I am looking into password managers, as number of my accounts are increasing. Currently I am weighing two options:
- Host Vaultwarden on a VPS, or
- Use the free bitwarden service.
I want to know how they are in practical aspects.
While I am fine self-hosting many services, password managers seem to be one of the most critical services that should not admit downtime. I surely cannot keep it up, as I need to update it time to time.
On the other hand, using bitwarden might require some level of trust. How much should I trust the company to use the free service? How do I know if my passwords would be safe, not being exposed to the wide net?
I want to gauge pros and cons, are there aspects I missed? How are your opinions on this? If you are self-hosting vaultwarden, how do you manage the downtime? Thanks in advance!
I enjoy self hosting, but what tipped the scales for me in favor of using Bitwarden’s servers is that I’m 100% confident I’m not as good as hardening my system from being compromised as they are. The vault is going to be encrypted anyway, and I think there’s a lower chance of it falling into the wrong hands if it’s hosted with Bitwarden. Same reason I don’t self-host email.
Plus Bitwarden is a cool company and the product is open source, and the premium features are unreasonably low priced.