I've been using lastpass for a few years now and was looking around to see what alternatives there are. The one that keeps coming up on top of late is DashLane, so I figured I'd give it a go.
Side note, before I get into it. Honorable mention goes to BitWarden. I'm not sure how it stacks as far as a paid service, but it is the only one that allows you to self-host your data. The last time I tried it the plugins and the overall experience wasn't stacking up to lastpass but the pricing is pretty great. $1/mo vs $4.99 for dashlane or $3/mo for LastPass. Still, if you are a big advocate of owning your data (and when it comes to passwords, credit cards and bank accounts this is probably the one use case you may consider it) BitWarden is a great candidate.
Now for the rest of us that are a bit lazier and don't want to manage a VPS and DNS entries in order to remember how to log into slashdot (anyone still uses that anymore? ). Let's take a look at my two favorites.
Core features
So, let's talk about the key features that each of these has. They're not really anything that sets them apart but they are key to what would be needed for a good password manager service.
They both allow you to fill out a form, save passwords, credit card, auto-generate password. They provide audits on your password and tell you not to re-use the same password for 100 different sites. (Nobody is doing that right? ).
"Secure Notes", basically write anything and trust that it's as locked down and secure as anything else you're storing in your password manager.
Also, they all sync up to the cloud so that you can find log into any website on your phone, desktop, laptop without merging the password databases like I personally ended up doing with keypass another honorable mention for offline password manager.
Also, they both have the ability to share usernames/passwords with others without giving them the actual password.
Pros
- Family pricing is a nifty feature. You get 6 accounts for $4/mo can't really beat that value.
- LastPass authenticator. Not sure how many use that but I like that it's tied to my lastpass account and keeps track of all my 2 factor authentication. The downside is, I obviously can't use it to keep track of LastPass's 2FA. I need to log into lastpass before being able to use it. Still a nice feature freebie.
- This doesn’t work on all websites but automated password changer. Click one button and it changes your account password. (Note, DashLane does this in the background which is, in theory, smoother, though I've yet to get it to succeed)
Cons
- Bad track record with security. It had two breaches that I know of, 2011 and another 2015 found here: https://www.wired.com/2015/06/hack-brief-password-manager-lastpass-got-breached-hard/ though no passwords were accessed or stolen.
- No Desktop app, though the browser extension is pretty full featured for a password manager.
- Less of a con but a wishlist, Accounts/Addresses/IDs management could be better. Ability to link an account to multiple sites using different domains would be nice.
I was actually really excited to review DashLane. It has some key features that I think are awesome.
Dark web monitoring I think is great and added into the package free of charge is very nice.
VPN support is also another great feature, I don’t need to sign up for yet another service and can simply use my password manager to VPN and browse the web security that’s awesome. Their Premium plus membership has some very nice features like credit card monitoring and identity theft protection and so on.
That being said, as a password manager I’m having a really hard time finding positive things to say about it. As the great Jerry McGuire said, “Help me, help you”... and DashLane needs some work before I can even use it as a user let alone recommend it.
Pros
- Well, DarkWeb support and VPN built in are both awesome features as mentioned earlier.
Having a desktop app is a nice +1, have a stable one would be even better. - Adding personal info is a lot cleaner and more polished then LastPass. Allows me to easily link things like payment methods to existing addresses and such are very nice and structured.
- Big Pro for me here, ability to import my entire LastPass database with no real issues.
Cons
- Password generator is odd. The chrome extension caps it at 28 characters. Desktop App allows for 40 characters (LastPass limit is 100). I imagine most website you won't need more than 28 but for banking and such I'd prefer my password to be pretty long.
- Only tested on Mac OS X, but desktop client has been buggy, crashed on me more then I care for. Searching for a password doesn't work on the desktop, (Chrome extention has no issues).
- Some basic tasks are not intuitive, there almost never anything available via a right click menu.
- Tried to use the Password changer feature, one of them inaccurately flagged the website I was using (etsy) as being under maintenance. The second one I tried made the app crash.
- There is a strong disparity between the features available in the desktop app vs the browser extension.
- It makes it very difficult to use a password not linked with the given website. For example, steem.it and steem.chat in theory i could use the same credentials. Because they have different domains it won’t let me easily right click and copy/paste the credentials. The chrome extention takes me to the desktop app from where I can copy/paste the password and login information. LastPass lets me do it all inside the chrome extension.
- This is expending on the point above, but why can I find an entry but can't copy/paste or even right click on the entry. It's a 2-3 step process involving 2 different apps so I can paste a password into a form.
Pricing
More info can be found below, but here's my overall breakdown
| Plan | LastPass | DashLane |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $3/mo | $4.99/mo |
| Family | $4/mo (6 users) | NA |
| Business | $4/user/mo | $4/user/mo |
Any thoughts? Am I being too biased against DashLane? Has anyone been a long time user? I have seen multiple reviews that rate DashLane very highly so I am a bit confused as to why my experience has been so bad.