What is the future of local/standalone vaults?

Regardless of how it's justified with long and passionate postings, I am so disappointed that 1P is removing my choice how to deal with my most sensitive data!
There are some data I would never, ever, post on servers I do not control.
Key Point: Data are only secure until they aren't.
The "membership" (aka, subscription) is a good way to improve cash flow 1P (by storing user data and then mandating a monthly fee for that "membership"), but for me this model does not work. I want to pick when to upgrade. If 1P comes out with a new version, I've always upgraded. Moreover, and to the main point, I need to be in control of my data -- locally for some -- and now 1P has removed that choice.
I'm currently migrating my data to Keepass, which I am not a fan of but at least I control my data.
Again, I understand the siren song of regular "membership" cash flow (aka, "subscriptions"), and I could actually probably agree to a subscription model if I still had the choice where my vaults go.
Unless the choice returns so I can choose which vaults are private (stored locally), 1P 7 will be my last version.

I've had standalone versions of 1Password for many years, though it was always a headache to find out how to buy a license. Question: will there be a standalone version of 1Password 8? And I would be VERY grateful for clear instructions on how to buy a license and set up the new version as a standalone. As far as I can see, the only way to start up the new version is log into an account. (I have an account, but I prefer not use it.)

Thanks for any help.

1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided

@dteare Thanks for your post, but can you please clarify the plans around the iOS app and standalone vaults & iCloud syncing? All the posts I've seen keep mentioning that 1Password 7 will keep working, but the mobile apps pose an interesting problem as I assume there will be a version update there that will one day yank the standalone vault & iCloud syncing support. What's the timeline on which that will happen? Rather not be given false hope that I can keep working with existing 1Password 7 when the critical part (the iOS app) will stop working with the Mac clients.

I will say, while the writing has been on the wall since the introduction of 1Password 7 and the lack of support on the Mac App Store version, I am still disappointed in AgileBits. Standalone vaults & the iCloud/Dropbox sync features were major reasons 1Password was recommended to me by work colleagues back when I worked at Apple. It what differentiated 1Password from other services as it showed a care for many different customers' use cases that competitors didn't cover. Would've been glad to pay a subscription with those features supported.

For the folks who are Apple device based, iCloud Keychain is adding TOTP with iOS 15 (one of the biggest differentiators for 1Password in previous years). I know I'll be re-evaluating whether iCloud Keychain could service my needs before committing to another cloud service like 1Password.com.

@dteare

Recently with shock and disappointment, I got notice of the fact that 1Password 8 will drop local vaults and the vault sync feature. I have been a happy a user of 1Password on macOS and iOS devices for years. With an annual subscription I was happy to receive support, new features, regular updates. Repeatedly, I have recommended 1Password to friends and family and showed them how to set it up.

In the following, I would like to outline my use case to provide insight why "leaving local vaults behind" is a showstopper.

• As a technical consultant, I work for multiple client
• For each client, I create a local vault to store secrets etc.
• Tresorit (kind of more secure Dropbox) is my primary data sync service
• Using the folder sync feature, all 1Password vaults on macOS are synced with Tresorit
• Sync of vaults with Tresorit works great across multiple macOS devices and even with colleagues working for the same client
• Selected vaults are synced to iOS devices using the WLAN sync
• No vaults are synced with 1Password.com
• Annual 1Password.com subscription

In summary, the "local vault and sync" feature has been a great and smart way to separate concerns between the password manager app and the storage service. With the announced road map, 1Password is dropping this essential separation of concerns the hard way without providing an equivalent alternative.

Migrating vaults to 1Password.com is not an option because this would violate the separation of concerns.

What is really frustrating is the thought about the time and effort that a migration away from 1Password would take in case the road map will remain forcing users to 1Password.com only sync. Being now in a locked-in situation as a long-time paying subscriber, it feels unfair to drop an essential feature without providing an equivalent option.

I really hope that the 1Password.com rethinks the road map. I have noticed the "Survey: Self-hosted 1Password kick-starter" to which I also responded. However, I really do not want to self-host 1Password. I simply want an app which is great a managing password but keeps itself out of the affair to store the encrypted database.

Conclusions as of today:

• Hope for 1Password product managers to return to sanity remains
• Stay at 1Password 7 on macOS as long as possible
• Write a task to research for alternative solutions and migration paths
• Cancel 1Password subscription for the time being

Same boat as many others. Long time evangelist for the service. Family Dropbox vault.

No one wanted subscriptions. It was forced. My company is on subscription because that was the only option.

Native Mac app and sync with Dropbox are why I’ve been a user since v3 and gotten it installed in the last two companies I worked at, plus most of my extended family on both sides.

