Should Your New Password Manager be LastPass? Review of Features, Usability & Pricing

Key Features

There are a lot of excellent features on LastPass free. All the features are designed to keep your passwords and login credentials safe.

However, we must mention that the paid Premium and Family plans have far more features. Some of those features help you to automatically fill up forms, export passwords as necessary and keep unlimited shared folders.

Let’s take a closer look at what LastPass offers in this LastPass review.

LastPass Accessibility

LastPass has pretty huge accessibility. It can be installed across different web browsers, different operating systems, and on different devices. It supports every browser – Google, Firefox, Internet Explorer, New Edge, Edge, Opera, and Safari.

There are two versions for two basic device types. There is the web version – install this one on your laptops and desktops. Then there is the mobile version, which can be installed on your Android/iOS smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches.

With the huge reach of this password manager, it can streamline all your accounts and give you an overall smooth experience online.

Ease of Use

The password manager is very intuitive. It has a simple user interface that is easy to interact with. The instructions are straightforward, so the app will guide you through the processes effectively. Making an account is only a matter of a few seconds, and anyone can do it!

Signing up to LastPass

This is the first thing you have to do to get started with your new LastPass account. To sign up, you have to punch in your email address and a master password.

The first page will ask for your email address.

Making the Master Password

Press next to go to the second page, where you will be asked to create a master password.

Instructions for a strong password will be provided in a dropdown menu once you click on the tab for typing out the keys. You will also be given an example in the web version of the app. After following all instructions, your password should be something like UlebkuLel@1.

Making a very strong password is important because this is the one password that will connect all your accounts on the internet. So, make sure to follow these instructions to a T.

You will be allowed to put a password hint so that the app can shake your memory a little bit in case you forget your password. This part is optional. But if you are indeed using it, be careful not to use anything too telling. Don’t use a hint that will make your master password too easy for others to guess. Keep it discreet.

Further Ease of Access (optional)

At this point, LastPass mobile apps will give you the option of using your facial profile to unlock the app. This will make it convenient to sign in to the app. This is one of the best features of this password manager. It allows you to access your accounts without even typing the password.

Note: We would warn you to practice caution here. The typing-free access to your accounts might have you forget your master password with time. If this happens, and you somehow lose your phone, then you will be locked out of your accounts. So, make sure that you always remember the master key.

Password Management

There are a few ways in which LastPass users can manage their passwords. But password management on LastPass goes beyond just the simple act of storing passwords.

LastPass takes care of the security on your accounts, so there are security features in place to help you make your system hack-proof. Let’s explore the diverse world of password management to check out the range to which LastPass can get you help.

Adding/Importing Passwords into the LastPass Web Vault

You can add or import passwords from any account into LastPass. Starting from your accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Google to the accounts you have on other password managers like DashLane, Roboform, NordPass, and so on.

After adding your account to LastPass, you will be able to get access to those accounts when you enter Vault.

Generating Passwords

The most secure passwords are those that are completely random. Put random passwords on your accounts before adding them into the password Vault. This is a great way of securing your accounts before locking them in with the LastPass master key.

Instead of going through the effort of coming up with random passwords for your accounts, you can use the LastPass website to generate a random string of words for you.

Follow these steps to generate a random password for your accounts:

Step 1: There’s a LastPass icon on the toolbar of your web browser extension. Click on that. 

Step 2: Type in your email address and the master password to log into your LastPass account. If the black icon has turned red , it means that you have done the activation right. 

Step 3: Now, go to the website for which you want to generate the random password. You can do this when opening a new account and also when you want to change the password of an existing account.

Step 4: The actual generation happens at this stage. You can get access to the password generation options from the following access points.

• From the In-field Icon: Locate this icon and click on it.
• Via the Web Browser Extension: Click on the red icon from the toolbar and select Generate Secure Password from the drop-down list.
• Through the Vault: Click on the red icon , then select Open My Vault. From there, find Advanced Options, and click on Generate Secure Password.

After you have generated one password, you can keep clicking the icon to generate more passwords until you find one that you actually like. Then, click on to copy your finalized password to the web vault and keep it elsewhere on your computer.

Step 5: After you have confirmed the password, click on Fill Password to take it to the form. Click Save.

After the password has been changed on the site, log out of the website and then log back in with the generated password to secure it into LastPass. That’s all.

Form Filling

You can store not only the passwords of your accounts from different websites but also information of addresses, bank accounts, and payment cards to your LastPass account. Then, you can use it to directly fill up forms for you when you’re on other websites.

