Same here. I bought 1Password (multiple times) and have it on my MBP, iPhone, and iPad and got the girlfriend using it on all of her devices too. Matter of fact, I switched to 1Password the very same day that LogMeIn bought out LastPass.

I am not happy about them switching to a subscription model and pushing their hosted product and (in this case) making it a requirement. Yes, the standalone version is still around. For now.

As much as I dislike it, it was (unfortunately, for us) probably the right business decision to make. The standalone version will go away at some point in the future. I'm sure of that, I just don't know when it will be.

I'll never switch to their subscription/hosted product but many, many others probably will. That will reaffirm their decision and lead to them eventually completely dropping the standalone macOS version.

Supposedly, 1Password 7 for Windows will bring back standalone vaults to Windows. Since the hosted solution brings them the bulk of their revenue (I'm guessing), it made sense to me for them to focus on the Windows upgrade with hosted accounts and I forgave them for it as long as 1Password 4 continued to work. I really hope that same attitude continues on with later versions of 1Password X. Starting out with accounts makes sense so long as they add standalone support later. I'm a patient person and beggars can't be choosers.

You’re not a beggar, though. You paid for the product! Honestly as long as they don’t break the current version, I’m fine with what I bought. I have 1Password now on MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows — and I guess I can get it on my Linux box now if I want to pay a subscription.

Yes you are. You paid for a product that continues to work exactly the way it did when you paid for it. They're not obligated to give me new features to the product I paid for at no cost to me, especially when it's a from-scratch rewrite. That makes all of us beggars since what we paid for still exists and they're not taking it away.

> I'm a patient person and beggars can't be choosers.

Is it begging when you pay $50 per license for the product?

Yes it is because you're asking to get the upgrade for free. The version you paid $50 for has standalone support and will continue to work exactly as it did when you bought it. Maybe that's a caveat of the SaaS/hosted model. I don't see why they should be obligated to give anyone the version with new features for free, though.

This line of thought is bullshit.

When you buy a product you also buy it because:

1. you expect long term support

2. you believe in the company's values and business model

3. you trust that company to keep protecting your interests

There are many more factors going into a buying decision than "current implementation has features X or Y".

Many people are upset with AgileBits because when they bought 1Password, they did so believing that the company's strategy is aligned with them — i.e. at that time 1Password was THE offline password management solution, the other popular alternative being LastPass, a solution that relies on web interfaces and browser plugins and that has had vulnerabilities because of that.

I should also remind you that by buying a software product, you don't actually own it, you're just licensing it — the difference between a one time fee and a subscription being one of contractual obligations on both sides.

But that difference is irrelevant for the topic at hand, because you don't own the 1Password version that you bought, you cannot make improvements to it by yourself, it's not open source after all. When you buy a car for example, non-shitty / classic models at least, at the very least you are free to repair it and improve it by yourself.

And while true that AgileBits has no contractual obligations to keep delivering updates to their standalone version, I personally couldn't give a shit about the scope of their contractual obligations. Because in society when interacting with other people, we also care about other things and we are free to associate or disassociate ourselves from other people at will and the same rules govern our interaction with companies as well.

So when AgileBits no longer delivers a standalone Windows version, that's a serious reason for concern and a flag that we should look for alternatives.

AgileBits is free to do what they want of course, but we can also vote with our wallets after all. And we are also free to complain.

We've provided 30+ updates to 1Password 4 for Windows:

https://app-updates.agilebits.com/product_history/OPW4

The first release was in June of 2014. The most recent update was September of this year.

Our July 2017 updates included support for our new Native Messaging based extension system so that the extension will continue to work for 1Password 4 for Windows users. This is all offered after we stopped selling 1Password 4 for Windows.

That's 3 years of updates. I'd say that's pretty long term.

So far as I'm aware, nothing is fundamentally broken in 1Password 4 for Windows. It behaves the same way now as it did before we stopped selling it and we've continued to produce fixes and improvements for it.