Now the reasons I promoted it are all gone. No one wanted another subscription. No one wanted another bulky electron app. I know corporate clients will win. I know VC growth targets will win. That doesn’t make it right or make the long-term customers wrong. 1Password was the best option, not the richest or biggest company in the space. Now it may be two and three but is it actually still one? Not for me.

Dear 1Password Team,

I purchased 1Password first in 2009, and immediately integrated it with Dropbox. I use it daily. It is great.

I've always preferred to use the standalone version, through all of the Mac App Store hoopla, as it removes any headaches I've experienced when using hosted services. Dropbox has been rock-solid reliable for 11 years.

Engaget is reporting and/or implying that the Standalone option will go away with 1Password 8. I'm very disappointed if this is a result of your venture capital investments of $200 million in Nov 2019.

The value the standalone license provided was great -- I paid $60 every time you did a major update, and everything worked great. You didn't need to have my credit card stored somewhere, and I didn't rely on my software provider to also keep a syncing service up and running 99.999% of the time.

I don't know how you run your server-side operations. I know how you store my passwords. I don't know your uptime over the past several years. I do know that 1Password with Dropbox has always just worked.

I need you to spend some more time and effort convincing me that I need to pay you $60/year for 1Password, rather than $60 every few years. I need to know how often your syncing service goes offline. I need to know where your servers are hosted, who hosts them, and how, exactly, you ensure that my personal and credit card information are not going to be stolen and used against me. I need to know that when an AWS us-east-1 goes down, whether or not my data will still be accessible and the outage completely invisible to me. I need to know how someone at your hosting company isn't going to take all of 1P data and sell it on the dark web, like so many services before you. I need to know how you prevent or detect unauthorized access to the bits of data that 1P streams to your servers. I need to know what "metrics" anonymized or not are flowing from the 1P app to 1P servers telling you what I do, or that a 3rd party audits every release you make to ensure that such metrics do not exist.

You've spent a lot of time telling us how you secure our secrets on our disks. Now spend a lot of time telling us how you secure our secrets on your disks.

You need to earn trust again that your SAAS game now is as good as your software has been the last 11 years.

Sincerely,

An 11-year customer who is reluctant to have yet another subscription to a company whose primary business for 11 years has been selling software and not running a five-9's SAAS

PS -- Your Families page is very light on details and restrictions. I get a vague "5 users" but how many installs is that? Unlimited? Limited? What if I have 6 family members?

1Password Version: 8
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS

As many others have mentioned, I have been a happy user of 1Password since V5. I am happy to pay for the subscription service and to a certain extent that's the way that software is going.

That said, the loss of local vaults will be a killer for me. Self-hosting would at least allow me to continue to use it - but it will be a downgrade in convenience from being able to host of Dropbox. I will probably stay on 1Pv7 but if there is truly no plan to support self-hosting then it sadly difficult to see where to go next aside from to another product :(

Of course 1Password is free to follow whatever path they think will provide the best UX for the majority of their users, it's just sad to see my use case deprecated.

If you definitely read more than 90% negative comments about the subscription model, and you don't take this seriously. Then you don't come across as credible as a company.
I'm going to be stuck on 1PW7, and that's more than fine.

Whoops! You can disregard. I now see this was addressed in another post.

I have 1Password Families but need standalone vaults in addition to the data on 1password.com. I just "downgraded" to the 1Password 8 early release, couldn't find a way to get to my iCloud and Dropbox vaults, and now need to "upgrade" back to 1Password 7. Maybe time to search for another tool that'll let me do what I need to do. I'm rather disappointed about removing the ability to sync standalone vaults.

@dteare

Relative to your prior messages, the ONLY way I can continue with 1Password is if you offered the option for us to self-host our own vaults. I’d be actually ok with that option even with a subscription as much as I dislike those since I prefer to continue to pay for licenses, almost regardless the cost. However, I can’t move from a local vault to turning my data over to a service. I’ve enjoyed the use of 1Password licensed app immensely and have recommended it to many family members and colleagues but… losing control of my password data is not something I can accept. I’d truly and unfortunately would have to seriously consider another way to manage my passwords regardless how painful that experience is.

Do I use cloud services, sure but each one’s use is weighed carefully against risk of turning over control of a portion of identity and security to an organization over which I have no control. As much as I admire your organization for engineering great desktop apps, I have no basis to trust your long term viability and ability to secure my most sensitive of data. I have no ability to perform periodic security audits of your systems, unlikely that you would ever agree to that in any event.

Thus, I’m left with the tantalizing prospect of your consideration of offering the potential for technically adept users to self-host our own vault servers. Please do. I’ll support that whole heartedly even with the overhead. At least I’ll still have a modicum, illusory as it may be over my own destiny. I prefer that.