Dropbox is adding a new feature on top of its usual offerings of storage and file sharing for free Basic accounts. Dropbox Passwords, the password management feature the company introduced for paying customers in 2020, will be free for Dropbox Basic accounts in April — with a new, arbitrary limit of 50 passwords that makes it seem suspiciously like a way to upsell you on a paid Dropbox account.
Now that LastPass is putting a device limit on its free plans, many are looking for a free alternative, and Dropbox Passwords will indeed allow you to sync your passwords across three devices for free. Like other password managers, it exists as a web browser extension, a mobile app on iOS and Android, and desktop applications on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. But other free password managers, like Bitwarden, offer unlimited passwords for free.
The 50-password limit might only make sense if you don’t have a lot of online accounts (grandparents come to mind). I think it would be very hard to find someone who both uses Dropbox and doesn’t have a stack of passwords numbering in the hundreds, and it’s not like it costs Dropbox more money to store double, triple or quadruple the number of passwords. We’re talking about text, not multi-gigabyte videos. If you’re already using a free Dropbox account for other files, you’re probably storing things that are already far larger than all the passwords you’ll ever use in your lifetime.
Still, it might be a worthy introduction to better password security for existing Dropbox users, and if you’re already paying Dropbox $11.99 per month for a Plus account or $19.99 per month for a Professional account, though, here’s a good reminder that Dropbox Passwords exists and you can easily give it a try. Dropbox plans to allow users to securely share passwords to other accounts at some point in the future, too.
When asked about the choice of 50 passwords, Dropbox said “We’re confident that 50 passwords will suit most users on our Dropbox Basic plan. For those who need more, we have a number of other plan options to suit various needs and individual, family or professional situations.”
Dropbox Passwords is available on free Basic accounts in April, but you should read The Verge’s list for some equally free, more fully-featured alternatives.
