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We've been using Bitwarden at work, the Teams plant, paying $15 per month, or $180 per year for 10 users. The only reason for why I picked it is its open source
by bad_user 7y ago
We've been using Bitwarden at work, the Teams plant, paying $15 per month, or $180 per year for 10 users. The only reason for why I picked it is its open source nature, otherwise I would have gone for 1Password Teams.
The pricing is odd. For example you can't self host it yourself without paying for a license. The code is AFAIK open source, so you could maintain your own fork with the required code branches removed, if you wanted to. I do hope the author doesn't pull a bait and switch, after enough users go down this route. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not looking into hosting it myself, I'm glad to pay for a hosted service, but with open source I want that possibility to be there and I don't want licensing per user for self-hosting either.
And currently I like what the author has been doing. Adding some code in there that makes it require a license, but that you can remove, is totally fine. But I'm seeing more and more open source apps turning proprietary nowadays and I don't look kindly to such bait and switches, because I end up using those apps because they are open source. Like it is the case for Bitwarden, otherwise there are often better proprietary options available.
From a usability standpoint, Bitwarden is unfortunately inferior to 1Password in every way. But it works fine for our purposes, for now. And Bitwarden is better than LastPass in case you're wondering, even if it has some missing features.
The official servers are slow. I just had multiple login failures. I'm assuming that it's experiencing issues due to being featured on HN right now, but this isn't the first time that it's happening.
But as long as it is _open source_ and as long as it does a reasonable job, then I'll keep supporting it. Because I'd rather pay for open source solutions.
- thatsnotmepls 7y agoDoesn't it bother you that even though it is open source, it is essentially maintained by one person [1]? What happens to the SaaS offering if he gets run over by a car? [1] https://github.com/bitwarden/server/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bitwarden/server/graphs/contributors
- bad_user 7y agoOpen Source means that it can be forked. If that guy gets hit by a bus and if the app is useful enough (and it is), then a fork will happen. And I can always do some contributions myself. And if I'm wrong and that fork doesn't happen, then nobody (with resources) wants it, in which case might as well let it die. The bus factor for open source stuff is great, even with zero contributors at any point in time. In contrast when a proprietary app gets killed (either due to acquisition or b/c it's not profitable) then it's gone for good. If a proprietary app changes, to include ads or anything that you don't like, there's absolutely nothing you can do but switch to something else or bend over.