Are password managers any good?

It staggers me how few people use password managers. I think a lot of people don't know they exist, or they simply use Chrome or Safari to remember passwords, which is a half way house I guess but nothing like a dedicated tool for the job.

The two big boys in this space are undeniably LastPass and 1Password. I started about 6 years ago using the former. It was good - I got my passwords organised into one place and loved stress free, when it comes to remembering passwords at least.

About 3 years ago I made the transition to 1Password though. Why did I move? Well, I found LastPass to be quite a clunky interface. It may have improved somewhat since, but simply put, 1Password is a more beautiful product to use.

The other factor was work - our company had adopted 1Password for our team and it was therefore more logical for me to learn and use one system, not two, across my personal and work accounts.

Since the switch, I literally haven't looked back. I pay the premium subscription and it's one of those costs that I can't see me ever cancelling, which would explain their huge valuation.

Are password managers secure?

I get this question a lot and I'm not a cyber security expert by any stretch... But what I do know is 1password generates much, much more secure passwords that I otherwise wouldn't use to secure my accounts. I previously used one word passwords, maybe with a number thrown in. Now I'm using highly complex mixtures of characters, numbers and letters. It's what any real cyber security expert will promote - more complex passwords take exponentially more effort to crack. I shudder to think how many terrible passwords are out there, much much easier to guess than mine.

So there you have it. Unless it's a budgetary issue, a password manager really is a no brainer. Stop forgetting passwords (and other information) and secure your accounts with complex combinations. Mind at ease...