I'd be curious to understand what it is we did to earn your scorn here. It's almost like we kicked your dog or something. I'm all for constructive criticism, but when the criticism isn't actually in line with reality it starts to make me really doubt the authenticity of the feedback we're getting.

Kyle

AgileBits

It's unwarranted. I'm still using 1Password 4 on all my Windows machines and it works just fine. I'm waiting for standalone support in 1Password 7 (just like most of the people complaining) but I don't feel like I'm entitled to the latest version for free. That's just nonsense. You guys have jobs and need to pay for staff and development time. I would gladly pay more for the standalone version that I am now but getting a major upgrade like that for the same price is more than fair. This guy's just being ridiculous.

Likely because they’re giving other users who happened to start using 1Password later, new features for free.

But those people will have to pay for the new version. They're not getting the upgrade for free either. They're either paying monthly for those features or they paid for the latest version that includes those features. You paid for the software you've been using the whole time that they haven't been using. I don't understand this attitude where users of old versions are entitled to full version upgrades for free.

Standalone user here since 1Password 2.0, using it both on iOS and OSX. I feel that it receives pretty frequent updates, and doesn't suffer from feature bloat. It even synchronizes great with Dropbox. What are people's gripes with AgileBits' support of the standalone version?

People see progress happening on something they don’t use (because standalone is basically feature-complete) and just want to gripe. I’ve been a stand-alone user for literally as long as I can remember and have never had a single issue with 1P.

Same. I have a tough time empathizing with people who expect free upgrades forever (especially if purchased many years prior) if they don’t articulate how those upgrades should be funded.

I think it comes from a desktop software mentality, where things remained rather static relative to mobile’s rapid changes.

I don't expect free upgrades forever, but I am extremely disappointed that I will have migrate all my data to another product if they cease providing an offline version.

Disclosure: I work for AgileBits makers of 1Password

We've already announced that 1Password 7 for Mac and 1Password 7 for Windows will continue to offer standalone licensing.

Just a heads up that we're not removing the option for users like yourself that want to continue to use standalone vaults and the licensing to go with it.

That said, if you haven't, I would recommend and least trying our 1Password.com service. It was built and designed from the ground up to work for 1Password. It's an incredibly great experience. If you try it and aren't interested after the trial I'd love to hear your feedback on why. No credit card is necessary to try it.

Kyle

AgileBits

I've tried it, but it isn't for me (privacy-paranoid). That said, I really appreciated the post where you said standalone vaults would remain — made me feel like you guys cared. That's the whole thing. I literally don't need any more features besides security upgrades, and as long as I know you're still looking out for us too I'm perfectly happy.

What does “cease providing” mean? Don’t you have the software? Isn’t the whole point of a standalone program that once you have it, the company can just go bust?

In the context of iOS at least, it has the potential to stop working or lose functionality as time goes on. Compatibility for apps that are not continuously updated is not high on Apple's priority list.

Disclosure: I work for AgileBits, makers of 1Password.

We recently updated 1Password 6 for iOS to work with the new Dropbox version 2 API. Going forward it should be fine until the next Dropbox API changes and presumably that will be a lot smoother than the change from version 1 to 2 that we just did... at least, I hope. We had several people put a lot of time into that transition.

I'm not sure if your comment applied directly to us, but for anyone wondering we tend to update 1Password pretty regularly. We are not at risk of ever being an app that falls on the "not continuously updated" lists I don't think. We were there on day 1 for Drag and Drop on iPad, and day 1 for Face ID. Much like we were there on day 1 for Touch ID and extensions.

1Password for Mac does not depend on Dropbox's API, it syncs directly to the Dropbox folder on the Mac. So as long as that doesn't change it has zero dependency on Dropbox itself.

Kyle

AgileBits

No, sorry, I probably wasn't clear. I didn't mean to say that 1Password does not provide updates.

I was just talking about the hypothetical situation for iOS apps (and thus their users) _if_ the apps don't get updates.

1Password upgrades are not free, they were charging for major versions.

Just checked, last time I paid was $10 (i think for an upgrade) in 2013.

