Review of Best Password manager Softwares for Bloggers and Webmasters

Are you a professional blogger? Or a developer or anyone who uses several online services including multiple emails, social media accounts, CMS accounts, internet banking etc? How do you remember login details of all these? Either your memory is sharp enough or you are using the same login password for most of your services or probably you save all your logins in your PC? Let me consider for a second that your memory is very good and you can remember all your logins very nicely, but what about Google account backup codes or what about license keys of softwares that you have purchased? To be honest, your mind can’t serve like a computer and I would like to tell you that I am used to remembering password in my mind but sometimes I forget some of them. Admittedly accounts logins which are used on a daily basis  are easy to remember and we almost never forget them. But there are some logins, license keys etc, which we use once in a while and they are indeed prone to be forgotten.

Several times I had to suffer just because of my foolish assumption that I’d not forget the login (while creating some account) and naturally I forgot. In most of the cases password can be retrieved via your registered email or mobile. But, what if password of your email account slipped away from your mind and you have no mobile number registered with it? Needless to say: It is nothing but an irreparable damage.

Never use same password for all your websites. It is extremely vulnerable.

Now let’s discuss keeping all this sensitive and valuable data in a plain text file in your PC. Would you like to know my opinion regarding this method? Utterly insecure and unprofessional. Yeah, I really mean it. Malwares keep on swimming freely like a drone via Internet wires and whenever they get chance, they steal anything from your globally connected computer. So it is foolish to keep your sensitive data unencrypted in your PC. even if you have a great internet security suite, you may be at risk and you know why? Let me figure it out for you;

• Sometimes due to PC malfunction, putting your computer at risk, your Internet security suite stops working (and obviously the Firewall) and you are not even aware of it that sentries has long fallen asleep and malwares and hackers are free to enter
• Sometimes you yourself are  responsible to allow hackers to taste your stuff by disabling your Internet security suite for a few minutes to execute a file that your security program is not allowing
• Zero day vulnerability:  A program installed in your PC  might have a Zero day vulnerability. That program is whitelisted by your Internet security software and hackers can easily access your computer by exploiting this vulnerability. Let me be clear: Zero Day Vulnerability may be present in any reputed software. For example Adobe Flash Player is currently facing this issue.
• No matter how much you keep your computer away from your friends and colleagues, chances of infiltration can’t be ruled out in any condition. And if one of your frenemy gets access to your PC and subsequently to your login details, he might make a muck of it.

It all boils down to the fact that you must have an encrypted cloud vault to save your passwords and other sensitive information as well. Using a secure cloud vault helps you get rid of storing lots of passwords in your brain and keeps the trouble at bay that you may otherwise be facing due to dodging passwords.

Here I am listing all the highly secure and easy to use services that tightly integrate with your Internet browser and serve the login detail when you open related website.

Note – All given services use AES encryption, that is a military level security.

LastPass

If you have been desiring for a cheap but best cloud vault service, LastPass is truly for you. Even its free version has a lot of features to offer and except for its Android and iPhone app, multi-factor authentication and tech support, you get almost all the necessary features that you may be expecting. Still, I advice you to buy its premium version that will not cost you much. Is it not dirt cheap when you get a robust vault application for only $12/year? Definitely it is.

The cherry on the cake is LastPass supports fingerprint sensor unlocking of Samsung  fingerprint enabled device Galaxy S5 and you will not need to enter your master password again and again.

Salient Features of LastPass

• LastPass is the most convenient password vault application that gets integrated with browsers seamlessly
• Multi-factor authentication support via several free authenticator iPhone and Android apps including Google Authenticator
• Create multiple login for a single site and choose whichever you want to login with
• Create form filling profiles and fill out a form within a blink of eye
• Create super strong passwords when you are on the password field. No need to leave the page to generate password
• Save your credit/debit card / bank account detail and get the details filled with a click
• State-of-art security for your saved data and even LastPass guys can’t access it. So be careful, if you lost your master password there is no way to retrieve your data
• Android and iPhone apps to access your data on the go
• import saved logins from your browsers any many other vault services
• Automatic password secured data backup
• Supports USB biometric fingerprint sensors on Windows 8
• Centralized device management
• secure password sharing
• Change compromised passwords direct from software panel (available for limited number of websites but expanding)
• password history

Unique features – Onetime password login, stealing price

Setbacks – Great to report that I was unable to discover any cons in this software.

Try LastPass for free

DashLane

DashLane is identical to LastPass in almost all features with few additional advantages. DashLane has all the features that LastPass has such as capturing logins automatically, filling out forms and logins, multi-factor authentication support, Android and iPhone app and top-of-the-line security encryption AES-256. In addition to all these features DashLane has an edge over LastPass as it offers some other sparkling features too. For instance, DashLane has a security dashboard where it notifies you regarding weak passwords, compromised passwords and reused passwords (passwords that are used on multiple websites)

I like DashLane server login and form filling because it is far more convenient to me. Let me put it this way: When you create a form filling profile with LastPass, every profile created is discrete and totally distinct from other profiles. Now you are going to create a Gmail account and you have created two form filling profiles,  you can’t pick one field from the first profile and another field from the second profile. But thankfully that is not the case with DashLane and you can pick individual fields from different profiles and place them together in a form. This very feature was so appealing that I ditched Norton Identity Safe and adopted DashLane for all my passwords and other sensitive data protection needs.