You can always fill in forms manually, but that wouldn’t be wise since LastPass can do it faster at greater convenience. LastPass can store your passport information, licenses, insurance numbers, and even your Social Security Number.

To do this, click on the LastPass browser extension, go to All Items > Add > More Items to expand the drop-down list, and put all necessary information into their fields. Click save on everything.

Now that LastPass knows your information, you can use it to fill up any form that you are required to on any website. Just keep the form open, click on a field, then tap the icon from the browser’s toolbar. Any relevant information that is saved on LastPass will automatically fill itself into the form.

However, I will point out that the form filling option hasn’t been completely refined yet on the LastPass website. In some cases, this option doesn’t work right. Sometimes it doesn’t read the tag on the field right and ends up putting in mismatching information in the wrong place.

Auto Filling Passwords

Similar to the task of filling forms with saved data, you can use the LastPass browser extension to fill in your login information on apps and websites. But for this to happen, you need to enable the Auto Fill option. Here are some of the steps that you can use to do this –

Step 1: Log in to LastPass.

Step 2: On Android’s user interface, click on the icon on the upper-left corner of the screen. On iOS, look at the bottom right to find settings.

Step 3: Enter Settings. Choose Autofill.

Step 4: There is a toggle switch on Autofill Login Credentials, turn that on.

Step 5: Click on Next, and the Accessibility Menu of your phone will pop up.

Step 6: Find LastPass here, and toggle it on so that your phone gives permission to the app.

• Now you have successfully synced your phone with the LastPass app.
• The Autofill feature is available on free versions of the app. It will allow you to swiftly enter your login credentials to apps and websites that are supported by LastPass. There are two ways in which your phone will use this feature:

1. Pop-up: This is the cleaner way in which Autofill is utilized. Open a website or an app, and attempt to log into it. Click on any one of the empty tabs in the login form.

LastPass will automatically pop up on the screen. Tap on the list of your accounts to select the credentials that you want to use for the login. All the tabs will fill up with pre-saved data automatically.

2. Autofill via LastPass Notification: This option is only possible for Android, not on the browser extension. Go to the LastPass app settings, then choose Show Autofill Notification so that it shows up on the notification panel. You can use this in cases for which the pop-up doesn’t appear.

• While you’re on the login page of the website waiting to fill up the form, swipe down on your phone to open the notification panel and tap on Autofill with LastPass to have your credentials fill up the form automatically.

LastPass Security Challenge

The best password manager doesn’t only store all the passwords and your information, but it also gives you feedback on the strength of the passwords that you have in effect.

There is a tool within this app called the LastPass Security Challenge. This tool analyzes your saved passwords in the Vault, and then it gives you a score on them so that you know if they’ll be able to hold up during a cybercrime attempt.

Go into the Security/Security Dashboard on your app, then check out your score. It will look something like this.

Now, this is an example of a pretty good case. It already has a high safety score.

If your score isn’t as high, then you should improve the level of security on your account. Do you see the At-risk Passwords?

That bar would show up red in case of a low-safety score. You can click on that and check out the passwords that are weak. Change the weak LastPass password by replacing it with one of those LastPass-generated passwords. Your level of security will move straight up by a few notches.

Password Auditing

When LastPass audits your accounts, it tells you how secure they are. As you can see on the screenshot, it tells you which passwords are at risk, and it tells you whether your Multifactor Authentication is on.

You will get a list of all trusted and permitted devices, and if you want to change the permission to any of them, then you can do so by clicking manage.

Emergency Access

This feature is only available for paid LastPass users. You can use this function to share the accessibility of your passwords with one or two trusted contacts who will be able to get into your account in case something unfortunate happens to you.

Other password managers have this feature as well, and they all work quite similarly.

In order to work this feature, the other LastPass users will need to have a public key and a private key. All you have to do is put in your recipient’s email address, their public key, and a waiting period after which decryption will be possible. 

LastPass uses special public-private cryptography via RSA-2048 to encode its access keys. To do this, LastPass will take the recipient’s public key and integrate the key of your password vault with it to make a unique key through RSA encryption.

This encrypted key can only be opened by the recipient’s private key, which will be recognized and accepted due to the common markers that it shares with the recipient’s public key.

When the waiting period is over, your recipient will be able to decrypt your data using his/her unique private key.

Security and Privacy

The core of LastPass is built on the foundation of strict privacy and security. There are bank-level encryption systems in place to assure that no one will have free access to your information, not even LastPass itself.

