No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

LastPass have announced they’re going to restrict their Free tier to either computers or phones / tablets — if, as many people do, myself included, you use it on both sets of devices, you’ll have to stump up for LastPass Premium.

I’m currently considering my options. One of them is 1Password, which I’ve used before and generally found to be a solid performer. Another option I tried in the interim was BitWarden, which is cheaper and pretty good, but I had lots of trouble with their app on the iPad.

I don’t begrudge paying for services that are valuable to me, within reason. LastPass is currently working well for me, but that hasn’t always been the case. I was a customer of theirs before I moved to 1Password, and the impetus for that move was a combination of poor app quality and disquiet over their acquisition by LogMeIn, a company with a reputation for buying up well-respected security services and then either killing them off or restricting the free tier in a bid to force people to pay up. I suspect that LastPass have had to improved their apps in the face of increased competition. And the way in which they’ve done this change smells like a cash grab to me.

(Their case for keeping my custom isn’t bolstered by the news that their Android app has advertising trackers — while I’m no longer an Android user, I have no doubt that their i(Pad)OS app would have the same if they didn’t have to disclose it.)

So, on balance, I will probably go back to 1Password since they seem less likely to mess me around in the future. Trust is important to me, over and above price and features — one reason why I walked away from Evernote, for instance, and won’t be coming back.