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LastPass is going to become an independent company

 2 years ago
source link: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22833319/lastpass-independent-company-logmein
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LastPass is going to become an independent company Skip to main content

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LogMeIn is making LastPass an independent company. Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

LogMeIn plans to spin out password management tool LastPass as a standalone company, it announced Tuesday. With the change, LastPass is promising that customers will receive enhancements on an “accelerated timeline” next year. “With a team solely dedicated to its continued innovation and growth, [LastPass] will be able to deliver even more strongly for users,” a spokesperson said.

LastPass, which LogMeIn purchased for $125 million in 2015, is a popular password management tool; it’s used by “more than 30 million users and 85,000 businesses worldwide,” according to LogMeIn, and “the significant majority” of its business is corporate customers. LogMeIn’s emphasis on LastPass’ corporate use in its press release could suggest the standalone company is going to focus more on that audience.

The change arrives almost a year after LastPass added significant restrictions to its free tier. LastPass now limits free users to only viewing and managing passwords on mobile devices or your computer. To access your passwords on all your devices, you need to be on a paid plan. If you’re still on LastPass’ free plan and want to move to another password manager, we’ve got a guide you can follow right here. LogMeIn has also been criticized for tripling the price of LastPass Premium between 2017 and 2019, though a spokesperson tells The Verge there are “no plans” to change LastPass’ pricing.

The shift is taking place nearly two years after LogMeIn agreed to sell itself to two private equity firms for $4.3 billion.

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There are 35 comments.

I don’t expect to switch back (from 1Password), but this was one of the primary reasons I dropped LastPass a year ago. It was buggy and seemingly hadn’t been updated at all in years. I was a paying Family plan user, so didn’t particularly care about the changes to their Free tier. The apps just barely worked and is kind of a mess on Android.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 9:16 AM

Bitwarden is so much cleaner and I find works much better than LastPass. I had been using LastPass for about 5 years until I switched earlier this year and I haven’t looked back! Super simple to switch too.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 9:24 AM

Similar to my experience. I had many years with LastPass, and it was "good enough"… but they never advanced it enough to warrant the doubling of its price every couple years, mostly under LogMeIn. There were a few sales (last one on Humble Bundle was $5-10 per year). But the price increase and stagnation drove me to Bitwarden, which I’ve loved ever since, and am actually happy to pay for or donate to.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 9:31 AM

Couldn’t agree with this more. Switching from LastPass was driven by the changes to their business model, but not only was moving to Bitwarden far easier and more seamless than I anticipated, turns out it’s a far superior product as well.

Never realized now buggy and unreliable LastPass actually was until I had the benefit of hindsight.

Just wanted to echo this. Like many others I jumped ship to Bitwarden when Lastpass introduced restrictions. Can’t believe why I waited, Bitwarden is miles ahead of Lastpass in usability in that major features like the tap to fill on Android actually work! It never did beyond the first five minutes after an update on Lastpass. Cannot see myself ever going back to them or ever recommending them to anyone else. Heck, the fact Apple, Google and Microsoft have made their in house efforts more feature packed also makes it harder to recommend Lastpass to the tech unsavvy like grandparents or parents.

I’d switch for a functional tap to fill alone. Last pass is getting on my last nerve. It works fine as a password manager but as an actual ap with a functional UI, "functional" is a bit strong.

So why did you and the others decide on Bitwarden? Anything specific? There are so many competitors that’s one reason I went with Lastpass initially. Just hard to sift through the noise on something that seemed similar across the board.

Not the OP but Bitwarden has a very generous free tier on their hosted platform. I think only enabling mfa requires a subscription?

The apps are good and regularly updated both with features and bug fixes. The UI is clean and kind of just gets out of your way.

The code is open source and security audited. https://bitwarden.com/blog/bitwarden-network-security-assessment-2020/. You can also self host on a server of your own if you would like full control of your data.

