Expert Rating
Pros
- Analyze and rate the strength of your passwords
- Supports automatic filling of web forms with personal profiles
- VPN and Dark Web scanning is available with a paid plan
Cons
- Expensive premium tiers
- The free plan is limited to one device
Our Judgment
With strong password checking and a polished interface, Dashlane is one of the best password managers available.
Today’s Best Price: Dashlane
Easy to use and feature-rich, Dashlane meets all of our requirements for a top-tier password manager. But Dashlane does more than manage your login credentials, providing insights on how to think better about security.
Dashlane’s strength has long been its elegant web portal interface. A vertical toolbar on the left makes it easy to access your logins, secure notes, payment data, and other information. If you choose one of these options, all associated entries are displayed in the main workspace as tiles or a list. Each tile has its own fly-out menu where you can view, edit, delete, or securely share that entry.
Dashlane also offers browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Safari that offer many of the same capabilities as the portal. I use the Firefox extension, which has four tabs labeled Vault, Autofill, Generator, and More. the Vault tab where you manage all your saved information, which it organizes into tabs that mirror the toolbar options of the web portal: Logins, Payments, Secure Notes, Personal Info, and ID. You can manage entries and launch sites directly from the extension. the Autofill The tab allows you to turn on or off the ability to automatically fill in the current login credentials for websites (at the time of the review, this tab contained a note that Dashlane will add more autofill options soon). the Generator tab allows you to set length and character parameters for automatically generated passwords. It can have between 4 and 40 characters—the default is 16—and includes letters, numbers, and symbols. the In addition tab has options to launch the Dashlane web portal, access support articles, and refer a friend to Dashlane to get six months free.
Note: Check out our roundup of the best password managers to learn about competing products, what to look for in a password manager, and product recommendations.
Dashlane’s password generator supports up to 40 characters including letters, numbers, and symbols.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG
One of Dashlane’s most attractive features in previous versions was its security dashboard, which rates the security of each password with a safety percentage as well as one of half a dozen color-coded descriptions from “Super safe” to “Not safe.” Replaced that with a Password Health report that provides an aggregate security percentage and shows you weak, compromised, and reused passwords. For each of these, you can click a Change Now button to change them.
At this point Dashlane’s capabilities catch up to LastPass—while being more secure.
Premium users get some additional features. The first is Dark Web Monitoring, which scans and alerts you to stolen personal data found on the dark web whether credentials are used or not. You can associate up to five emails for scanning. Premium users also get a simple VPN for secure Wi-Fi hotspot connection. After an initial setup, you simply click VPN from the menu, select a server location from over 20 countries, and select connect. Although any VPN can affect the speed of your internet connection, I didn’t notice any slowdown in my usage.
Dashlane provides a password health score and highlights your most dangerous passwords.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG
Some password managers allow you to directly designate an emergency contact who can access all of your information even if you can’t do it yourself. Dashlane takes a different approach. You can give trusted people access to your Dashlane data by exporting it to a secure DASH file and ideally saving it to a USB drive stored in a secure location such as a safety deposit box. You share the location of the DASH file and password protecting it with your trusted contact, preferably via a Dashlane secure note, along with instructions on when and how to access it.
Dashlane recently restructured its pricing and now includes four plans. The Free plan offers basic password management—without password limitations or sharing restrictions—on one device. The Advanced plan, which costs $33 per year or $2.75 per month, adds dark web monitoring and enables syncing across all your devices. A Premium account subscription costs $59.88 per year or $4.99 per month and includes all the features of the previous tiers and adds a VPN. The Friends and Family plan extends Premium plans to up to 10 accounts for $89.88 per year or $7.49 per month.
Bottom line
At this point Dashlane’s capabilities have been taken over by LastPass. Given LastPass’s recent serious security breach—not its first—it’s easy to recommend Dashlane as the password manager.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect price changes and the addition of Password Health, Identity Dashboard, and VPN features.