Family Plan & iCloud vs. Dropbox

Hi @rbb,

I appreciate you taking the time to ask these good questions. I just answered some similar questions in another thread. I recommend reading my reply there. I'll now attempt to answer your other questions that I didn't already address in that other post. :)

If we did go to the Family Plan would our two accounts merge where we both would see the same thing so that my information and her information becomes the same?

When you sign up for 1Password Families, each family member has their own Personal vault. This is private and only available to you. There is also a Shared vault that is accessible to everyone in the family. This is great for things like your Netflix password, wireless network passwords, and other information you want everyone in the family to have access to. If you have children who will be part of the family account, you may wish to keep things like bank and credit card accounts separate from them but still shared with your spouse. In that case, you can create a new vault and share that with just your spouse. It's super simple to create new vaults and choose who you want to share them with.

One more question. Is there any advantage of using iCloud vs. Dropbox, this includes security?

Whether you sync with iCloud, Dropbox, or 1Password Families, 1Password protects your data when you use a sync service. I'd encourage you to read that article for the complete details, and I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may end up with after reading it.

As mentioned in that article, there is a sense in which 1Password Families is more secure. With 1Password Families (and 1Password Teams), we introduced the concept of the Account Key. It's a 128-bit string of random characters that is required to access your account. It is combined with your Master Password to strengthen the encryption. So, even if someone guesses your Master Password (which is very unlikely if you have a sufficiently strong Master Password), it will still be impossible for them to crack that 128-bit Account Key in the lifetime of the known universe.

From a security perspective, switching to 1Password Families is like going from ultra secure to even more ultra secure. :)

I hope that helps. Let me know if there is anything else I can assist with.

Cheers!

Hi @rbb, I'm gonna tackle those one at a time.

We both have individual 1P6 accounts for our individual Apple devices. If I do that merge, as shown in your video tutorial, I assume the one of us who registers would be the primary (admin) for the 1P Families.

Yes, but you can also make your wife an owner of the account, too. She can have all the same permissions, access, etc. that you do. The only difference would be to whose credit card the monthly subscription is charged ;)

1) Does the two separate existing accounts (mine and my wife's) go to the trash and merge or does just the registered owner's 1PF account go to the trash?

Nothing goes to the trash unless you want it to. Your existing 1Password data won't be affected by signing up for 1Password Families. You can migrate your data and then choose to delete the vaults that aren't connected to your 1Password accounts, but neither you nor your wife will have to delete anything you wanna keep.

2) Via permissions, would I have access to her complete existing vault as well as her's to mine? Our goal here is efficiency through consolidation.

Not by default. 1Password Families was designed so people could compartmentalize their information, some of which they want to share and some of which they want to keep to themselves. If you and your wife want to share everything, you can simply add the data from both of your vaults into a shared vault that both of you are allowed to view. Nothing in your Personal vaults is visible to anyone else.

3) Why don't you simply have a single-key shared account version for family members who want equal access? If I add to my 1P I want her to have instant seamless access to any new data as a single account. Or, is this exactly what 1PF accomplishes?

You could, technically, simply use the same 1Password account. (Not the same Family account, which has 1Password accounts beneath it, but the same 1Password account itself.) But the promise of 1Password Families is that your wife would have seamless access to any data you save to a vault she's allowed to view. I think the response above explains how we view the split between personal and shared items.

Does that answer your questions? If I had to boil things down I think I would just say: Nothing is deleted, and you can share exactly as much or as little as you like with your wife, without having to do anything but run through the initial setup and use 1Password Families. Let me know if that's not clear, or if there's anything else I can help with 8-)