Ditto 1Password 7. Which is why I stayed with it. My mandatory requirements are: 1. Standlone one-time purchase. 2. Local storage - absolutely no proprietary online server storage. 3. Local WiFi sync between my Mac and my iDevices.
If I can’t have those then I’ll use 3M’s management system. 
For those of us already annual, the annual is also increasing by 33%. Well, slightly more, actually. $12 more per year more when the current price is $35.88.
With the exception of open source software, all software sales could be considered a coercive agreement. Even with perpetual licenses.
The ugly truth about software sales is you didn’t buy an app. You bought the rights to use an app according to the terms and conditions in the licensing agreement. By using the software, you’re agreeing to those terms.
Those software license agreements do not favor the purchaser. Which is why things like open source licenses (e.g. GPL) exist.
1Password has made the business decision to stop selling perpetual licenses. They have also stopped providing any kind of updates for older releases: Deprecation of 1Password 6 and older versions of 1Password 7 | 1Password Support
It’s unlikely they’ll be selling an update to those deprecated stand-alone 1Password versions should a new iOS/iPadOS/macOS update break them. Other than a 1Password 8 subscription, that is.
Admittedly then you’d have to choose. It’s unfortunate that they’re forcing you to choose rather than making the decision on your own time line.
Nitpicking, but it’s more than a click. Travel mode is not exposed in the mobile or macOS app, so you need to log in with Safari to the website, and hopefully you’ve already logged out, so someone couldn’t simply force you to type in the password - the quickest way is to scan the QR code with another device, but if you don’t have another device, then you need to enter 1password’s secret key in addition to the password for your account. Then it is two more clicks until you can toggle travel mode back off.
Couple thoughts:
This doesn’t make sense to me. The real money is in commercial software, not consumer software, which is (at least a large part of?) the reason they pivoted so hard in the first place. Also why they literally give it away for consumer use when you have an association to it through your job.
I am not outraged at all, but considering increasing my value by switching to a product that costs $20 per year instead, or one that costs me nothing. As I said, I did this once already, when I was having issues with 1p, so I may decide it’s better for me now that 1p wants to charge me more.
No outrage. Just a re-evaluation of value.
This also when subscriptions for everything are being increased. I don’t mind paying subscriptions for things that bring me value, but if another internet provider appeared who charged less per month, I’d consider that, too.
Not mentioned so far: Apple Passwords is the more vulnerable of the two.
Those people who got both their phone passwords and the phones themselves stolen in bars a while back found not only that they were locked out of their accounts, but the bad guys had access to the password manager as well.
That’s an argument for keeping the two things separate. Also an argument for not using your password manager for two-factor authentication.
In case they would have increased the price yearly (to the price we will see end of March) the “protest” would have been far less.
I wonder if people are upset because the ca. +30% - or about the price which a user has to pay from end of March?
The question is: $3.99 per month - for what? If this piece of software is important, safe/secure and you use it almost daily (well, a password manager is in use 24/7, even if it was not opened for some days; different to e.g. Photoshop). For me it would be ok to pay the $3.99 per month, but I use Bitwarden and here we also saw an increase of the price, ca. 50%, some weeks ago.
To answer the initial question of this thread, I will continue with 1Password as it is the only way I can support my parents (remotely and on-site) by sharing vaults to enforce security across their devices and to share confidential data between us. It saves me a lot of time and hassle. They are both over 80.
Like others here, the size of the increase has given me pause for thought. If the Apple Passwords app ever includes credit cards, passports etc I think that would be the end of my long standing 1Password subscription.
As Adam noted, inflation since 2016 has steadily lowered the effective price of 1P, and it seems now that they are just trying to get back to its dollar value then. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator it will take you $81.79 today to buy what $59.88 would in 2016.
I will stick with 1P for several reasons. (1) It works for me. (2) I’m old and don’t see the point in replacing something that isn’t broken. (3) I’d likely continue to pay for it even if Apple Password was equal in quality out of appreciation for the years of service 1P has given me. Scoff if you like, but I’ll be saving about two real bucks come March when renewal comes, and I won’t be wasting any of the time left to me changing something that works.
