Zoho Vault vs Bitwarden

Common Features We Looked For

While everyone’s priorities are different, we think that these five features give you the key information you need to make the right decision between Zoho Vault and Bitwarden.

Security and Encryption

A password manager is worthless if you can’t trust it to keep your information safe.

Encryption is the most important aspect of security with a cloud-based password manager. To sync data across different devices, your password manager needs to send your information over the internet. Without encryption, a third party could intercept that data and use it to gain access to your online accounts.

It’s also critical to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to minimize the risk of unauthorized login attempts. 2FA requires users to approve each login, adding an extra layer of security beyond the username and password. Finally, we considered any other security features such as offline storage and dark web monitoring.

App Compatibility

Of course, you also need to find a password manager that supports the devices you use most often. In the app compatibility section, we’ll explain all the clients offered by both Zoho Vault and Bitwarden. This could include desktop and mobile apps as well as browser extensions, command-line interfaces, web vaults, and more.

Setup and Ease of Use

Your password manager should make it as simple as possible to set up a new account, import your existing passwords, and log into your digital accounts seamlessly. This section is where we cover the entire setup process as well as the interface and overall functionality of each password manager.

Password Sharing

If you only want to store and use your own passwords, you don’t need to worry about password sharing. Many users also want to be able to give other people access to their accounts. When discussing password sharing, we’ll go over the sharing capabilities of Zoho Vault and Bitwarden, including the ability to share passwords with people who don’t use the same password manager.

Price

Finally, no software comparison is complete without a consideration of price. Even if you’re willing to spend a little more, you should be sure that you’re getting your money’s worth. We’ll outline each password manager’s free and paid options and compare the price points as well as overall value for the cost.

Security and Encryption

Zoho Vault and Bitwarden both rely on AES 256-bit encryption to keep your information safe. AES 256-bit encryption is the industry standard used by most other password managers, so you can be confident that your data is secure on their servers.

Similarly, each password manager offers additional account security through 2FA. 2FA makes your vault safer by requiring approval for new login attempts — typically from a designated device. Even if someone compromises your password, they still won’t be able to get into your account without 2FA approval.

Zoho Vault supports common 2FA methods like short message service (SMS), YubiKey, and mobile authenticator apps. You can also use the native Zoho OneAuth authenticator. However, you need to upgrade to a paid subscription to use time-based one-time passwords (TOTP).

Free Bitwarden users are even more limited, with 2FA only available through email and mobile authenticator apps. Paid plans add in support for YubiKey along with Duo Security. While Bitwarden doesn’t currently offer SMS authentication, this could be a good thing since SMS is less secure and easier to imitate than other common 2FA channels.

App Compatibility

Zoho and Bitwarden offer various mobile and desktop clients, and most users are fine with either option. Still, Bitwarden is ahead of Zoho Vault in a few ways, which could make a difference to users with particular needs.

If you go with Zoho Vault, you’ll be able to access your passwords through the mobile app, browser extension, or command-line interface. The mobile app is available for iOS and Android, and both versions have received solid user reviews.

Meanwhile, the extension is only available for a total of five browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Vivaldi, and Brave. That leaves out some of the most popular browsers, such as Opera and Microsoft Edge.

While you can access your vault on the website, you won’t be able to autofill login credentials into websites without the browser extension. This makes Zoho Vault a less-than-ideal choice for people who use an unsupported browser and aren’t willing to switch.

The command-line interface is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, but it’s significantly more complicated than a conventional app or extension. It’s designed for users who have the technical skills necessary to work in the command line.

Unlike Zoho Vault, Bitwarden provides a desktop app in addition to a web vault and browser extension. The desktop app is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it also comes with many different installation options.

You can install the desktop app directly from the Bitwarden website, through the macOS or Windows store, or through the Homebrew (macOS) or Chocolatey (Windows) package manager. The Windows version is even available as a portable app for flash drives. If you’re on Linux, you can use the Snap package manager or download the app as a .rpm, .deb, or appendage file.

Furthermore, the Bitwarden extension is available for even more browsers than Zoho Vault: the same five of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi, and Brave, plus Opera, Microsoft Edge, and Tor Browser. The mobile app naturally supports iOS and Android, but it’s also available through the more obscure F-Droid platform.

Finally, Bitwarden’s command-line interface is compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux. With a desktop app and support for three additional browsers, Bitwarden has at least a slight advantage over Zoho Vault when it comes to app compatibility.