I’ve tried lastpass, dashlane, enpass, keepass and 1password all at one time or another and bitwarden has been the best. I’ve used it for 3-4 years at least now and have no intention of switching.

That’s awesome thanks. I think I’ll give it a shot.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 4:37 PM

therachetnclank does a good job answering but in my case I pretty much posed a similar question to the Verge comment threads and was reassured by how consistent the answers were about how easy it would be to transition and how the free tier of Bitwarden is excellent for everyday usage. And honestly it has been. I was hesitant about the shifting process, considered just relenting to the in built solution from either Microsoft or Google but wanted to keep it on a third party if possible. In that regard everyone touted the open source credentials of Bitwarden and yeah, I just went with that.
Sure it doesn’t seem to have the ability to notify you if passwords have been breached (that I know of). Maybe that’s something in the paid tier?
I can definitely confirm that the apps are very good and the web plug in is clean and simple. I’m very satisfied with it.

Posted  on Dec 15, 2021 | 6:26 AM

Bitwarden is fantastic and i run it self hosted too so it’s even more secure.

Could you elaborate what you mean by self hosted please?

Posted  on Dec 15, 2021 | 6:22 AM

I’ve just seen your reply above now about self hosting. Was that easy to set up?

Posted  on Dec 15, 2021 | 6:26 AM

What’s the switch process like? I’m hesitant because spending the first 6 months finding, editing, and updating passwords into lastpass was a major pita. I know it’s marketed as hassle free but it was a pretty constant annoyance for a while so I’d love to avoid that if possible.

I was worried about this too but I asked on Verge and everyone explained how hassle free it was and genuinely, it was a painless experience switching between the two!

Posted  on Dec 15, 2021 | 6:23 AM

Similar experience for myself. I also switched when they changed the free tier and I find it much better.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 3:54 PM

Rev

I switched to BitWarden when they screwed over their existing customers last year, and I don’t see myself switching back. Even before LogMeIn bought them, they’d stagnated for years. Their system is exactly the same as it was when I signed up for LastPass over 10 years ago, just with a fresh coat of CSS to pretty it up.

It’s extremely stagnate, and they keep doing things to screw over their customers, I’m not interested.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 9:24 AM

I understand exactly the motivation behind all these Software-as-a-Service models, but it is extremely frustrating that once you get buy in to a certain workflow, there’s very little to stop companies from just jacking up the prices again and again.

Adobe is probably the poster-child for this, but it’s pretty ubiquitous.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 9:40 AM

Any reason to use them over Apple Keychain? I’ve been a LastPass user for years, but recently found out keychain works on windows too and seems to support all the same stuff.

Cross-plaftorm access, OTP support, arbitrary file storage support.

Apple never has truly cross-platform services.

LastPass (and many of its competitors) have integration in all of the major desktop browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Edge – on every platform those browsers work on, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.

These services also offer desktop apps for Windows/macOS/Linux.

…and they offer apps for both Android and iOS.

Also is its very customizable in the cards and how you set them up. You can store important notes and even custom fields in there as well. I switched from LP to BitWarden and it is a great product. It may require a little user interaction to get it where you want to but the payoff is worth it.

I jumped ship from Lastpass when they implemented that restriction. I had been a paying member earlier on but went the free route when mobile was available along with desktop.

Lastpass was also buggy as heck and it took me a month of back and forth emails and screen captures to actually get Lastpass to admit there was a bug in their extension.

It was only this year that lastpass’s bad behavior pushed me to switch to 1password. Replacing free features with lower quality paid features was a great way to drive off customers. We’ll see what happens but I don’t think they are going to be able to urn back old customers.

It feels like LastPass development effectively stopped as soon as LogMeIn purchased them. I still use my account: it works, I have a bunch of shared passwords with family that it would be a PITA to move over to another service, but it definitely has felt like abandonware since LogMeIn laid their filthy paws on it. Hopefully that changes now.

