a BIG THANK YOU and an important question about the 1Password8 model
Hello 1Password team,
First, we want to say thank you for many years of excellent service going way back to v3 if we recall our 1Password history correctly. Again, THANK YOU for designing, building, and maintaining an excellent product.
We know you are under some "feedback", some of if very unkind, regarding recent 1Password8 announcements. Online social media can be a very unkind place, sadly. So, we will say it again in case you missed it:
T H A N K Y O U ! ! !
We hope you will take the time to read the text below. After we calmed down and stepped back from our earlier posts, we have decided to see if we can engage to determine if the 1Password8 model is right for us.
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BEFORE WE START / WHAT THIS IS NOT ABOUT:
We do not use Beta software in our production environment, so we have no experience with 1Password8. We presume that the same AgileBits team will continue to do an excellent job of building a good toolset, so we are not very concerned about the underlying code if it maintains the high 1Password standard.
We are also willing to pay for excellent service, so the subscription model is not an issue for us.
We know others have concerns about Electron and about subscriptions. We neither detract nor endorse those concerns. We will let those people address those concerns themselves in their own posts.
This is NOT about Electron and NOT about subscription models.
Nevertheless, we have an IMPORTANT 1PASSWORD8 QUESTION: the answer is key to helping us determine if 1Password8 is the right tool for us. But first, permit us to give you our use cases.
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OUR PASSWORD USE CASE:
We use 1Password 7 in "family mode". The 1Password.com vaults contain passwords that are of low priority / low importance. We use the 1Password app in iOS and macOS to access this shared pool of low priority passwords as a matter of convenience.
We also maintain private vaults with very strong, randomly generated passwords for key infrastructure. We also place non-password data into those vaults such as physical lock codes and device codes. To date, we have 600+ such passwords.
We sometimes work in remote places where network access is either unreliable or impossible.
We sometimes work in environments where we are trying to debug and/or restore network service.
We sometimes work in environments that are under active attack and/or have devices that may have been compromised.
We sometimes work with passwords where we are made to promise not to send them over any network.
We sometimes travel internationally where data rates make accessing cloud-based password vaults very expensive.
We make use of 1Password smart folders as a key part of our password management and password workflow.
etc.
In the above listed cases (and more), 1Password’s 1password.com seems to not fit our needs for certain passwords.
We have successfully used a private vault for passwords that fall into the above cases.
With most of our private vault passwords, sync with iCloud once we are back online.
(We don’t / can’t use Windows nor Android platforms for various reasons).
In a few rare cases we have 1Password private vaults that are never synced over the network.
We propagate changes by "sneaker net": manually copying the private vault in those rare cases.
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OUR SMART FOLDER USE CASE:
We have made extensive use of 1Password smart folders. These smart folder use properties of password entries. These 1Password SMART FOLDERS have become a KEY PART of our password related workflow and our password management.
As an example, we identify those passwords that have not been modified in a certain number of days. The age to review depends on the type of password. Text in the notes section helps determine the review period for a given password.
We make extensive use of the "notes" feature of password entries. We have important requirements for password entries. We use smart folders to alert us to any password entry that is missing important note data.
To date, 1Password.com based vaults do not have smart folder capability. Smart folders seem to be only supported in Private vaults.
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OUR IMPORTANT QUESTION:
Is 1Password8 the right password manager for us?
To help us answer that question, please permit us to ask you these sub-questions:
1) What will happen to private vaults if we upgrade to 1Password8? 2) How long will 1Password v7 be supported and updated, if at all, once 1Password8 is released? 3) Is / will smart folders (or anything similar) be supported for 1password.com based vaults in 1Password8? 4) For a device without network access, how does 1Password8 (if it can) give one access to password data? 5) For a device that is offline for a period, how does 1Password8 (if it can) sync adds/mods/deletes once that device comes back online? 6) Is there any option / ability for 1Password8 to not sync a given password over the internet? 7) Do you have any advice, given our above requirements, for how we might use 1Password8?
We hope you can provide answers to the above 7 sub-questions in order to help us understand if 1Password8 is right for us.
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Thank you for your time and consideration.
— Landon Curt Noll
1Password Version: 7.8.7
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 11.5.2
Comments
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Hi @chongolcn2
Thanks so much for the kind words and careful consideration about how 1Password might fit into your workflow going forward. I'll try to answer your questions the best I can:
What will happen to private vaults if we upgrade to 1Password8?
Versions of 1Password beyond v7 will not include support for standalone vaults, as we call them. These vaults would need to be migrated to 1Password membership vaults in order to utilize them with new versions of 1Password.
How long will 1Password v7 be supported and updated, if at all, once 1Password8 is released?
This is something that management is evaluating but I can say that 1Password 7 is alive and well and it will continue to receive at least critical security fixes. I would say that fixes for minor bugs are less likely at this point and moving forward.
Is / will smart folders (or anything similar) be supported for 1password.com based vaults in 1Password8?
We don’t currently have anything like this, or any definite plans that I’m aware of for it, but one of the advantages of the 1Password 8 model is that it makes rolling something like this out much more realistic. I’m happy to share this request with the team.
For a device without network access, how does 1Password8 (if it can) give one access to password data?
If a device will never have network access, then it will not be able to use 1Password effectively. That said, the apps do keep an offline cache, and so once they’ve synced with the server offline access is possible.
For a device that is offline for a period, how does 1Password8 (if it can) sync adds/mods/deletes once that device comes back online?
For sure, 1Password can work in an environment like this. It is designed to be able to work offline and then sync back up when reconnected.
Is there any option / ability for 1Password8 to not sync a given password over the internet?
There is not, however we are running a survey to see what benefit would be provided by self-hosting, and how many people / companies would be interested in that: https://survey.1password.com/self-host/
I hope that helps!
Ben
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Thank you Ben, for taking the time to provide some answers to my questions.
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Thank you, @chongolcn2, for the questions and your kind and considerate post. We appreciate hearing from you!
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Hello @Ben and @PeterG_1P,
We have taken some time to digest your replies and answers. Here is where we, from our perspective, stand:
The loss of smart folders in v8 is a BIG issue for us. Smart folder functionality was something we used and counted on in 1Password. The loss of smart folder functionality for 1password.com was THE reason why we avoided production use of 1password.com based vaults. We had hoped the lack of smart folder functionality was an oversight when 1password.com vaults were first introduced, or that it was a feature to be restored later on. Unfortunately that never happened: folder functionality has remained missing from 1password.com to date.
At the risk of appearing to be less than polite: There appears to be a question of product dependability. It strains our being able to depend on 1Password when major features appear to be ignored and when major features seem to just "disappear".
Is AgileBits willing to commit to restoring smart folder functionality to 1Password in v8? And if so, when?
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Thank you for your time and consideration.
— Landon Curt Noll ^oo^
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