Setup and Ease of Use

When it pertains to getting started with a new password manager, importing your existing passwords is usually the biggest obstacle. You might have your passwords stored in your notes app, your web browser, or even another dedicated password manager. Fortunately, both Zoho Vault and Bitwarden support batch imports from external sources.

With Zoho Vault, you can import your current passwords through a comma-separated values (CSV) file or many other formats — select the format and origin from the dropdown menu, and Zoho import and recognize the corresponding information automatically.

Bitwarden supports a similarly long list of import formats. Regardless of the one you choose to use, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting your passwords into the new password manager in 10 or 20 minutes.

More generally, Zoho Vault and Bitwarden both have straightforward, if basic, designs. Neither one looks as sleek as top competitors like NordPass and LastPass, but they’re clear enough for new members to start using without much of a headache.

Password Sharing

Even though Bitwarden generally has the advantage over Zoho Vault, we found that Zoho Vault is the winner when it comes to password sharing. Bitwarden’s password sharing is overly complex and comes with limitations that unnecessarily complicate the process. Meanwhile, Zoho Vault provides robust functionality that facilitates sharing with both users and nonusers.

When you share a password through Zoho Vault, you can select one of four permissions: Auto-Login Only, View, Modify, and Manage. This makes it easy to share information as needed without giving the recipient an undesired degree of access or control.

These options are only available when sharing with other Zoho Vault users. Still, you can securely share passwords with nonusers through Zoho’s sharing links. This form of sharing shows up in plain text, so there’s no way to stop them from viewing the password.

For this kind of sharing, enter the recipient’s email address. They receive the password through a link that expires 30 minutes after sending. You also receive a decryption key, which needs to be sent to the recipient separately to enable their access.

Meanwhile, Bitwarden sharing goes through two different channels: either Organizations or Bitwarden Send. Organizational sharing works well, but it’s an extremely limited feature. You can only join organizations with other members of your subscription — for example, coworkers on an Enterprise plan or family members on a Family plan. Individual users can also designate one other person for organizational sharing.

If you want to share information with people outside your organizations, you have to go through Bitwarden Send. This feature doesn’t integrate directly with your vault. Instead, you have to copy and paste the entries you want to share and send them in plain text or as an attachment.

Bitwarden Send comes with some helpful settings like expiration dates, maximum access counts, and encryption. Still, Bitwarden has an odd sharing setup, and it lacks full support for direct sharing between Bitwarden users. Zoho Vault makes it simpler to share information from your vault with other Zoho Vault users, and there are generally fewer limitations on sharing.

Price

Both Zoho Vault and Bitwarden offer free and paid options, but there are some significant differences between their respective subscriptions.

While Zoho Vault offers a 15-day free trial with no payment method required, Bitwarden only provides a free trial for the family and enterprise plans. It’s unclear why there is a Bitwarden free trial for families but not for individual users.

The Zoho Vault free tier comes with support for unlimited passwords, but free members can’t share their passwords with other users. You can get password sharing, cloud backups, priority support, TOTP compatibility, user management, and other extra tools by upgrading to a paid plan — 90 cents per user, per month, paid annually.

Zoho also offers Professional — $4.50 per user, per month, paid annually — and Enterprise — $7.20 per user, per month, paid annually — subscriptions for teams that need more features. Both of these plans come with a five-user minimum.

Key Professional features include activity reports, emergency access user groups, and an automatic password changer. Enterprise introduces things like single sign-on (SSO), custom branding, and help desk integration.

Bitwarden’s free plan is mostly similar to what we saw with Zoho Vault. Free users can store unlimited passwords on an unlimited number of devices. However, they’re limited to just email and mobile authenticator apps for 2FA. While free users can only share vault items with one other user, they can access unlimited text sharing through Bitwarden Send.

The Bitwarden Premium subscription is very close in price to Zoho Vault at $10 paid annually, which works out to 83 cents per month. This tier comes with support for all of Bitwarden’s 2FA methods plus emergency access, security reports, and other advanced features.

While Zoho Vault only offers individual and business subscriptions, Bitwarden also provides a dedicated plan for families and groups of up to six people. This tier costs $3.33 per month, billed annually, which is equivalent to about 67 cents per person, per month, for a family of six. Business plans are also available for $3 per user, per month, paid annually (Teams) and $5 per user, per month, paid annually (Enterprise).