The Dashlane password-management service is altering its “freemium” deal, imposing a cap of 25 saved passwords and removing email and chat support from its free tier.
The New York-based company announced the changes in a post Thursday and an email to users (under the subject line “Attention: Upcoming changes to your account”).
“As tactics and technology for password and data theft evolve, so does the need for additional protection,” Chief Product Officer Donald Hasson wrote in the post. “As we continue to work to evolve our product, we’re making adjustments to Dashlane’s Free plan starting this November.”
This change will preserve Dashlane’s full set of features for each saved login, including its recent addition of support for passkeys. And free users who have saved more than 25 accounts won’t see any of them erased—but they won’t be able to save any new ones.
That limit goes into effect Nov. 7, while free accounts lose email and chat help on Dec. 7. The company is offering 55%-off codes for a year of Dashlane Premium ($59.88) or Dashlane Friends & Family ($79.88 for 10 accounts).
Other password managers have scaled back their free tiers in recent years, requiring users to choose between using a diminished app, paying for what they once used for free or switching to a competing service.
For example, LastPass drastically reduced the utility of its free version in 2021, although the bout of security breaches since then now looms as a larger issue. Meanwhile, one of that service’s chief competitors, 1Password, now makes a point of saying that its subscription-only model forces the company to stay focused on those customers.
Among free password managers, the open-source Bitwarden remains our Editors’ Choice pick. What’s not our pick: Responding to Dashlane’s move by abandoning password managers entirely.
Any good password manager, even the free ones that Apple and Google build into their software, will make you safer online by memorizing complex and unique passwords for each site. Just as important, letting it save your existing passwords allows it to warn you about any reused passwords—a bad habit that hackers regularly attack, as seen in the recent breach of accounts at the DNA-testing service 23andMe.