Thank you, Adam, for posting a clear summary - this is definitely helping me clarify my thinking.
Ouch! I promise you, I am not a media company making money from user clicks! “Overreaction” would have been a more fair criticism. Sometimes a straw is just a straw, and sometimes it breaks a back - I think I’m still a little bit in shock after realizing (thanks again, Adam!) how many subscriptions I have, many of which have also been increasing prices.
And as a newer customer of 1password, I was absolutely not aware of how long it’s been since they last increased prices (despite their brief mention of that - they could have lead with that fact and provided more detail).
So my new assessment is that a 33% increase is shocking but fair - though it still is pushing me towards moving to Apple Passwords exclusively. It sounds like most of my concerns are addressed - plus Keychain Access still exists for things like secure notes, and credit cards can be stored in Apple Wallet, so even some of the gaps that people have mentioned here have other solutions.
I believe all this talk about inflation is completely out of touch with the basic facts.
IIRC, back in 2016, you were buying a perpetual license. If that’s wrong, then I’m wrong about the rest.
But if I’m right, then the purchase price was spread over multiple years. Now you’re being charged per year. So do the math again, and you’ll find that they have raised the prices dramatically since 2016, way way way above the inflation rate.
This is a modern invention that came into existence when the courts decided that “shrink-wrap licenses” could be legally binding. Where, by using the software (or sometimes, even opening the package), you agree to various terms just as if you had signed a contract.
In the absence of such terms, or in jurisdictions where shrink-wrap/click-through licenses are not considered binding, only copyright law applies. The purchaser of a copy (whether software or music or a book) has rights with respect to the specific copy he purchased. Less than those of the copyright holder, but not nothing and not simply what the copyright holder would wish him to have.
Fair—I hadn’t even known about it before starting to write this.
Yes, sorry, but you are partially wrong. As I noted in the article, in 2016, you could buy a perpetual license, but that’s also when 1Password introduced then-optional subscriptions at the prices that then remained in effect for a decade.
I - actually “we”, my wife and I, through a shared vault - use 1PW for LOTS of information besides passwords, credit cards, passports, etc using secure notes. That way we both have quick and easy access on our computers, phones, and iPads to info on our cars, insurance policies, subscriptions, appliances, doctors, etc, etc. We “might” be able to do that using Apples Passwords and Notes apps, but it wouldn’t be as easy or as comprehensive as 1PW.
That is true, but unlike, say, MacOS where Apple uses vast resources to keep legacy OS versions protected from major security vulnerabilities (they recently issued a security update for iPadOS 16.x, which I appreciated for my iPad Air 2 that’s now a weather station display using Teapot for Tempest)…1Password is a focused app whose entire reason for being is secure password and information storage. Sometimes their current owners have made moves for apparent financial reasons, but on the whole they are laser-focused on security and compatibility.
Keeping 1PW7 running in some versions is a bridge to 1PW8, but those still running 1PW6 because “I bought it in perpetuity and they should keep it running in perpetuity” should seriously consider whether a principle is more important than the information they are trying to protect.
You can’t share an encrypted note in the Notes.app, last time I checked. And trying to keep everything as a “login” in the passwords app doesn’t work great in my experience. That’s one of the areas where I think 1P is better.
I’m also interested by the description above of how Apple Passwords is less secure, because it shares the passcode of your device. I hadn’t thought of that or read it anywhere else.
Thanks for the detailed post, Adam. Certainly lays out the situation clearly.
I have been using 1Password for a long, long time, and it has never failed me. I don’t use very many of the additional features, but some of the security-related features are important.
I’ve always wondered about BitWarden. From what I understand and have read about, the company offers both free and paid versions of it. But ease of use/implementation is a possible concern. Would like to hear comments about it.
Also Adam, have you ever done a comparison here on Tidbits of available Password Managers for Macs? That would be useful and helpful.
Then it’s fair to compare the subscription price back then to what the new subscription cost is. But it’s also a fair comparison to look at the Total Cost of Ownership over the last 10 years.
10 years ago you could get 1P for $70, and it lasted 10 years and counting. 10-year TCO: $70. Cost per year: $7
Subscription pricing today, the 10-year TCO is $479. Cost per year: $48