Much like LastPass nerfs the free tier of its popular password manager, Dropbox has hit the road with a free version of its own password app, but there’s a bit of a catch.
Dropbox today announced that passwords will soon be free for all of its users, whether on a basic free plan or one of the premium individual or business tiers. Starting in early April, every Dropbox user will have access to a limited version of passwords that can securely store up to 50 credentials. The catch here, of course, is that most people probably have more than 50 passwords for different accounts, and ideally a password manager should be used for all of them.
The deal with passwords is if the complex ones are harder to remember – which is where the password manager comes in handy – are not used for all of your accounts, users may be tempted to reuse easy-to-remember passwords or make small variations that make it easier for attackers to access more than one of their accounts. So while free password management is certainly an attractive offering, Dropbox may not be the best option for someone concerned about applying good security hygiene to all of their accounts.
Dropbox launched Passwords last year, but it was limited to Dropbox Plus and Dropbox Professional at the time, as well as the business tiers of the service. Dropbox Plus costs $ 12 per month, which includes 2 TB of cloud storage and the standard version of passwords. The Professional plan jumps up to $ 20 per month, but includes additional storage and advanced file recovery support.
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LastPass, meanwhile announced last month some changes to the free tier that will drastically change the way people work to be use the product. Starting today, the free LastPass plan only supports unlimited access on computers or mobile devices – not both. Existing users will have to choose an active device type in the future, although they have three chances to change their preferred device.
The company is also pulling email support for free accounts, which are now only offered on Premium and Families plans. Those plans cost $ 3 and $ 4 per month respectively (and are billed annually), but the company offers discounted rates of $ 2.25 and $ 3 for existing free users for a limited time. In other words, it effectively forces them to upgrade if they want to continue using the service as before.
To be clear, there are plenty of free password manager apps. For example, Apple, Google, and others provide their own password management tools for their browsers. Dropbox is now an option, also, as an extremely limited one.