May 2, 2026
Password wars: vaults out, claws out
I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden
One angry review tried to bury Bitwarden — but the comments came out swinging
TLDR: A longtime self-hoster said Bitwarden has become too clunky and too corporate to recommend anymore. Commenters mostly pushed back hard, saying the service is cheap and solid for normal users, while others shrugged and said the obvious answer is to use the lighter Vaultwarden instead.
A blogger dropped a bombshell by saying they no longer recommend Bitwarden, the popular password manager, after years of running it themselves. Their big complaint: the software felt too bloated, too complicated, and too corporate, especially after the company took major investor money. In plain English, the author’s vibe was: this once-friendly tool now feels like a giant machine that regular people probably shouldn’t have to wrestle with.
But the real fireworks were in the comments, where readers basically yelled, "Wait… what?" One camp defended Bitwarden like it was a beloved underdog success story: cheap, open, trustworthy enough, and far better than many rivals. One user said it has "one of the BEST business models a user can ask for," while another flat-out admitted they had "no idea what this person is going on about." Translation: many readers thought the article was less a warning and more a personal grudge.
At the same time, some commenters did give the author a little credit. They agreed that self-hosting Bitwarden can be a pain, but quickly added the punchline: just use Vaultwarden, the lighter community-built version that fans say is easier, faster, and drama-free. And then came the internet being the internet: one commenter barely discussed passwords at all and instead got distracted by the site’s bizarre tab-changing prank, turning the thread into a mini side quest. So the verdict? The article said Bitwarden is the problem; the crowd replied, skill issue, maybe the website is weirder than the app.
Key Points
- •The article states that after several years of self-hosting a Bitwarden-compatible setup, the author no longer recommends Bitwarden.
- •The article says Bitwarden operates both open-source password management software and a hosted SaaS offering, with pricing comparable to competitors.
- •The article notes that Bitwarden received a $100 million growth investment in 2022 led by PSG and joined by Battery Ventures.
- •According to the article, the official Bitwarden server uses a C# backend with MSSQL Express and does not support PostgreSQL or MariaDB in the described deployment model.
- •The article presents Vaultwarden as a lighter unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server written in Rust and contrasts its popularity with the official server implementation.