The Best Business Password Managers

If you've used any password managers before you'll know that once you've spent the time setting them up and start using them, you'll question how you ever lived without them. This is also often the case when someone introduces a password management solution into a business.

In our digital age, it's never been more important to ensure your business is as secure as possible and this means making sure that any passwords that your business uses are not only secure themselves but are also handled securely.

This is where a password manager can into play, put simply, a password manager is a piece of software that helps you manage passwords as well as permissions within your business in a much more secure and more effective way.

Not only can it help by making sure your employees don't reuse passwords but it can help ensure that any passwords used are of a certain length, strength, and uniqueness that help give the security of your important information.

Which Is The Best Business Password Manager

Of course, with all software decisions, the best password manager for your business will be the one that fits the best within your business and the only person who can answer that is you, however, we can help give you our opinion on which have we love and which have great features.

Below we'll look into detail of two of the leading password management solutions around.

1Password's business plans are one of our favorite options, being one of the market leaders in terms of password management solutions across both personal and business globally you'll likely have heard of this company or come across them before.

1Password business plan is a great option due to the number of features you get and how it can fit business of different sizes, some of our favourite features include:

• Apps for both Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and Web, so it can fit easily into your business no matter how you operate
• Uses AES 256-bit encryption
• Unlimited shared vaults and item storage
• Unlimited password storage
• Admin control and ability to manage permissions
• Great password-sharing options
• 24/7 support
• Business watch tower (this gives you a view of any issues such as potentially weak employee passwords including compromised passwords)
• Free family accounts for each team member

You can find out more about the 1Password business plans on the 1Password site including the last pricing and features.

Another popular password manager used by businesses is Dashlane, they offer a similar offering to 1Password. Dashlane boast that they've never suffered from any type of data breach which of course is something that is great to be able to say as a company operating in the security sector.

Dashlane has many features but some that we love include:

• Can be used in browsers, on Macs, Windows and iOS and Android devices
• Intuitive and easy to use backend/dashboards
• Password health metrics
• Uses AES 256 bit encryption
• Two factor authentication
• Various business plans available
• Ability to share passwords easily

Pricing wise you'll find there are two main plans for Dashlane, these include a starter price of $2, a Team price of $5 and a Business plan of $8 per user per month.

How does a Business Password Manager work?

If you've signed up to a personal password manager then it's quite a similar process, once signed up as a business, you'll be able to create a Master Password that allows you to control the account, give permissions etc. This master password is the key to the password vault where all of the passwords are kept.

Once you've set up the above, you can then start the process of getting your employees to join, this is done by sending out invitations, you can then set permissions for each employee so they have access to certain items within vaults.

This is one of the best features as you can give senior employees access to more important and vital data, logins or files whilst restricting this from other employees.

Think of these password managers stopping the need for you to memorize every login details that you have, especially for businesses that operate digitally your employees will have multiple logins and passwords that they'll need to remember and lots of them will resort to writing these down somewhere so they don't forget them.

This leads to a big issue in terms of security and is not something you want your employees to do, however expecting them to remember them all without doing this is a big ask, hence why password managers for businesses are a great way of solving this issue.

All their passwords will be in an encrypted password vault, accessed by them using their master password, meaning instead of having to remember multiple logins and passwords they only need one single sign in and they'll be able to get access to them all.

Multi factor authentication

This is one of the key features that you need to make sure not only the business password manager has but also that your employees use when they join. This type of authentication can be completed either by a text (SMS) message being sent to an employees phone, the use of an authenticator app or a biometric way such as 'Face ID'.

This gives an extra layer of security, so that if the worst happens and someone gains access to an employees master password they'll not be able to get past the multi factor authentication and so you're documents and data is safe, reducing security breaches.

The difference between a password manager and a business password manager

Although a lot of companies other both personal and business password management solutions, it's important to understand why they are seen as having different purposes even though they offer similar features.

The main difference is that within a business it's likely that you'll need to not only share passwords or access to documents, software and files on a regular basis but you'll want to be able to change the permissions of this access easily.

A person password manager may have the ability to share certain documents and passwords with friends or family, but it's not designed to be heavily shared nor will it be set up so that you can certain access permissions to each of the people you share with. Business password management is designed all around this, allowing you to share access to certain people and give them certain roles with different permissions.

Another one of the features of a business password management solution over a personal one is you'll have more storage for your documents i.e instead of 1GB of storage per user you may be able to get 5GB or more.

Enterprise Password Managers

For larger organizations, an enterprise password manager is a must, the enterprise plans that are available from the top password managers give you additional features which allow things such as advanced sharing features.

One of the benefits of Enterprise plans from companies such as 1Password are that they give you a dedicated account manager as well as tailor-made support when implementing the system within your business. The larger your business and the more employees you have the more complicated it will be to implement a password manager so this is a great feature that gives you the peace of mind that it'll be set up correctly and any issues will be ironed out.

Are Password Managers Safe for Businesses?

Security is at the heart of all of these businesses, it's the one key feature that is of up most importance and without it the business model of these password management solutions would be nonexistent.

They have a wide variety of measures in place to make sure all of your data is encypted, they have whole teams whose job is the security of the tech and software itself and one big thing is that the password managers don't store your master password.

Of course any system can never be called 100% secure, we're sure you've seen in the news of hacks into some of the biggest and most secure companies in the world and this has been seen in hacks relating to password management software too including LastPass who were hacked in 2022.

So like with any security measure you need to be aware that it can never be fool proof, however these password managers are great at what they do and if you act with security in mind and make sure your employees are always thinking that way then you can massively reduce any chances of data breaches.

How much do Password managers cost?

Prices do vary and some even have free password plans however in most cases for businesses you'll need to be on a paid plan, these do vary from company to company but you'll be looking at a price range of around $5-10 per user per month.

This is a small price to pay for the added security and if you've ever experienced a data breach or heard of one from a company you'll know the cost to deal with one is extremely high not to mention the financial cost and damage to the business when you report the breach.

Best Business Password Manager for Small Businesses

For those founders who are looking for the best password manager for small businesses then we personally would advise looking into 1Password as a great option and one that we use as a company.

The ease of use and quick set up means you'll be able to get everything going within the hour and suddenly have a new more effective and secure system for logins, data and so on. As you grow as a business you can add your employees and monitor their security health and also give permissions to them.

This is also a great option for those who are looking for the best password manager for startups as these are cost-effective and you can opt to not tie yourself into long contracts giving you the flexibility to leave if you need to for whatever reason.

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