I spent $200 on a 'premium' password manager that was worse than the free one

Kelly Hayes · 2026-03-28T00:45:06.111936+00:00

Everyone says you need a paid password manager for real security, so I bought a year of a fancy one last fall. It cost me $200 and the interface was so slow it added 10 seconds to every login. The auto-fill broke on half my banking sites, and their support took 3 days to reply with a generic help article. I went back to my old free manager after 4 months and my life got easier. Has anyone else found that paying more for security tools doesn't always mean better?

simon3784mo ago

They're just password managers. Not that deep.

4

noah_singh816mo ago

Wait, isn't the real issue that some paid tools just have bad software? Like @diana_grant's reviewer said, price doesn't equal quality. I had a paid VPN that was so slow it made browsing a pain, and a fancy firewall that blocked my own printer. The free versions of other apps worked better. Sometimes companies just sell a feeling of safety but the actual product is junk.

2

diana_grant6mo ago

That "paying more doesn't always mean better" thing is exactly what a tech reviewer I follow said about security software last week.

1