After the announcement during the early hours of Friday morning, popular password management service LastPass announced they had been acquired by remote management service LogMeIn. The fallout behind any acquisition of a popular service is never immediate, but the acquisition hasn’t been universally popular for all of LastPass’ customers. Competitor Agile Bits, the developer behind 1Password, has taken the opportunity to hold a ‘Cyber Security’ sale across their range to try and nab some of the disgrunltled LastPass user base.
While their blog post announcing the sale points to an announcement of Octoberby US-President Barack Obama as ‘National Cybersecurity Awareness Month’, it took till October 9th (10 days after the announcement), co-incidentally the same day the LastPass sale was announced, for them to go ahead with the sale.
Agile Bits has dropped the price across all their 1Password range of products down by 40%. The Android app, which has a 30-Day free trial for you to use, then wants you to purchase premium features which you complete through the In-App Purchase mechanism, for a relatively pricey $8.18. Unlike LastPass however, that’s not the only price you pay, you’ll also need to shell out for a Windows/Mac app as well to use it on your desktop/laptop – and no, there doesn’t appear to be a Linux app.
1Password is also behind the ball somewhat when it comes to ‘key’ functions that LastPass has, it has limited auto-fill capabilities, and also hasn’t implemented fingerprint support for the app as yet, though they’ve said that will come with Android Marshmallow.
It’s quite bit more investment to jump over to 1Password and seems to be a bit of a step down in terms of functionality, but the Android app at least seems to be pretty decent. There’s many other options available if you do a search for password managers in Google Play – but there does seem to be growing support for open source Password Manager KeePass which also has an Android App.
If you’ve decided to look around, with any app you’re trusting your passwords to, we highly recommend you do a lot of research first.
If you’re keen to check out 1Password you can check it out Google Play or head over to the 1Password website for links to the Windows and Mac app stores.
KeePass is good and it has a Windows app. Not sure about Mac and Linux
KeePassX is a Mac port of the client. I believe there’s a native Linux client too.
Yes, KeePassX runs on any Linux / BSD / whatever other *nix. I use it myself on Ubuntu, keeping my password safe synced via Dropbox. It lacks the auto fill feature of LastPass, but on the other hand your passwords aren’t as vulnerable to a massive security breach.
You can download free plug-ins with autofill functionality for all the mainstream browsers.
From memory, not for the mobile versions, though.
Sorry you’re right, I meant desktop. I haven’t found a plugin for that yet on mobile. KeePassDroid lets you copy usernames and password from the notification menu but it’s not as seamless as autofill.
When you say no linux support, do you mean not even a browser plugin for Firefox? I certainly won’t be swapping then. LastPass and Xmarks have been a dream for me, and I won’t be switching unless the functionality is equal and the price is superior.
1p also doesn’t have any of the company/enterprise features that LastPass has. This is basically why we went with LP for my company – and there doesn’t seem to be much competition at all in this space.
Can you link some of the negativity? I don’t really see the big deal. I’m not a paying customer so if they start charging, I’m off.
Could be because scammers use the remote access side of the company?