Most of these people are on the Windows version, I'm guessing. The 1Password Windows version is very neglected by AgilBits.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Windows Teams support isn't out of beta yet and regularly has bugs.

Teams support has been released long time ago: https://app-updates.agilebits.com/product_history/OPW6

And all our apps have bugs :)

I’m sure from a business perspective 1Password X was also designed with the intent to close the free/standalone funnel and convert those with standalone onto the hosted/paid plan. It’s all about the MRR and I don’t blame them. I’d do the same thing if I was CEO. The money to pay for this R&D/engineering has to come from somewhere.

Just to add on to this now that I see that Agliebits staff are in this thread.

I'm not against paying for major version updates. Think of it as a tradeoff between time to market vs. revenue. I'm fine with Teams getting features first (other than security fixes) and paying more infrequently than subscription. It's certainly a business model that previously sustained Agilebits and plenty of other software providers. I get that the HN crowd may not make up a large majority of users at this point but I would think there are still many people that would be happy to spread use of 1Password via word of mouth if you deign to do so.

Thank you, @newman314!

While we think that subscription makes it easier to use 1Password and not have to purchase apps and upgrades for every platform, there are many users that prefer to use licenses. We are going to support both for upcoming 1Password 7 on Mac and Windows.

The same is true for 1Password service vs host-it-yourself model. I have 30+ vaults shared with my team and family and it is much easier to use the service but I can still keep the data locally and set up sharing manually if needed.

There are some features that are simply not possible without the servers doing the heavy lifting: shared vaults and permissions, travel mode, Chromebooks, etc. I just hope that technically savvy HN crowd understands that and doesn't see it as an attempt to push everyone to have a subscription.

Roustem, Founder of AgileBits

I used to develop 1Password for Mac and iOS. I now develop 1Password service with Go, ReactJS, and Terraform/AWS.

Same here. It doesn't even make sense to me because I already have the app installed on the same computer. I should be able to access the new features of this tool using the existing implementation. I'm even willing to pay for the extension if that needs to be done!

I’m not against the hosted model, but at the moment for me they don’t have enough compelling reasons to use it if you purchased the standalone version. It sounds like they’re trying to get there with X and I wish them luck, but in the meantime I’m a happy standalone user.

I don't think we are. 1Password X is a purely in browser app. It doesn't have local access to your files, it is an extension. The only way for it to get data is from some server outside, i.e. cloud. Don't try to see the malicious intent where it was just practical decision.

At the moment this is the only way to get 1Password to work on Linux (except older OPW4 with local sync support under Wine). I personally happy about it. You don't have to be, if you don't use cloud. No one pushes you.

> Don't try to see the malicious intent...

I think you have replied to the wrong comment? Parent says "I'm not against the hosted model...I wish them luck"

Sorry, you're right :)

Also I see that people for some reason think that this is the only future of our apps. - Standalone apps are not going anywhere. - The original 1Password extension, which is working with standalone app is there too and in active development.

1Password X is one more thing, additional possibility. Not a replacement.

Disclosure: I work for AgileBits, makers of 1Password

This particular solution also makes the most sense for our hosted solution. Extensions are sandboxed, so the question becomes how does the standalone vault get its data into the extension sandbox? Once it's there, how do you keep it in sync?

Sure, it's possible, but it's also incredibly fiddly for the average user. While we do talk about Linux here, the extension is still focused at the average user in most ways. So having a user drag a vault into a particular folder deep in their system or really any other solution is just going to be painful and impossible to easily keep in sync.

The extension also has a prerequisite of not relying on our native applications. So any input from that side is a no go.

The other thing with this is we would've literally had to recreate a very large portion of the standalone vault code again. On Mac for instance this code is written in Objective-C, on Windows it was written in Delphi for version 4, it's not present in 1Password 6 for Windows yet but when it does exist there it'll be in C#. Our new 1Password X extension is written in Typescript and Go. So quite literally none of our existing code carries over to this. That's a big barrier to entry.

