Bitwarden

Disclaimer

I think my needs within the context of Bitwarden's service offerings were pretty basic, so this is meant to be a log of my experience with what I have used as opposed to a full-on deep dive review of every feature and service offering. I feel that most people will probably have needs similar to mine so I hope this helps.

The Features and Services I Used On Bitwarden (In no particular order)

• Password sharing

  • Via Organization

• Auto-fill

• Mobile app

  • Android

• Desktop app

  • Windows

• Browser Extensions

  • Google Chrome

  • Firefox

  • Brave Browser

• Multi Factor Authentication

  • One-Time Passwords (OTPs)

  • Security Questions and Answers

• Password generator

Quick Summary of Good Features

The apps are decently polished, and easy to use (although maybe tricky for the less technically-inclined to figure some things out if they aren't into reading instructions or watching tutorials). The security is very good, and the open source aspect makes me feel confident in it. Many features that are paid with other apps are included in the free version, so take a look at what's included and compare to see if it's worth saving the money based on your needs. Even so, the paid version is much less expensive than other apps in my experience. Worked well on my devices in most cases.

History

As a tech enthusiast, I am no stranger to the herculean task of password management. I have been the designated "computer person" in my family since we got our first computer in the late 90's. Granted that title was not really earned back then, it just fell to me because I spent the most time on it. Usually playing games. As I got older I did learn a thing or two about how they work, so maybe it did eventually become earned, but I digress.

My First Password Manager

My first encounter with a password manager was in the early 2010's. I had just graduated university and started working for a small local IT firm. It was there that I learned why you should use unique, complex passwords for all of your accounts. We had several clients that had been hacked because they used the same, simple password for everything. Although I couldn't always help them recover what was lost, I wanted to help them prevent it from happening again. I looked at a variety of solutions to this problem and eventually settled on LastPass. It was fairly easy to use, and free if you were only using it on one device, which was much more common at the time.

Years went by and many things changed: My job. My home. Even my relationship status. But I was still content with LastPass. Until the early 2020's when they had a string of hacks. Thankfully, none of my data was compromised. Though it was enough to make me start questioning their security practices. One day my coworkers, some of whom are much more adept and knowledgeable about technology than myself, were talking about LastPass and how it keeps getting hacked. It was enough to convince me to leave comfort and the status-quo behind for something new. They talked about another product called Bitwarden as a good alternative, so I decided to give it a go.

Bitwarden's software is open-source so I felt way more confident about its security because anyone can look at the code and see for themselves. That's pretty good incentive to ensure that you are keeping your customers' data as secure as possible. Another benefit to Bitwarden is that only certain features require a paid account. I kept my LastPass account active while I switched everything to Bitwarden so I could see if it would meet my needs. I used Bitwarden exclusively for a month and it worked great. I did have to upgrade to a paid account (which was less than $20 CAD per year at the time) to ensure that I had all of the features I needed, but that was a fair bit less than I was paying for LastPass. This concluded my Bitwarden experiment.

My Second Password Manager

In 2023 I deleted my LastPass account and used Bitwarden exclusively. I liked pretty much everything about it. The interface. How it worked. The process for sharing passwords. It worked well on my devices. It was great. I definitely liked the price. However, after several months with the product, and the ever-changing technology landscape, I wanted to get my wife, who isn't the most techically-savvy person, on a password manager to try to improve our own cybersecurity. So I tried to get her set up with Bitwarden. I shared the passwords she needed access to and set it up on her phone and her computer. I tried to make it as easy as possible for her to use. Unfortunately, this didn't work as I had hoped. She didn't like it at all. Although, to be fair, she hardly ever used her computer and the Android application didn't work well on her phone for some reason. I think she had a Samsung Galaxy S21 at the time. Thankfully, she hardly ever needed access to the passwords I had shared because we're usually together. Then in 2024, my employer adopted 1Password as its official password manager. Everything changed shortly after that.

All employees were expected to use 1Password to manage their work-related passwords on work-issued devices. I was a little resistant to this because I was partial to Bitwarden and had hoped I could convince the company to consider it, but it really didn't take too long for 1Password to win me over. Before I knew it I was using it daily and really enjoying it. The interface is very intuitive and there are lots of options in terms of the types of data you can store and how to store it. Organizing your data is also pretty easy through the use of collections and tags. The browser extensions I've used have worked very well, although there are some kinks I'd like them to work out, but I'll go over that in anothet review. Near the end of 2025 I learned that my employer's 1Password plan entitles all employees to a free Families plan for personal use.

My Third (And Hopefully Last) Password Manager

Suffice it to say that I switched right away. I set up personal accounts for my wife and I, imported all of our passwords from Bitwarden, and shared everything that I needed to. I did the same thing as I did with LastPass to ensure it would meet our needs before I deleted my Bitwarden account. So I lived with 1Password exclusively for a month and it worked brilliantly. So earlier this year I deleted my wife and I's Bitwarden accounts and I haven't looked back. My wife even uses 1Password on her own occasionally. Which says a lot. I couldn't pay her to use Bitwarden, so I was quite excited to see her using 1Password from time to time.

Although I will say that most of my experience with Bitwarden was great, my wife wasn't a fan and I was in favour of saving money where I could.

The little things add up

For me, Bitwarden was sufficient, and I probably would've kept it if 1Password wasn't free through my employer or my wife already had her own password manager. It met my needs for a decent cost. But I can't turn down free. Especially if my wife will use it. Like I said, I couldn't pay her to use Bitwarden.

There were also some minor issues with the android apps. For me on my Samsung Galaxy S23, it was occasional issues with the auto-fill. However, I have experienced this with other password managers. So I'm thinking it must be an issue with Android (or at least Samsung's flavour of it). For my wife, on her Galaxy S21, it was that plus issues unlocking the app. For whatever reason it would give her issues. Didn't matter if she was using biometrics or her password. It was usually difficult.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I would recommend Bitwarden. It's a great password manager. However, I would say that that depends on how tech savvy you and/or the people you may want to share passwords with are. If you are more technically-inclined, I'd say use Bitwarden. Otherwise I would advise using 1Password.

• If you want more information on LastPass, check out my review

• If you want more information on 1Password, check out my review