Furthermore, DashLane operated from a Windows based software other than browser based app with which you can manage your data in a better way and personally, I think it is more secure than a browser based application. For instance, a couple of days ago Adobe Flash Player was seriously compromised and it was a zero day vulnerability. Commenting on the loophole Adobe acknowledged that by exploiting this vulnerability hackers could have got considerable access to the effect browser. Definitely, chances were that any browser based application could have been affected more than a standalone Windows application. So it is another DashLane triumph over LastPass.

However, there are few features in which LastPass seems to be outstripping DashLane and these are:

Salient Features of DashLane

• Multi-factor authentication support via several free authenticator iPhone and Android apps including Google Authenticator
• Save login detail automatically or manually
• Save as many logins as you want for a single website
• Create form fill profiles and interchange the data between profiles while filling out a form
• Automatically generates strong passwords for you
• Suggests changing weak or duplicate passwords
• Import password data from other services including browser saved passwords
• Export encrypted data backups. Automatic backup option is also available
• Android and iPhone app
• Biometric fingerprint scanner support on PC (Windows 8 or above)
• Support Samsung Fingerprint scanner (Galaxy S5, S6,Note 4 etc)
• secure password sharing
• Change a compromised passwords direct from software panel (available for limited number of websites but expanding)

 

Price – Free for PC (no on the go support via Internet browser or Android/iPhone support)

$39.99/year ( all premium features such as multi-factor authentication support and mobile apps)

Pros –  the most user-friendly way to input login detail and form filling, warns you regarding weak and duplicate passwords

Setbacks –  centralized device management is not available via web interface (only available via mobile apps),

slightly overpriced compared to others

Go checkout Dashlane for free

Sticky Password

Sticky Password is another password manager software that is as much powerful as the two aforementioned softwares and covers almost all the features that LastPass and DashLane offer. What is different is its software interface and different looking tooltips in browser. Most of its features are the same as that of LastPass and DashLane. But there is still something that needs to be pointed out and that might make you prefer this service over the the two detailed above:

Sticky Password offers lifetime license too and you need not to pay every year. Additionally, Sticky Password keeps your data backup in cloud (automatic daily backup) and you can restore it in emergency conditions.

Unique features – Cloud data backup, lifetime license

Setbacks –  I didn’t find any fault or glitch in this software.

Norton Identity Safe

Norton Identity Safe comes packed with Norton Internet Security Suite. I have been using Norton as an Internet Security Suite for several years and Identity Safe is a free addon with this security suite. Identity Safe comes with all the essential password and other sensitive data storage needs. If you are logged in to Identity Safe and have saved a login for some website, on opening the website, Identity Safe would fill out the login form automatically.

Identity Safe offers extensive options to secure your vault data. You can set a time-out or you can stay logged-in on first login. Even you can set an option that you will be asked for Vault password every time before filling out the login form.

If, due to any reason, browser extension doesn’t work, you can access your vault in Identity Safe panel and copy any data to clipboard.

Identity Safe Android and iPhone app is available that works seamlessly on your mobile device.

Moreover, if you are away from your computer or even from your phone, you can access your vault data via Identity Safe web based interface using any internet browser.

However, it can’t be denied that Identity Safe is not so advanced as LastPass and DashLane, lacking two factors: authentication and automatic password generator support. Also as i used it I experienced a weird glitch that sometimes after entering login detail, if login page redirects too fast, Identity Safe “Save or replace Login” dialogue does not appear (but it is not the case with DashLane and LastPass).

Salient Features of Identity Safe

• Support for all three major internet browsers
• Asks to save a login if it is not saved in vault and fill the login form automatically when you open the login page next time
• Save multiple logins for a single website
• Save logins manually in Identity Safe’s local or remote panel
• Login on the go via Android and iPhone app
• Save Credit Card details
• Save sensitive notes
• Save addresses and get them autofilled in address forms
• Import export password protected backup

Tip – Keep your Identity Safe data backed up (secured with a password). Luckily Identity Safe has an option to schedule daily automatic backup of vault data, that is importable.

Unique Features – It comes free with the most powerful Internet Security software Norton

Setbacks – Sometime faced Chrome compatibility issue, if login page redirects too fast, Login save dialogue may get disappeared. Two factor authentication is not yet a feature

There are a lot of other password manager services too but after having reviewed them, I came to the conclusion that no other service is on par with the above given services. So I have listed only best four and excluded all the others to  prevent you from confusion. Here on inrealsense.com, my aim is to isolate and bring forward  the best stuff for you after extensive and careful analysis of all the present stuff.

Yet, Here is a bird’s eye view of the other related services I get to know:

• Avast EasyPass
• Password Genie
• LogMeOnce
• Zoho Vault
• Keeper
• Authentic8 Silo

Some of them lack mobile apps, some of them are pricey and some of them lack some essential features.