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Bitwarden is underrated. Passwords run everything in our digital life. I will gladly take a UI compromise here and there for more trustworthiness.

corytheboyd 3y ago
I don’t even mind the UI honestly. It works. Some annoying UX here and there, but I can live with that. I happily pay for a subscription to support them.
- ramenmeal 3y ago
  I moved over from Lastpass, I find the experience of filling in a password in Bitwarden more jarring/slow than in Lastpass. I'm not sure what it is, maybe Lastpass had longer timeouts to require FaceID when filling a password? Bitwarden requires it every time.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Can you compare to 1Password?
    - ramenmeal 3y ago
      sorry, no experience with 1password
    - jorvi 3y ago
      1Password is very trustworthy too. They get audited frequently, and their db file format is open source (meaning you can write a 3rd party tool to decrypt them). With UI/UX they are lightyears ahead of Bitwarden. I want to like Bitwarden, but when your application doesn’t even support extremely basic stuff like drag ‘n drop, I’m gone. In general they also support newer tech much faster. And their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method.
      - lxgr 3y ago
        > With UI/UX they are lightyears ahead of Bitwarden. 1Password is arguably moving backwards these days, UI-wise. I don't know if it's caused by the Electron update or just coincided with it, but I've been finding the keyboard autofill shortcut as well as keyboard navigation for selecting a given login on a page very unreliable lately. That said, 1Password's "auto-rotate password" feature is still ahead of the competition, though. Bitwarden doesn't even seem to try, but that's still better than LastPass, which reliably used to lock me out by irrevocably overwriting the old stored password before the website confirms the new one as having been accepted. > their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method. I don't know, their security key mechanism seems to be getting weakened in the interest of convenience as well. I was recently very surprised to notice that the iOS client apparently synchronizes the security key for any logged-in vault to iCloud Keychain, with no way to opt out – even for enterprise vaults! Bitwarden will also soon support the WebAuthN/CTAP2 "PRF" extension, which is even better than a static security key since it rotates with every vault unlock.
        TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
        > > their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method. > I don't know, their security key mechanism seems to be getting weakened in the interest of convenience as well. I was recently very surprised to notice that the iOS client apparently synchronizes the security key for any logged-in vault to iCloud Keychain, with no way to opt out – even for enterprise vaults! In their defense, they document that the point of the Secret Key is that it remains secret from them/AgileBits/1Password, and that it is expected to be present on-device. It used to be called the Account Key, but the reason the name was changed was because far too many people were referencing it in emails to support, which undermined the design. In your defense, while they started syncing the Secret Key in iCloud Keychain all the way back at v7.0, they had then and have had sense gotten plenty of feedback saying this should be optional. They have just refused to make it optional.
  - lucideer 3y ago
    > Bitwarden requires it every time. This is configurable - not sure what the default is but every time does sound annoying.
  - gregschlom 3y ago
    This is configurable in the settings. The default timeout is indeed too low and very annoying, but you can set it up to 4h I believe.
- giarc 3y ago
  My biggest peeve is that if you search for a password and you happen to be in the "Card" category for example, it will return 0 results. A good alternative would be to show No Results for the category you are in, but then provide results for other categories below.
  - corytheboyd 3y ago
    Yeah that gets me somewhat frequently too, and second the request you have. Another silly one is adding custom fields, you can’t change the type between visible/hidden once it’s created, so if you mess up, you have to delete the custom field and add it with the desired visibility. Ughhh
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    another is that if you do a search then click on an entry and do another search, the entry details displayed and what's in the search box don't match and it's not clear unless you're paying attention.
  - mderazon 3y ago
    My biggest issue is when having to copy multiple fields from an entry into the webpage and having to use the search (because the entry is for a different domain or just a note or a card) you have to search for the entry again and again because the search key doesn't persist
- troyvit 3y ago
  Same here. We use 1Password at work and the braindead UI choices continuously surprise me compared to Bitwarden's simplicity.
kwanbix 3y ago
I pay for family, and I like it. The only thing I don't like is that 50% of the time it would not recognize that I created a new user/pass combination.
lucideer 3y ago
Bitwarden's UI is far from perfect but I find it better than any competitors I've tried (LP & 1Pass). 1Password feels cleaner, more integrated & polished but in practice the UX is inferior to BW - most regular actions take more clicks & discoverability is lower. And the password generator is even worse than LP's. Lastpass UI is well known to be poor - Bitwarden's is far less worse by every metric. Bitwarden's not perfect but what's significantly better UI-wise?
- throwaway447 3y ago
  Nothing beats www.enpass.io but they charge now. I still ran the free version (free version not available for download anymore).
  - tssva 3y ago
    I find Enpass to be great for personal use at least. I've never tried it for business use. Luckily I paid for it when the Android app was $6.95 and got you lifetime usage on all platforms. They recently added passkey support.
    - throwaway447 3y ago
      I never installed it on Android. I use it only on my computer. But I use it also a lot as an organizer since it is so flexible. Has also my ID scans, Degree scans etc.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    > store and sync passwords wherever is best for you So, how would you access that cloud account in the first place? Unless you remember the password and disable 2FA for that cloud account, unless of course you add another 2FA manager which is just an extra non-needed complexity.
- bmurphy1976 3y ago
  I can't speak for the other password managers, but I find Bitwarden's organization management to be pretty terrible. As a personal password manager it's pretty good, but as an organization password manager, not so much.
sph 3y ago
And with the Premium upgrade at only $10 a year, it's outstanding. I wouldn't mind paying 10x that. I introduced it at work to manage all our company credentials, and loved the fact that all users also get free premium for their personal account.
razemio 3y ago
Why is it underrated? In my personal bubble everyone is using it. Most of them self-hosted. My hole family and some friends use my instance. Besides pass (low non tech approval factor) there is nothing that comes close.
- breakfastduck 3y ago
  Tends to be used by a tech audience, it's nowhere near as widely adopted as e.g. last pass for normal consumers.
carstenhag 3y ago
I have to use bitwarden at my company laptop and don't enjoy it at all. Weird UX with unlocking the vault via touch id on a Mac (this is literally the most common UI interaction, please make it nice). On top of that, weird rare syncs/bugs, but this could also be coming from my employer.
scubadude 3y ago
I am very happy to pay for a family plan. The price of one coffee per month. Thank you Bitwarden.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  The coffee is really expensive where you live lol. Here is around €1. But it's a decent price for a password manager yes. And the personal one is even better.
nedt 3y ago
For hackers there is a CLI and with that also JS libs etc. to get it into anything you might want. For anyone else the UI is already miles ahead of Lastpass so there is no big compromise.