End-To-End Encryption (E2EE)/Zero-Knowledge

E2EE means that only the sender on one end and the recipient on the other end will be able to read the information that is being relayed. The pathway through which the information travels will not have access to the decrypted information.

This doesn’t mean that third-party apps won’t be able to have access to your information. E2EE only encrypts your information in transit. Therefore, your service providers will have the decrypted version of your message. If they choose, they can definitely sell your information out to third-party apps.

By all means, they will have access to it, but the E2EE means that they will see nothing but a bunch of codes that they can’t crack. Thus, your information will be completely unreadable and unusable to them. They will have zero knowledge whatsoever.

Oh, and another thing of note is that the E2EE doesn’t exempt the website owners from the encryption either. So, even the apps that you are using as the communication platform won’t be able to read your text now.

AES-256 Encryption

LastPass is one of the best free password managers because it uses the AES-256 cipher to encrypt information that is fed to it. All your passwords become encrypted once they are entered into LastPass. They remain encrypted as they reach their designated servers.

It is virtually impossible to break the encryption of an AES-256 system because there are 2^256  possible combinations for the right key. Imagine guessing one correct value from that!

Hackers won’t be able to read your password even if they breach through the firewalls of a server. Thus, your account and all its information will still remain secure after a breach.

LastPass Authenticator App

Free LastPass users will unfortunately not be getting this feature. In paid versions, the LastPass Authenticator works on its own on systems that are supported on both Android and iOS. It complies with the TOTP algorithm, which means that it is compatible with all the apps and websites supported by Google Authenticator.

This feature can employ a range of different authentication tools for you. Its methods include time-based 6-digit passcodes, one-tap push notifications, voice authentication via the Call Me option. It will enable you to get 2FA for multiple services at once.

MFA/2FA

The multifactor authentication options (MFA), also known as the 2-factor authentication (2FA), will double the security of your account on LastPass. You can explore factor authentication options by going into Account Settings and clicking on Multifactor Options on the tab.

You will find a list of websites below. Click on the ones that you want to secure with the authenticator app.

Mobile Devices

These are your smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, which you have already authenticated through LastPass. You can revoke your permission to these devices by going into Account Settings > Mobile Devices > Action. Delete the device that you don’t want to give access to.  

These devices will still be on the list if you deny them permission. When you decide to give access to them again, all you have to do is get into Account Settings > Advanced Options > View Deleted Items and then click restore on your particular item of choice. 

GDPR Compliance

GDPR is the acronym for General Data Protection Regulation. This is the toughest data protection law in the world, and it applies to organizations all across the globe.

LastPass has been certified to be compliant with all the principles of GDPR, which means that they are legally bound to these international obligations. This means that LastPass will be directly responsible for any mishandling of the encrypted files and data in their storage.

LastPass releases all your data if you decide to delete your profile, as not doing so would mean that they are breaching their GDPR data protection rules, which would run them into serious legal complications, and their license could also be revoked in such a case.

Sharing and Collaboration

Password sharing is a practice that should only be done in a limited capacity. But if you must share your LastPass password with family members or trusted friends, then you can do so within the LastPass infrastructure.

Unfortunately, password sharing and collaboration are not supported in the free version of the app. Only Premium subscriptions allow you to share folders and files.

If you have a single account, you can share an item with multiple users. And if you are on a family account, you can share unlimited folders with each member of the plan.

Use the Sharing Center to add folders and manage them between the members of your family/team/business account. All you have to do is go to the LastPass Vault, click on the Sharing Center, then tap the icon to directly add a new folder to the sharing center. 

• If you want to work with users or files that already are in LastPass, then you have to select that file and tap Edit to open up some options. Here’s what you can do here:
• You can share a folder with someone who is already using the account with you, and you can also type in the email address of a non-member account that you want to share the file with. Adjust the settings to choose whether you want to limit the file to a Read-Only version or Show Passwords. Then press Share.
• You can also deny your permission to let a person access your file. Select a specific shared folder, then right-click on it to bring down the menu, click on Change User Permissions. From here, select Edit, then select Show Passwords or Read-Only. Then save the settings once you are done.
• You can also Unshare a file at this stage. Simply click on the user’s name to whom you want to deny permission, then click Unshare to complete the action.

