A Bitwarden Alternative for Companies Who Will Never Self Host It

Bitwarden publishes the lowest business pricing of the four compared here and is the only one that is open source and free to self host. 1Password publishes its prices too and is the more polished product. LastPass and Dashlane both render their business pricing client side, so we do not quote a figure for either. All four are measured on this hub against the same question, which is whether anybody is running the vault after it has been bought.

Both business plans give you administration. Teams includes the public API, event and audit logs retained indefinitely, user groups, Directory Connector, SCIM provisioning and organization two step login through Duo. Enterprise adds the parts most people mean when they say control: passwordless SSO, organization policies, custom roles, the account recovery workflow and Access Intelligence.

Passwordless SSO integration, organization policies, Access Intelligence, custom roles, the account recovery workflow, a free Families plan for every user, and the option to self host. The dedicated engagement manager and the dedicated onboarding are Enterprise as well, and Bitwarden marks both as being for qualified customers.

Who decides what a collection is for and who may create one. Who removes the contractor when the project ends. Who reads the event log. Who patches the server if you choose to self host. Bitwarden hands you every switch and no opinion about which way to set it.

Often you should not, and we say so on the first call more than you would expect. If somebody in your business already owns the collection list, runs the leaver process and keeps the server current, you have what we sell and you are paying a great deal less for it. Call us when that person leaves, or when it turns out they were never really doing it.

On license cost alone, it does not. Teams at four dollars a user reaches three hundred a month at seventy five people and Enterprise at six reaches it at fifty, and our fee sits on top of a Zoho Vault license rather than replacing one. The arithmetic favors Bitwarden at almost any size. What changes the answer is the cost of the work nobody is doing, and that one never appears on either invoice.

On people. Both business plans are a straight per user monthly charge, with unlimited passwords, unlimited devices and unlimited collections. Encrypted file attachment storage is five gigabytes personal and five for organization items, and it can be expanded.

Taken on its own, as a password manager and nothing else, we would generally say yes. It is open source, audited in public, cheaper, and it self hosts. Zoho Vault gets chosen for a different reason, which is that it sits inside an estate you are already running. If Zoho is not that estate for you, this comparison probably ends here and Bitwarden is the sensible pick.

That is the reason to choose it. Vault sits alongside CRM, Desk, Projects and the rest on one directory, one admin console and one bill. A credential ends up beside the client record it belongs to, instead of in a second system with its own user list to maintain.

We set up the vault and provision your users, migrate you off whatever you are on now, design the collection structure and the sharing rules, configure policy and two step enforcement, run joiners and leavers, review standing access on a schedule, and stay reachable about any of it. One figure for the organization, month to month.

You do, and that is deliberate. The Vault subscription is bought in your name and stays in your name, so if you ever stop working with us you keep the vault, the data and the account. Our three hundred is a management fee and nothing else.

Yes. Bitwarden supports encrypted export, so the data itself moves cleanly and that is not the hard part. The time goes into deciding what the structure should be on the other side, rather than copying across a collection list that grew by accident over four years. If you are self hosted we will also want a conversation about what happens to the server.

No. Three hundred a month, month to month, thirty days’ notice. There is no setup fee, no annual prepayment, and no tier above this one that unlocks the parts that matter.

Then buy Bitwarden Teams at four dollars a head, or start on the free tier, and do not pay us anything at all. At five people the collection list is short enough to hold in your head. Come back when it is not.

Some businesses do. Once what you are running is manufacturing, stock across several locations or a chart of accounts a spreadsheet cannot hold, the estate stops being the right shape and we will say so.