corytheboyd 3y ago

I don’t even mind the UI honestly. It works. Some annoying UX here and there, but I can live with that. I happily pay for a subscription to support them.

ramenmeal 3y ago
I moved over from Lastpass, I find the experience of filling in a password in Bitwarden more jarring/slow than in Lastpass. I'm not sure what it is, maybe Lastpass had longer timeouts to require FaceID when filling a password? Bitwarden requires it every time.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Can you compare to 1Password?
  - ramenmeal 3y ago
    sorry, no experience with 1password
  - jorvi 3y ago
    1Password is very trustworthy too. They get audited frequently, and their db file format is open source (meaning you can write a 3rd party tool to decrypt them). With UI/UX they are lightyears ahead of Bitwarden. I want to like Bitwarden, but when your application doesn’t even support extremely basic stuff like drag ‘n drop, I’m gone. In general they also support newer tech much faster. And their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      > With UI/UX they are lightyears ahead of Bitwarden. 1Password is arguably moving backwards these days, UI-wise. I don't know if it's caused by the Electron update or just coincided with it, but I've been finding the keyboard autofill shortcut as well as keyboard navigation for selecting a given login on a page very unreliable lately. That said, 1Password's "auto-rotate password" feature is still ahead of the competition, though. Bitwarden doesn't even seem to try, but that's still better than LastPass, which reliably used to lock me out by irrevocably overwriting the old stored password before the website confirms the new one as having been accepted. > their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method. I don't know, their security key mechanism seems to be getting weakened in the interest of convenience as well. I was recently very surprised to notice that the iOS client apparently synchronizes the security key for any logged-in vault to iCloud Keychain, with no way to opt out – even for enterprise vaults! Bitwarden will also soon support the WebAuthN/CTAP2 "PRF" extension, which is even better than a static security key since it rotates with every vault unlock.
      - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
        > > their secret key system is more secure than Bitwarden’s password-only method. > I don't know, their security key mechanism seems to be getting weakened in the interest of convenience as well. I was recently very surprised to notice that the iOS client apparently synchronizes the security key for any logged-in vault to iCloud Keychain, with no way to opt out – even for enterprise vaults! In their defense, they document that the point of the Secret Key is that it remains secret from them/AgileBits/1Password, and that it is expected to be present on-device. It used to be called the Account Key, but the reason the name was changed was because far too many people were referencing it in emails to support, which undermined the design. In your defense, while they started syncing the Secret Key in iCloud Keychain all the way back at v7.0, they had then and have had sense gotten plenty of feedback saying this should be optional. They have just refused to make it optional.
- lucideer 3y ago
  > Bitwarden requires it every time. This is configurable - not sure what the default is but every time does sound annoying.
- gregschlom 3y ago
  This is configurable in the settings. The default timeout is indeed too low and very annoying, but you can set it up to 4h I believe.
giarc 3y ago
My biggest peeve is that if you search for a password and you happen to be in the "Card" category for example, it will return 0 results. A good alternative would be to show No Results for the category you are in, but then provide results for other categories below.
- corytheboyd 3y ago
  Yeah that gets me somewhat frequently too, and second the request you have. Another silly one is adding custom fields, you can’t change the type between visible/hidden once it’s created, so if you mess up, you have to delete the custom field and add it with the desired visibility. Ughhh
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  another is that if you do a search then click on an entry and do another search, the entry details displayed and what's in the search box don't match and it's not clear unless you're paying attention.
- mderazon 3y ago
  My biggest issue is when having to copy multiple fields from an entry into the webpage and having to use the search (because the entry is for a different domain or just a note or a card) you have to search for the entry again and again because the search key doesn't persist
troyvit 3y ago
Same here. We use 1Password at work and the braindead UI choices continuously surprise me compared to Bitwarden's simplicity.

