Dashlane Password Manager review

The murky trend with password managers is they tend to advertise monthly value but charge an upfront annual fee. Dashlane bucks that trend, offering monthly and annual options. Start with Dashlane Free if you want to try before you buy, then upgrade to unlimited devices and dark-web monitoring with Dashlane Advanced for US$33 per year or US$3.99 per month.

According to Dashlane, Premium is the most popular subscription tier, which costs US$3.99 a month or US$39.96 per year for everything in Dashlane Advanced alongside a virtual private network (VPN), which is a great way to access Hotspot Shield. Finally, there’s Dashlane Family & Friends for US$71.88 a year or US$4.99 per month for everything in Dashlane Premium, plus a Friends & Family dashboard.

Dashlane Free, Advanced and Premium are built for a single user. But Dashlane Family & Friends supports up to 10 users, which is a great point of difference over 1Password (five), LastPass (six) and Bitwarden (six). Dashlane is one of the cheapest password managers for individual users, and while it’s slightly costlier for its family plan, the extra users (plus an included VPN subscription) boost the overall value.

Whether you’re using a free or premium version of Dashlane, your password manager journey starts by creating an account with an email address and a master password. I like the on-the-fly strength rating Dashlane offers while you’re typing in your master password to let you know whether it’s secure. If you’re using Dashlane on mobile, you get a free 30-day Premium trial (without having to add credit card details).

Handily, if you go the Dashlane Google Chrome extension route, Dashlane has a guided process for adding your first credentials, testing autofill and downloading the mobile app. The ‘Add your first login’ step for Dashlane offers popular websites and also acts as a way to import data, with the following choices:

• 1Password
• Bitwarden
• Google Password Manager
• Dashlane backup
• Microsoft Edge
• Mozilla Firefox
• KeePass
• Keeper
• LastPass
• Safari

Realistically, you can select any of the options, including “Other CSV’, because all of them except for ‘Dashlane backup’ prompt you to upload a CSV file with your stored credentials. Preview the data you’re importing or just import all of them. Like other password managers, Dashlane advises you to delete the unencrypted CSV and deactivate any other autofill software or extensions that may otherwise interfere with the newly installed password manager.

When you’re using your browser now, a Dashlane logo will appear in compatible autofill fields. It’s not just for usernames and passwords, either; you can save identity information that will intelligently recommend relevant personal details for corresponding form fields. You’ll be prompted to add this by completing the ‘Autofill’ guide. Admittedly, I did hit a bug while creating this guide that had me perpetually stuck on the second of three steps.

Dashlane’s Google Chrome extension is just as user-friendly as LastPass, recommending commonly used email addresses when creating an account and automatically generating a password that you can one-click accept. There’s a pop-up to prompt you to save the credentials, too, unlike the more manual approaches required from Bitwarden that can lead to accidentally lost credentials.

When logging into sites that have saved credentials, Dashlane automatically populates the fields for faster access. This is more convenient than it is secure, but with a few clicks to get into settings, you can activate biometrics unlock and two-factor authentication on new devices, or check the option to prompt you for your Dashlane master password whenever you log in.

Dashlane is a secure password manager with military-grade encryption and all of the trappings you’d expect. The only feature it’s ‘missing’ is Travel Mode which, at the time of writing, was a unique feature for 1Password.

Outside of that, Dashlane has automated cloud sync, document storage, secure notes, a digital wallet and offline mode. For back-end security, there’s end-to-end encryption, a password strength checker and Dashlane Premium users have dark-web monitoring. Unlike LastPass, Dashlane hasn’t ever had a data breach.

Unlike other password managers that have desktop software, Dashlane pushes its users towards smartphone apps and web browsers. There’s a web app, accessible by logging in via browser, plus browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. For mobile devices, there are apps for Android and iOS.

Chromebook and Linux are mentioned in older Dashlane blog posts, but the focus these days is on using the browsers or apps. Basically, if you’re using a platform that supports the browsers listed above, you can use Dashlane via browser extension.