Early Access Frequently Asked Questions
Hi folks,
We've had a number of questions from long time users about the state of licenses as well as standalone vaults, and what our plans for these are moving forward. One of our founders, Dave, has written extensive thoughts on these subjects, but they've largely been lost in the bustle of activity in the forum. Additionally we've had a lot of questions about our use of Electron, specifically as it relates to 1Password for Mac. In an effort to be transparent about these topics I've created this announcement post which will be pinned at the top of the category to summarize our position.
Licenses
A 1Password membership will be required to use 1Password 8 and later. Most customers already have a membership. Learn more
For the first 10 years of its life 1Password was licensed to customers on a per-person, per-platform, per-version basis. This wasn't so bad when we were a small company with one or two offerings. As we've grown both as a company and in terms of the number of different offerings we have this model did not scale well. In 2015 we began offering our 1Password membership service, which includes all that 1Password has to offer for a single monthly or annual subscription fee. At first we tried continuing both the license offering and the membership service, but this created a massive amount of confusion for customers. Despite best efforts to make it clear otherwise, folks assumed that licenses offered all the same benefits of membership, such as free upgrades and access to 1Password on all of their devices. Ultimately it was decided that continuing both offerings was muddying our messaging too much and sales of licenses were discontinued. Now that we're moving forward full steam ahead with 1Password 8 we're also going all in on memberships. There will not be a licensing option for 1Password 8. There are a number of things that we felt were important for 1Password to include that weren't possible or practical via the licensing model, and coupled with the confusion it caused, we feel this is the best path forward.
You can read more of the backstory and thoughts behind the decision in Dave's post, here.
Standalone Vaults
Standalone vaults, as they were in 1Password 7, will not be part of 1Password moving forward. Learn more
Like licenses, standalone vaults are how 1Password got its start, and the story here is similar to the evolution from licenses to memberships. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Additional details can be found in another of Dave's posts, here.
What is this Electron I keep hearing about?
We're committed to delivering a high quality desktop app for each Mac, Windows, and Linux. Learn more
Electron is one of the technologies we're using to enable us to deliver on that commitment. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Michael Fey, our VP of Engineering for Client Apps, has a blog post detailing our dedication to desktop applications which you can read here.