I closed all my LastPass accounts when LogMeIn purchased them. Moved to Bitwarden and not looking back. LogMeIn is right up there with Cisco and Adobe when it comes to buying companies to squeeze as much $$$’s our of the subscriber.

Never did like the feel of LastPass. Soon after I found KeepassXC. This multi-platform, open source, password manager has been my go-to for years and has never given me an ounce of trouble. I love the simplicity.

I have nothing invested with KeePassXC. They’re just a solid, simple password manager.

Does anyone know of any reviews of password managers focusing more on their level security? Particularly from security experts or at least the authors got feedback from security experts?

Not particularly interested in look, feel, robust feature sets, etc. Cross platform would be a nice feature though.

I really hope it gets better going forward, not a fan of LogMeIn and LastPass has stagnated feature wise for a while and is pretty janky. I’ve been using it for 10+ years though and share many accounts with my spouse, so migrating to something else is a pain when it mostly works.

Was with Laspass since they opened the doors, paid every year for it and loved it. Thing is they started charging more and more every year but I didn’t notice any improvement to the features. This summer I canceled my sub and switched to Bitwarden.
$10 per year? Yea, that’s unbeatable

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 1:21 PM

Another Bitwarden convert from LastPass. Thanks to The Verge on helping make the decision. I’ve been using a password manager since 2003 when I started out with Roboform before I converted to LastPass. BitWarden just seems to work so much better than RF and LP ever did and the import process was simple and easy. I don’t think I’ve run into many sites that needed fixed after import either.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 2:17 PM

I’m looking to switch from LastPass to 1Password because there seems to be no easy way to contact a human at LastPass for tech support.

I’m a web developer so my IT knowledge is probably higher than the average person. Yet, in the past when I was having long delays getting a password texted to me to complete a multi factor authentication login to my LastPass account, I saw no way to contact a human to get this issue resolved.

Contrast this with 1Password where when I’ve asked them questions (the last time via Tweeting at them as suggested by their website) and they replied in 1 to 2 hours which is good enough.

More and more I like supporting IT companies that actually provide prompt tech support from real humans.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 2:44 PM

I’ve been a LP user for probably 10+ years, always on the free tier. 99.7% of the time I am using the PC browser extension, the ipad app was only a convenience so I didn’t have to turn the computer on to get a password. I can’t remember an instance where the app didn’t give me a password when I wanted it. Other than losing the ability to use the app, I haven’t really ever had an annoyance worth jumping ship over. Since I have never paid for it, the lack of new features just never phased me. It stores passwords, it retrieves said pw, it stores the backup passphrases for various accounts in the notes section, that’s all I’ve needed it to do.

My brother jumped ship from LP a few years ago to Bitwarden and has a self-hosted server so it would be pretty easy for me to jump over. But, there just hasn’t been a reason to push me to move. I guess I am lucky that I haven’t experienced the bugginess that others have.

There is one instance I caught them in, back when they restricted the free tier, that they hadn’t planned to mitigate. The LP Authenticator app has the ability to save your accounts from Two step on your LP account. When you trigger it to save them, it requires you to login using the regular LP app, which in turn switches your account from PC to mobile. I talked to support about it and it was very evident that they hadn’t thought about it before then. They eventually came out and said that I have the ability to switch back and forth 3 times before you are stuck on whichever platform was the last one. But, because I am not using the actual LP app and just the Authenticator, they just told me I could contact them to reset that number. Very hokey decision. But since I rarely add anything new to the Authenticator I have only saved it once.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 5:29 PM

Anyone remembers Xmarks? I think it’s time to bring back with Last Pass.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 5:55 PM

I used Lastpass for many years, and was pretty happy with the service. I moved to Bitwarden after logmein decided to create artificial scarcity to hike the price up. Bitwarden is a significantly better service. It’s open source, and free.

Posted  on Dec 14, 2021 | 7:35 PM

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