Our focus on 1Password.com accounts really made the most sense because it can get the users data directly from the web, dump it in the sandbox where necessary, and it can be easily synced. It was also a lot easier because much of our web client's code could be shared with the new extension, so a good chunk of that work was already done.

That said, I am sorry that you aren't happy about this direction we took for the extension. It wasn't specifically done to make any users made it was to try to continue to expand the options available to users.

* Make 1Password available to two new platforms that we didn't support directly: Chrome OS and Linux * Make it possible for users to not have to have the applications installed in order to use 1Password in their browser. This starts to lower the barrier to entry as well. Traditionally the install the app, install the extension bits have been difficult for some users, this helps alleviate that.

None of our decisions here were based on making users unhappy, it was trying to make users lives easier and introducing 1Password to more types of systems.

One of the main reasons we made 1Password.com was because it allowed us to do things that we could not do in the past. This extension is one of those things that we've wanted to do but couldn't. You're bound to see a lot more of this type of thing in the future because standalone vaults limited our options for a long time and we have a long list of features and things we've wanted to implement but couldn't do with standalone vaults. Now we have a backend that can help us make these things happen so we're working on them.

Now, I'm not saying you have to agree with our decisions, but I do hope that giving you some details will help you at least understand why we're doing this. Understanding why doesn't mean you have to agree with it, or like it even, but understanding does mean you can see it from our side too.

We know our standalone users exist, we're not ignoring them, but we have some really exciting projects that we've wanted to work on for a long time and are now able to do so. Like anyone else here on Hacker News we like to work on thing we're excited about too.

For what it's worth we haven't "moved" to a hosted model. We offer our standalone licenses to users who want them. They may not be front and center but they're there. We have also made it clear that we're offering standalone licenses for 1Password 7 for Mac and Windows, so they'll continue to be offered in the future.

And our existing extension is being worked on every day. We hope that some of the changes we've made to this extension will make their way into the extension and applications our standalone users use currently. I'm excited to see how the new 1Password X extension influences the Mac application going forward.

Anyway, I hope that helps a little. If you have questions definitely reach out. I'm happy to help however I can and again, I'm sorry if the release of this new extension has upset you. It certainly wasn't our intent.

Kyle

AgileBits

> No surprise but looks like standalone users are left out in the cold. Again.

There is no money there, without a MRR companies won't do it.

The Standalone version’s support is abysmal. Just yesterday I found out it is not supported on Linux. I’m sorry, but what?

I almost regret purchasing 1Password.

edit: So complaining about lack of support for a major operating system is downvote-worthy now. Cool. Keep it classy, HN.

It never has been supported on Linux. Why is that suddenly a surprise to you?

I built a Linux machine to perform my development work on and found it out.

"It has never been supported on Linux", uh, okay? I'm saying it's totally shitty that a major platform is not supported.

Linux is a major platform? It’s probably as hard to write a Linux version as it is to write the other two, but it has at least two orders of magnitude fewer users.

It's a major platform amongst hackers, no? That's the core audience here.

I don't think hackers are 1Password's core audience. Password managers have a pretty wide appeal.

Yeah... Linux is not a major platform for anything except web servers and I don't think web servers have a need for 1Password yet.

A lot of commercial software is not supported on Linux. The vast majority of it, even.

At one point I ran the legacy Windows version under Wine, which even worked with the Chrome extension. Had to disable some extension security policy in Chrome though.

This is off topic but I've had to use AIX for a recent project and it's jarring to see the lack of software available for AIX compared to Linux. Makes me happy to go back to Linux.

So it's all relative =)

Yeah, I saw that was an option, but installing Wine and all its dependencies (~750 MB of space) just to run a legacy Windows app is a non-starter, for obvious reasons.

Wrong again, there have been cross-platform wrappers for the (very well documented) 1P format for a LONG TIME, see here[0].

Slightly non-intuitive, but functional.

[0]: https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass

Note that only the older agilekeychain format is well documented. AFAIK there aren't any well known public CLI tools kicking around that can read the opvault format, though it shouldn't be that hard:

https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/77406/opvault-i...