That free password manager I ignored for years got me out of a bind when my laptop crashed last March

I always figured paying for Bitwarden was overkill until I needed to recover 47 logins from a dead hard drive and realized their free tier had everything backed up in the cloud the whole time - anyone else sleep on free tools that saved them later?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_jamie1mo ago

and the wildest part nobody's talking about is how password managers actually make you mentally lazier about password hygiene but in a good way. @annajenkins i feel you on those old passwords because i recovered a login from 2013 and it was literally just my dog's name with a 1 on the end. i realized the free tier works so well because it removes the anxiety of remembering stuff without the pressure of paying for features you'll never touch. my buddy still uses sticky notes on his monitor and refuses to switch because he thinks the free version is "sketchy." meanwhile my entire digital life has been saved by something that cost me exactly zero dollars and zero recurring payments.

ward.kim1mo ago

Right, "slept on free tools" - I think I was in a coma when it came to password managers. I spent a solid weekend rebuilding everything from scratch because I was too stubborn to use one. Then my buddy's like "just use the free one" and I felt like a total idiot when it pulled up all my old logins from like 2017. It's ALMOST like the free tier is good enough for 99% of people and the paid version is just for showing off. But hey, at least I got to relive the horror of my old passwords, so that was a bonus.

annajenkins1mo ago

Oh man, that passwords from 2017 thing hits way too close to home.

elliotm571mo ago

The free tier actually saves unlimited passwords though, the paid version just adds extra features.