The password manager will be free for basic accounts too

Mar 17, 2021 18:08 GMT  ·  By

Dropbox already offers a password manager for paid accounts, but this week, the company announced that a similar feature is going live for basic accounts too.

In other words, the Dropbox password manager is getting a free version, though it’ll come with one major drawback: it’ll support just 50 accounts, so for more entries, you need to pay for a premium account.

At the first glance, the goal of the company is pretty clear: let users try out its basic offering free of charge hoping they like what they see and eventually get a paid plan.

Free with a catch

While it’ll be interesting to see if this works, a password manager with just 50 entries sounds like something power users would rather avoid. However, Drop promises a series of other features, including sync support for up to 3 devices, as well as secure sharing, an option that is projected to go live at a later time.

“Last year, we launched Dropbox Passwords for all paid Dropbox plans to make signing in to websites and storing your passwords seamless. The Passwords app remembers your usernames and passwords on all your devices—so you don’t have to. And zero-knowledge encryption ensures only you know your passwords, not Dropbox,” the company said in an announcement.

“We’re excited to help make the passwords experience easy for everyone, so in early April we’re rolling out Dropbox Passwords to all Dropbox users. Now, with a free Dropbox Basic plan, you can try a limited version of Passwords.”

At this point, there are plenty of free password managers out there, many of them coming with cross-platform and sync support, but Dropbox’s goal is different. The company doesn’t want to compete against these apps but actually entice users to upgrade to a paid plan that would provide them with so much more, including not only additional storage in the cloud but also unlimited password manager entries.