My wife and I both use Bitwarden and share passwords back and forth. We switched from LastPass after the chrome extensions shit the bed, and thankfully before they got hacked.
Tonight I got her to just make a Pass Plus account under the one year free deal. She voiced her opposition to switching “again”. I told her it’s not better than Bitwarden yet anyway, but I’ll keep an eye on it and let her know when it’s better. I’m going to need to make a convincing case to get her to switch… again.
As someone who self hosts Bitwarden, I’m curious why you are interested in switching.
I’ve been asking myself the same question. I’ve been using both since Pass came out somewhat out of curiosity and somewhat because why not, I’m already using Proton everything else.
Can you tell me more about self hosting Bitwarden? Does it run in Docker? What if the container goes down or gets corrupted? Can I still share passwords back and forth with my wife if she doesn’t want to deal with my self hosting shenanigans?
Check out Vaultwarden. It is the Bitwarden, but made in Rust. It is lightweight and yes, it does run in docker. You can use bitwarden’s apps and extentions with. You get all the enterprise edition features too.
Backing up the container data is very easy. Also, you can export the passwords in a json or csv file using the apps. If the server stops working, the passwords are still cached in the apps, and you can export them even if you are offline.
To share passwords, both accounts have to be on the same server. Or you can use the Bitwarden Send feature.
I have been self-hosting Vaultwarden for two years, and have corrupted my data once, because I updated the container very late, and it jumped multiple versions. No harm was done, as I backed up my passwords, using the app’s cache.
What if the container goes down or gets corrupted? Can I still share passwords back and forth with my wife if she doesn’t want to deal with my self hosting shenanigans?
These reasons here are why I’m switching to KeePass soon. You can set up Syncthing to keep all the databases in sync and store it locally on each device. That way, it’s all self hosted still but less chance of critical failure and no chance of your database getting into the wrong hands from a massive leak by a company.
Bitwarden stores the vault locally on each device. If the server goes down the devices still all work. They just can’t sync together which is exactly the same as synching+keepass
The vault is also stored on the Bitwarden servers, which is why I mentioned a data breach.
Granted, the level of encryption on those vaults is excellent and the chances of decryption is low.
That’s only if you use their service. If you self host, they get no data from you. My Bitwarden server doesn’t even have access to the internet.
Oh true
nutbutter answered most of your questions, but yes the original BitWarden also runs in docker. I run my containers inside a VM that I snapshot weekly and keep several backups, so if anything gets corrupted I just restore a VM snapshot. Has never happened for any of my Linux VMs though, only to PFsense a couple times before I abandoned it.
But as nutbutter also mentioned in his great reply, even if you had no backups the client caches will save you.
Sharing costs a fee with Bitwarden, but I only use it for myself so had no real reason to try Vault Warden. That may help you decide which version to try.
Be aware that while it has an iOS client, iOS is REALLY picky about certs these days. It does not let me use certs signed by my internal OPNsense CA, which is really irritating. That’s Apples fault though.
I used Pass for the last couple months. A week ago I went back to Bitwarden. Pass is just too immature and Protons historically slow updates while simultaneously launching new products haven’t made it better.
To be honest after I switched to Bitwarden I could not find a reason to leave it even having access to Proton pass due to my plan with them.
It works and fills my privacy / licensing requirements.
I only use Pass because it’s part of the unlimited plan and I can save myself a few bucks. It is several years behind the competition.
The most frustrating thing is that when using an alias it sets it as my username, with no alternative.
I am very hesitant to use them after finding bitwarden (self hosted vaultwarden) so much better than keepass and past experience does say anything new released by proton will take a while to be full featured 😀 .
I understand your pain though. I setup my wife with it but can’t convince her to actually use it, despite her getting regularly frustrated with forgetting passwords… I keep saying to people it is so much better than not having one as it fills it automatically and is much more secure but for some reason, people think I’m the crazy nut for using one.