kwanbix 3y ago

I pay for family, and I like it. The only thing I don't like is that 50% of the time it would not recognize that I created a new user/pass combination.

lucideer 3y ago

Bitwarden's UI is far from perfect but I find it better than any competitors I've tried (LP & 1Pass). 1Password feels cleaner, more integrated & polished but in practice the UX is inferior to BW - most regular actions take more clicks & discoverability is lower. And the password generator is even worse than LP's. Lastpass UI is well known to be poor - Bitwarden's is far less worse by every metric. Bitwarden's not perfect but what's significantly better UI-wise?

throwaway447 3y ago
Nothing beats www.enpass.io but they charge now. I still ran the free version (free version not available for download anymore).
- tssva 3y ago
  I find Enpass to be great for personal use at least. I've never tried it for business use. Luckily I paid for it when the Android app was $6.95 and got you lifetime usage on all platforms. They recently added passkey support.
  - throwaway447 3y ago
    I never installed it on Android. I use it only on my computer. But I use it also a lot as an organizer since it is so flexible. Has also my ID scans, Degree scans etc.
- tamimio 3y ago
  > store and sync passwords wherever is best for you So, how would you access that cloud account in the first place? Unless you remember the password and disable 2FA for that cloud account, unless of course you add another 2FA manager which is just an extra non-needed complexity.
bmurphy1976 3y ago
I can't speak for the other password managers, but I find Bitwarden's organization management to be pretty terrible. As a personal password manager it's pretty good, but as an organization password manager, not so much.

sph 3y ago

And with the Premium upgrade at only $10 a year, it's outstanding. I wouldn't mind paying 10x that. I introduced it at work to manage all our company credentials, and loved the fact that all users also get free premium for their personal account.

razemio 3y ago

Why is it underrated? In my personal bubble everyone is using it. Most of them self-hosted. My hole family and some friends use my instance. Besides pass (low non tech approval factor) there is nothing that comes close.

breakfastduck 3y ago
Tends to be used by a tech audience, it's nowhere near as widely adopted as e.g. last pass for normal consumers.

carstenhag 3y ago

I have to use bitwarden at my company laptop and don't enjoy it at all. Weird UX with unlocking the vault via touch id on a Mac (this is literally the most common UI interaction, please make it nice). On top of that, weird rare syncs/bugs, but this could also be coming from my employer.

scubadude 3y ago

I am very happy to pay for a family plan. The price of one coffee per month. Thank you Bitwarden.

wkat4242 3y ago
The coffee is really expensive where you live lol. Here is around €1. But it's a decent price for a password manager yes. And the personal one is even better.

nedt 3y ago

For hackers there is a CLI and with that also JS libs etc. to get it into anything you might want. For anyone else the UI is already miles ahead of Lastpass so there is no big compromise.