info” is just, well … useless. It’s not BW purpose to copy LastPass. And to believe that LP is the standard to keep up is nonesense. I looked at LastPass and I couldn’t not have liked it more.

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A lot of users asking for specifics. I’m a new user - using Bitwarden for the past couple months only. Previously, I only used the browser’s password manager, and as long as things were browser based, this worked perfectly on every platform (Android, Windows, 5 devices), I’d say 90+% of the time.

I decided to go with a PM because, mainly, apps. And I regret it. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that Bitwarden is “there for me” maybe 1 out of 5 times, across all websites and apps.

And when I say it doesn’t work at all, I mean it appears to be completely unaware that its services are needed, whether for a new login, or supplying password for existing. I did better with a secured spreadsheet, and that’s not hyperbole. The majority of the time, it didn’t capture a new password, or didn’t provide the password services when an app or website ran. It’s quite a lot more effort than using the browser’s built-in manager, along with a spreadsheet for non-browser things. Literally more clicks to wake it up than to open and find something in a spreadsheet.

I’ve read up on other complaints and apparently, there was an update earlier this year that messed things up. And as I’m using the latest, either that continues, or what I’m seeing are all new bugs. Like I said - not a long term user.

Most of the really terrible stats on this are with apps. I’d say 90% to 95% of the time, on my Oneplus 8T (fully updated), it simply appears to be unaware it’s needed. Having to reopen it, and enter a master password, and search for the expected login, every. single. time. I log in to app makes it worse than a spreadsheet. Okay - I’d allow that it isn’t worse, but definitely at best the same level of annoyance. So why have yet another app installed if it’s main effect is annoyance?

So I’m not comparing this to another general password manager - I’m comparing it NO general password manager, and it doesn’t stack up for that either.

When it does work, it’s great, but as this is a fraction of the times it should work, it’s not a viable solution.

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@rbsts1 - I guess you can blame the software, but I believe the vast, vast majority of users would not be able to relate to your statistics about low rate of success with Bitwarden.

I use Bitwarden regularly on MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. I have never seen anything resembling your degree of issues using the software. Genuinely, it makes me wonder what you are doing wrong if my experience, and that of so many others, is so different?

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Shills? Let me supply an alternative: I just registered, after a couple months as a user, to add comments with my experience. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if someone wants to pay me to comment, let me know :smiley:

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Hey @rbsts1 just wanted to check in, I haven’t experience anything like that, but have you checked out the Android troubleshooting guide? There is a wide range of autofill configurations and perhaps there is a better configuration for you? Troubleshooting Android Auto-fill | Bitwarden Help Center

You an also contact the official support team any time at Get in Touch | Bitwarden

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Welcome to the forums, @rbsts1.

Assuming you are referring to desktop apps (not mobile apps), this is where you went wrong picking Bitwarden as your first password manager. Bitwarden currently does not offer 100% functionality for logging in to desktop apps — for example, one of the most upvoted feature requests in the forum is Auto-type/Autofill for logging into other desktop apps . Although Bitwarden developers are in the process of researching options for implementing this functionality, there are inherent challenges in how to do this in a way that maintains cross-platform compatibility and works using the Node.js package.

 

This, and any other frustrations you may have encountered (besides the inability to autofill when logging in to desktop apps), seem to be caused by either some idiosyncratic issue with your particular set-up (which you should be able to troubleshoot with help from the community of these forums, or by contacting Bitwarden’s tech support directly), or by a lack of knowledge on your part regarding how to most effectively accomplish various tasks within Bitwarden’s UI (which you can also get help with on these forums).

Just like switching between a PC and a Mac is not intuitive and would require a learning curve, it will take a little time to figure out the best way to work with Bitwarden if you are coming from a different password manager (including the password managers that are native to various browsers). To learn, all you have to do is to is post a question in the “Ask the Bitwarden Community” forum. For example, new users commonly ask for help when Bitwarden fails to provide login credentials to a specific website; this is usually easy to fix by modifying the URI matching rules or be defining custom fields.

If you absolutely need to autofill login credentials for desktop apps, then you should probably look at alternatives to Bitwarden. On the other hand, if autofilling in desktop apps is not essential, then you should be able to significantly improve your experience with Bitwarden if you start engaging with the user community on these forums.

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I am too, but I came from 1pass family plan to bitwarden individual plan.
Missing my tags, recent used entries, agility to move/copy/drag & drop itens.
Missing the entry saving webpage icons too.
Everything is manual. I had to activate a bunch of things that on 1pass were automatic like autofill, save suggestion, biometric unlock, and stuffs like that.
On 1pass it looks like more for general public while in bitwarden seems something more to security community.
Average design, average UI, average features, etc.
Still trying to adapt.
I am struggling more than I was expecting.
Many hours lost learning and testing. :man_shrugging:

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Thanks for the feedback @fmartin the team is working on adding tags and sorting and there are lots of improvements coming on the roadmap.

There are also short video guides in the Learning Center, including the Bitwarden 101 series