Perennial favourite password locker LastPass has announced their family plan pricing overnight, as well as announcing their premium tier has become more expensive, doubling the per month price to $2 while also removing a sharing option.
The family plan will cost you $48USD per year, which includes Premium LastPass access for up to 6 ‘family’ members. This Family plan includes a dashboard to manage the family members in your account and a folder for sharing passwords between those accounts.
In more divisive news, LastPass now costs $24 per year – double the old yearly cost of $12 per month. While the price has doubled, there’s no new features included to justify the price hike. The same features are still included in the Premium LastPass plan for what that’s worth.
The news of the price hike hasn’t gone down well with LastPass users either. The Verge is reporting that many users have taken to LastPass’ Facebook page to share their displeasure. LastPass for their part are justifying the price increase by pointing at new features like the improved user experience – but that’s not winning any friends at this stage.
Free users lose some functionality as well with the free tier now getting limited sharing on a one-to-one basis only.
Here’s the layout of the pricing and plan features.
At this stage, LastPass is still cheaper than competitor 1Password at $2.99 per month, but Dashlane at $39.99US per year is looking pretty good right now. Of course other options like KeePass exist if you’re willing to put a little work in. If you don’t like the update, time to vote with your wallet.
I recently posted this same question on OzBargain and someone came back with Enpass,
I’ve been trialling it and the desktop side is quite slick, you store your own password file and can do “cloud sync” using your own cloud storage (Dropbox/Google Drive/Box etc).
IMO, I “trust” Google Drive more than I do LastPass so I’m happy to store my Enpass DB in Google Drive.
As a premium user, I am not happy with the price increase. However, I don’t think I will move either. Better the devil I know than the one I don’t know.
An example of why I try to avoid subscriptions, Keepass for Windows is great as is “Keepass2Android Password Safe” (both are free), no web version though.
How do you know it doesn’t call home and pass on say your paypal info (as one example). I would never trust open source for a password manager.
I’ve used Lastpass for years and I spent a couple of weeks looking for an alternative after the LogMeIn acquisition. There wasn’t any competition, nothing worked with my chromebooks and mobile as well as Lastpass.
Doubling the price is a shock but I’ll probably end up sticking with it as it isn’t that much money for what you’re getting.
Dashlane unfortunately while quite a slick platform is a no-go for me. No auto-fill capabilities on Android unless you use their web browser afaik. Which imo seems ridiculous in this day and age.
So whats a good option if dumping Lastpass due to the price increase?
Keepass is a decent option. It’s free, but takes some work to get the cross device functionality working – basically you store the file in Dropbox etc.
Dashlane is also a good option, though still more expensive at about $39.99USD.
The main issue I have with going with someone else is how secure is their system. Just image if people could hack into these sites and steal everyone’s passwords. I never use Lastpass for any monetary sites, but it would still cause me huge headache if they got my general stuff. I sent Lastpass a ticket to say I was cancelling due to the doubling of the subs and the reply I got back was basically “sorry to see you go, this link will show you have to cancel via paypal”. Hopefully they will get the message as more and… Read more »
I am a Last Pass premium user. I have to say that with the price increase I may not renew my subscription when it comes up as I have been less than impressed with its functionality on Samsung S8. They really need to start delivering better functionality in my view.
You’re not alone. I’m weighing up my options as well.
They have stagnated a little bit since becoming a part of Logmein.