Choosing a password manager for your business is not just about picking the one with the nicest app. It is about trust. You are handing over the keys to every account your team uses, so the company behind the software matters just as much as the software itself.
We spent time with Keeper before settling on 1Password as the tool we include in our managed IT support plans. Here is what we found, and why it mattered.
Keeper’s Security Record Has Some Uncomfortable Gaps
Keeper has never suffered a server breach, and they are quick to tell you that. Fair enough. But a clean server record is not the whole picture.
In 2017, a Google security researcher found a critical flaw in Keeper’s browser extension that allowed any malicious website to steal any stored password. The patch came quickly, which is good. What was harder to ignore was that an almost identical vulnerability had already been reported to Keeper a year earlier in 2016. The same problem, fixed, then allowed to resurface.
The response to the press coverage made things worse. Rather than treating the reporting as a useful spotlight, Keeper sued the journalist who wrote about it. They had previously threatened legal action against a security research firm that reported a different flaw in 2013. This is not the behaviour of a company that welcomes scrutiny, and in security, welcoming scrutiny is the whole point.
When a security researcher finds a problem and tells you about it, the right move is to fix it and say thank you. Suing people who shine a light on your weaknesses is a red flag, not a reassurance.
The Day-to-Day Experience is Just Better with 1Password
Security decisions should not come down to nerves alone. We also looked at what it is actually like to use both tools every day, and 1Password wins that comparison comfortably.
The autofill in 1Password is more reliable and better thought-out. It also includes the ability to suppress your browser’s built-in password manager, which removes one of the most common sources of confusion for people who are not particularly technical. Having two tools competing to fill in your passwords is a headache nobody needs.
Passkey support is built in by default too. Passkeys are replacing traditional passwords on more and more sites, and 1Password handles them without any additional setup or fiddling about.
The interface is also noticeably cleaner. This matters more than it might sound. A password manager only works if people actually use it, and people only use tools they can figure out without a training session. We have set both up for ourselves and for clients, and 1Password is consistently the easier one to get people comfortable with.
What You Pay For Should Not Come with Hidden Extras
This is where Keeper’s pricing model becomes a genuine problem. Dark web monitoring, which checks whether your passwords or business credentials have been leaked in a breach, is called BreachWatch in Keeper. It is a paid add-on, charged on top of the main subscription. File storage is the same story, an extra cost if you want it.
In 1Password, breach and vulnerability monitoring is included as standard through a feature called Watchtower. It runs in the background and flags any passwords that have appeared in known data breaches, as well as weak or reused ones. You can read more about why this matters in our post on 1Password for small businesses. Each user also gets a file storage allocation built in, with no extra charge.
When you are recommending a tool to clients, you want them to actually use all of it. A tool that hides its most important security features behind additional payments is one where people will skip the things that matter most to save a few pounds.
Sharing Should Have Clear Boundaries, Not Just Flexibility
Both tools let your team share passwords and other credentials. But the way they handle that sharing is quite different.
1Password uses a vault system with clear trust boundaries. You decide what goes in which vault, and who can access it. The structure makes it obvious what is shared and what is private, which makes it much harder to accidentally give someone access to something they should not have.
Keeper is more flexible, which sounds like a good thing until you see how easily someone can share an item or folder without fully appreciating the scope of what they are sharing. For small business clients who are not thinking about access control every day, that flexibility becomes a liability. People share things without realising the full reach of what they have done, and that is how credential leaks happen from inside a business rather than outside it.
It Is Part of How We Look After Your Business
1Password is included as standard in our Advanced IT and Complete IT support plans because we believe it belongs in the foundation of any business’s security setup, not as an afterthought.
If you want to talk through what proper IT support looks like for your business, get in touch and we can walk you through the options.
