I have been checking out bitwarden lately, having been a lastpass user for many years.
I was seriously considering swaping my whole family over but was suprised to see that with the premium access addon costing $3.33/month it actually works out more expensive than Lastpass families.
Bitwarden family + premium access = $4.33/month (5 accounts)
Lastpass family = $4/month (6 accounts)
obviously without the addon bitwarden is far cheaper but i was very suprised to see that the addon takes it over the lastpass price. Dont know whether it has been considered to drop the $0.33/month to bring it into parity (despite the account limit of 5 not 6).
The cost analysis of LP families: 6 premium accounts for the price of 2 LP premium accounts.
If bitwarden family was setup in this same price structure it would cost Ā£2/month.
Which i agree would be extremely cheaper than it is now. Iām just wondering if there is a reason why the premium addon needs to be such a bump in price and whether a more competitive price has been considered.
Same here! I was about to test Bitwarden to consider a switch but then got really surprised when reading about the Premium Access Addon which is not mentioned near the pricing.
So itās not $1 per month for a family of 5 members ($12 per year) as the Addon ads an additional $40 a year. $52 a year = $4.33/month.
I donāt think dropping the price solves the issue of this not being clear. Iād just include the Addon for all organisation models so all itās users are premium users. Maybe raise the price for Family a bit for that if it helps. Donāt sell the Addon, really makes the pricing structure a mess in my opinion as a nearly-user
The thing that I donāt understand is that if I use Bitwarden infrastructure I can share between two people under the free tier, if I self-host then I have to pay to share with anyone. What is the logic of it being free if I use Bitwarden resources but paid if I use my own?
Pricing is generally designed to maximize the benefit to shareholders. So ā¦ itās magic. If logic in pricing was widely considered a necessity, we would all be flying SouthWest, at least within US.
āSo itās not $1 per month for a family of 5 members ($12 per year) as the Addon ads an additional $40 a year. $52 a year = $4.33/month.ā
Yup.
I noticed the same thing and it turned me off to the family plan completely because itās just my wife and I. So I can technically do it cheaper by getting two individual accounts and creating an org ($32/yr). Iām still in the evaluation phase, so my answer right now is to see if just the free features work for me.
The response from BW is that they are two separate products. But itās clear from multple accounts that presenting this as two different products is confusing to consumers. I love the idea that itās OSS, but not so sure that itās worth a premium over LP or other more refined systems out there.
I think it would be best if āUsers get premiumā would be the default for Families, Teams and Organization accounts. And then increase the price for families a bit. Much more clear.
But it would already make a difference if the Premium Access Addon would be clear from the beginning. Probably a mention of the Premium Access Addon on the homepage in the box for the Families will do for the short term.
Note I asked how Teams would acquire Premium, for this they have to upgrade to Enterprise. So my guess for you and your spouse is youād also need to upgrade to Families.
I āthinkā that I could do it the way Iām thinking, but I would probably have to make multiple payments. That isā¦ my wife would have to buy her premium, I would have to buy mine, and one of us would have to buy the āfamilyā plan.
Itās all convoluted.
ETA: I would be all over it if they would just simplify it to something like $12 family and $8 per user. But why should I I spend $40 on premium features for 2 users?
Agree. Find it confusing that paid memberships donāt include āpremiumā. There are 2 pricing models happening at the same time for everyone other than Enterprise.
BAlGaInTl - yes, you can buy the family plan and then each individually buy premium. I did something like that.
I found it a confusing, too. It was after playing around that it made a little more sense to me.
For the $12 family plan, I got the ability to create shared collections. In those shared collections, some premium features are available (TOTP, security checks, etc.). I just have three people in the family account at present, and it seemed that the premium features were worth it for me but not the other two (yet), so I paid the $10 to get premium for myself alone.
I would much prefer a clearer and more integrated pricing structure (let me chose who gets premium and pay for them, or maybe charger per user up to a cap for the organization).
Yeah. Still think itās weird though. I have a hard time explaining the pricing structure to people.
The 1GB diskspace and vault health reports are in both Premium AND Families. So the Premium addon adds TOTP, real 2FA (YubiKey) which is rarely used as expensive afaik and priority customer support.
Itās also a manual process to add Premium to members of a Family as you have to file a support ticket to add it.
For Teams/Enterprise the same issue exists. Teams also donāt get premium - but they do get priority support. Enterprise does add Premium.
After coming back to this several months later I think itās still more convenient for everybody if paying means everybody is Premium. Maybe raise the price of Family to $2 a month if money is an issue here.
Iād like to maintain the option to not have everyone get premium, as most of my family doesnāt need it.
Having the ability to have larger family groups would be nice as well, even if it costed extra, or perhaps you can add unlimited āreadā users to any group, and the restriction on group size only effects the maximum number of āwriteā users you can have in your group. I could see the current offering being unfriendly to larger families.
What I donāt understand is why especially THIS feature is not in the family plan. This is one of the most important ones nowadays. I would book it seperately, but the full package jumps from $12 to $52 which seems like a bad joke to me. Cheaper to get one account for each member which needs it. Want it for my parents, so its better to go 2x Premium without the family plan I guess. Or family with 2x Premium which is still cheaper.
It seems that even if the pricing structure canāt be changed, it should definitely have a dedicated page that clearly breaks down each charge / āadd-onā and what you get as far as features in each tier / category. The current set up is extremely confusing.
Iām another one in the situation of having a āfamilyā of 2. We would like to both have at least the Premium features of 1GB storage each (2 GB total) and the health reports. The priority / āupgradedā support would be nice too, especially if paying customers. Based on my interpretation of the current pricing info, we would have to do a āfreeā family account and then each pay $10 separately for Premium ā at least I think that would work.
If thatās not how it would work, I guess weād be paying the $12 for families and then doing the Premium Access Addon for ~$40 a year. Definitely not worth leaving LP if thatās the cost.
In a perfect world itād be great if you could input your number of users, select the features you want, and have a running tally of what your annual cost would be (similar to how some of the mobile companies do their pricing estimates).
If nothing else though, as stated the pricing should really have a dedicated page that clearly explains what is gained / lost for each charge. Maybe have examples of the best way to set up your account for your use case.