Free vs Premium Plan 

Features	Free Plan	Premium Plan
Saving Passwords	Yes	Yes
Random Password Generator	Yes	Yes
Unlimited Passwords	Yes	Yes
Sharing	Allows only one to one sharing	Allows one-to-many sharing
Number of Supported Device Types	1	Unlimited
Automatic Sync Between Devices	No	Yes
Dark Web Monitoring	No	Yes
Monitor Other Accounts for Data Breaches	No	Yes
File Storage Available	No	Yes, 1 GB

Extra Features

Extra features are available both for mobile apps and browser extensions but only for premium users.

Credit Card Monitoring

You can get credit card alerts on your smartphone and computer through pop-up messages and emails. It will keep reporting you on transactions so that you can take immediate actions in case of identity theft attacks. This is a feature that is only available on the premium version to paid users who are residing in the United States.

Dark Web Monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring is only available for family and premium accounts but not for free users. You can turn on dark web protection on LastPass to keep track of accounts and emails that are associated with .onion.

Since the dark web has a different set of underground servers, you might be exposed to potential breaches if you surf these overlapping networks.

If any of your email addresses or accounts end up on the dark web by any means, then you will be notified about it. Then, you need to instantly change passwords and secure your accounts to prevent dark web criminals from getting access to your information.

However, LastPass will notify you if it happens. Then, you can click on the accounts that have become unsafe in order to change their security and withdraw them from the breach until more walls have been breached.

VPN

For increased security and privacy, LastPass has joined forces with ExpressVPN to offer a VPN service through the app. This feature is not available on LastPass free.  It’s a 30-day free trial that is only accessible by users of LastPass Premium and Families.  

To get the free ExpressVPN trial, you have to log into the vault, go to the Security Dashboard, and click on ExpressVPN. Click on it, follow instructions, and you’re done. After this, the trial period won’t be activated instantly. You will receive a message of confirmation and then your LastPass connection via ExpressVPN will go live.

Plans and Pricing

There are two main categories among which LastPass accounts are divided. If you’re operating on a personal level, then there is the single users and family account type.

If you’re operating on a business level, then you have to use accounts under the business category. We’re going to talk about these plans, their features, and their pricing in more detail right now.

Single Users and Family LastPass

LastPass free version has a 30-day trial deal to help you get a taste of how life would be with this app. There are three types of deals – free, Premium and Family.

Free LastPass

The free one will let you sign into one device only, and you can use it for 30 days. You can do the basic things like make a master password, add multiple accounts and secure them all together with that master password.

You can use the Sharing Center with one other LastPass user and secure notes, all your files, payment cards, and so on. You will get full access to the password vault of LastPass, and you will be in control. However, you cannot unlock all the features of the app through this free version. 

LastPass Premium

A subscription to LastPass Premium will cost you $3/month, but I recommend you take the 30-day trial period first. You will be able to add this account to every one of your devices.

All the features of Free LastPass will be included in the premium set, and there will be some very important additional features as well. These additional features will not only keep your passwords and content safe but will actively help in making your online experience smoother by a large degree.

Along with managing secure notes and folders, these additional features include an expanded version of the file sharing center that will allow you to share your files and folders with many users at the same time. You will also get a storage capacity of 1 GB, dark web monitoring, factor authentication options, and emergency access.

Family LastPass

Subscription to Family LastPass will cost you $4/month, but you can try it out free for 30 days before purchasing it. In this version, you will have 6 premium licenses that you can share with the other members of your account.

You will have to invite them over to join the account with you. Each member will get a different vault, and they will be able to create a unique master password for themselves.

All the special features of Premium LastPass will be available on the Family LastPass.

Enterprise LastPass

Enterprise LastPass accounts have the same features as Premium LastPass, but you can share one account with many more people than you could with LastPass Family.

You can try out accounts of LastPass Enterprise for a period of 14 days only. If you want to continue with their service, then you will have to buy a subscription. There are two types of accounts here.

Teams LastPass

You can add a maximum total of 50 members to one team account. A subscription to Teams LastPass will require every member of the team to pay $4/month, and they will each get a separate account of their own.

Business LastPass

Each user of Business LastPass will have to pay $7/month. This is useful for companies that would suffer losses if their plans become public.

Business LastPass gives each employee a different account and makes sure that the employees are not using weak passwords. If they are, strict passwords are assigned to them using the automatic password changer on LastPass.

Besides password security, it also helps the business to store its information from every employee in one place so that there is no possibility of a breach in the system.

LastPass Plan	Trial Period	Subscription Fee	Number of Devices
Free	30 days	$0	1
Premium	30 days	$3/month	1
Family	30 days	$4/month	5
Teams	14 days	$4/month/per user	Less than 50
Business	14 days	$7/month/per user	More than 50

Questions & Answers