1Password Review: The No. 1 Password Manager?

A solid track record, large fan base and unique features like Travel Mode — is 1Password worth the price?

TLDR: 1Password excels across many devices — especially Apple — providing a smooth, clean password manager experience, but one that doesn’t come for free.

One of the longest-running password manager options is still one of the best on the market. 1Password makes it easy to save and sign in to your accounts with just one password.

With an unlimited password vault and a straightforward app, 1Password combines security and privacy with convenience at a competitive price. However, unlike competitors, 1Password does not offer a free plan. 

Created in 2005, 1Password is a 16-year-old company with more than 400 employees serving millions of customers in 20+ countries and more than 80,000 businesses. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada and has locations in the U.S. and Europe.

1Password keeps it simple with its pricing plans. The company offers one individual plan, one family plan and two business plans.

1Password allows you to choose between monthly and annual billing for your plan, but it does not make it easy to find the monthly price. We’ve done the digging for you and have listed below how much you’ll pay at signup for 1Password’s monthly and annual plans.

Individual Plan ($36/year)

• Unlimited devices
• Unlimited passwords
• 1Password Watchtower
• Travel mode
• Password generator
• Two-factor authentication
• 1GB document storage

1Password is a bit more expensive than many competitors. The company relies heavily on its 14-day free trial since a free plan option doesn’t exist. It’s banking on the hope that you’ll love the product enough to remain a customer after that two-week trial.

1Password is a bit light on features for its price at the individual user level. Without a bunch of plan options to choose from, the individual plan is essentially its “premium” plan. If that’s the case, it’s missing quite a few features that competitor premium plans include, such as the ability to share passwords with others or view a security score for your passwords.

What we like: The plan does include 1Password Watchtower, which is the company’s version of dark web monitoring. Watchtower also alerts you whenever a password or associated website has been compromised.

The most unique feature is Travel Mode. If you’re traveling somewhere with higher restrictions and you’re worried you might be searched or inspected, 1Password lets you hide any vaults containing passwords you haven’t deemed safe for travel. That way, no one can use your device to coerce an unwanted login since Travel Mode has made those passwords “vanish” until you turn it off. It’s an interesting feature for frequent travelers that we haven’t seen with other password managers.

Families Plan ($6.99/month or $60/year)

• Five 1Password accounts to share
• Limited sharing for a maximum of five other users
• Family dashboard and management
• Shared vaults
• Emergency access

We really like that 1Password offers a monthly rate for its plans. The downside is that you’ll only have five total accounts, while competitors offer six for less money.

The management of family accounts and shared vaults is easy, and you’ll be able to help recover master passwords for anyone on your account.

While 1Password’s Families interface is simple and intuitive, overall, you’re not getting quite as good of a deal as you might with rivals.

Business Plans ($7.99/month or $96/year)

Like many other password managers, 1Password has devoted resources to serve and support businesses. For a bit of a price hike, your business can have an unlimited account for each employee, as well as Duo integration for multi-factor authentication with the Business plan.

The Enterprise plan offers some of the best business support we’ve seen. Each employee will receive a Families account plus 5 GB of document storage instead of the usual 1 GB. Custom reports, roles, groups, activity logs, security and access controls, as well as provisions with OneLogin, Okta and Active Directory are all supported. Of course, at a custom price per business, we can’t measure how the quote you’ll receive will stack up to other password manager business plans.

Which 1Password Pricing Plan is Right for You?

If you want to share items or passwords with anyone else, you’ll need a Families plan. If you only need a password manager for yourself, you’ll be better off going with the individual plan.

We tested 1Password by first signing up for a free trial, then upgrading to a Families plan on the web vault in Safari. We also tested 1Password on iOS, Chrome, the Mac app and Firefox through Windows.

Signup

Signup was nearly instant. We created an account with a name, email address and master password. The signup screen asked for credit card information, but we were able to skip that step (look for the small print). 1Password then offered a PDF download of an “Emergency Kit” that holds your Secret Key and allows you to log back into your account if you forget your master password.

The free trial was a breeze to start with, and upgrading to a Families plan took just two clicks and required no credit card information.

Adding Passwords

For the web vault in Safari, the interface is slightly cluttered. However, it’s still easy to find what you need. It’s fast to set up a vault and add a password, and integration with the Mac app worked well. Since the Mac app has automatic integration with the Safari browser, the only extra step we had to take to enable autofill was to turn on the 1Password extension in Safari preferences. After that, everything worked like a charm.

The same was true for the iOS app. Using the QR code from the Emergency Kit, we were able to log in to the mobile app in a way that felt much more secure than typical for password managers. Once integrated, FaceID worked great, and we could launch a browser right from the mobile app for faster access.

Apps vs. Browsers

Other apps and browsers worked just as well, albeit they didn’t have the same intuitive flow between Mac, Safari and iOS. Connecting to the Windows app and the Edge extension was painless, and autofill worked just as well in Firefox as it did in Safari.

As some Apple fans know, 1Password has been a go-to password manager for Mac and iPhone. In recent years, 1Password’s support of other platforms and browsers has really improved. Its pricing is a bit higher than other password manager services, and the apps aren’t the fanciest, but you’ll experience friendly customer service, solid security, a simple setup and pain-free integration, especially for Apple products.

• AES-256 encryption
• PBKDF2 brute-force protection
• Master Password and 128-bit Secret Key locally stored
• Secure Remote Password for data transmittal

In its 15 years of operation, 1Password has never been breached or hacked. That’s an impressive streak, one 1Password is focused on keeping.

AES-256 is the same security standard the U.S. government and military uses to encrypt their own files. This, combined with Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2), ensures that your data is protected from hackers trying to manually guess your passwords through brute-force and hundreds of inputs.

1Password goes the extra mile with Secure Remote Password (SRP), which encrypts your information with a different key for each log-in session. The benefit of this, as 1Password explains, is that “an attacker who records one authentication session won’t be able to play that back in an attempt to authenticate.”

What else we like: We appreciate the lengths 1Password goes to be transparent and inform users about how exactly their passwords are being protected. 1Password’s constant communication with its customer base is a hallmark of the company that we definitely appreciate.

1Password offers native password apps for macOS, iOS, Windows, Android, Linux and Chrome OS. You can also launch and run scripts straight from the command line of your computer.

In addition, 1Password supports browser extensions for:

• Brave
• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari

1Password provides customer support through email, Twitter and community forms. Though you won’t see a phone number or live chat, the 1Password team is committed to actively responding and communicating with its customers in a helpful way.

The community boards are full of helpful answers from the customer support team. Overall, you get the feeling that 1Password wants to help and will guide users through any issues they have in a supportive way.

That penchant for customer service is apparent in 1Password’s customer reviews. Trustpilot features more than 4,300 reviews with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars. 1Password is one of the few password managers deemed “Excellent” by the vast majority of its reviewers. More than 84% of users gave it 5 stars.

1Password has a loyal fan base. We think that’s because of 1Password’s upfront and honest communication and its willingness to help its customer no matter what. That means something to customers, even at the cost of losing a few extra features or having to pay a slightly higher price.

Pricing accurate at time of publication.