I recently decided to give in and switch to a 1Password subscription. I blogged about maybe doing this last year, but decided not to do it then.
I originally bought 1Password (for Windows, Mac and iOS) back when it was sold as plain old software. All things being equal, I’d just as soon continue using it that way, but there are a few advantages to switching to the subscription model. Mostly, I wanted to get access to the latest version of the Windows software, version 6, which is only available to subscribers. The previous Windows version works, but isn’t great. (Version 7 is in beta, and will support non-subscribers, but it will be a paid upgrade, so I figured I’d just skip that and pay for the subscription.) To their credit, they haven’t been aggressively pushing people to switch to subscriptions, though they’ve been gently nudging people in that direction. And I do like their software, in general, so it makes some sense to support them this way.
I have three minor nits to pick with the subscription version:
- They’ve eliminated folders, in favor of tags. That’s not too bad, but the standalone version supported both, so it doesn’t seem like it would have been difficult to support both in the subscription version too. I’ve managed to move my folders to tags, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.
- The Mac software supported “smart folders” which were basically saved searches. I had a few of those set up, and they were lost when I switched to the subscription. I had hoped that there would be some kind of saved search functionality in the subscription version, but there’s not. (You can still do advanced searches, but you can’t save them.)
- The subscription version requires that your master password be at least 10 characters long. My previous master password was only 7 characters, so I had to create a new one. I never have to type it in on my iPhone, since I have Touch ID enabled there, but I do have to type it in a lot on Windows and Mac, so that’s a pain.
As to other advantages of the subscription version, I’m honestly not seeing many, other than the new Windows software. And there’s an advantage in having my passwords available online now, via 1password.com, rather than having them stored in Dropbox. Since my 1Password data was pretty much the only thing I’d been using Dropbox for, I can probably delete the Dropbox client from all of my devices now, if I want. (I’m using OneDrive to keep my files in sync across devices. 1Password only supported DropBox.)