Swapping out a tool you genuinely like is a strange decision to make. There was nothing wrong with 1Password. We used it for years, we still rate it, and if you asked us to recommend a password manager to a two-person business tomorrow, it would still be on the list. A password manager is one of the security basics every small business should have in place, and we have never doubted that. We even wrote about what 1Password does and why your business needs it, and every word of that still stands.
So why change? Because our business grew, and the way we work changed with it. We now look after more than a thousand password records, share access with clients and partners, and juggle files across the team. At that scale, the day to day details start to matter more than the headline features. Here is what tipped the balance towards Keeper.
Sharing that works beyond our own team
Inside your own organisation, sharing in 1Password works beautifully. Keeper takes it a step further. We can share a single folder, or even one login, with any other Keeper user, not just people inside our business. For us that is a big deal. We work with resellers, partners and the occasional external contractor, and being able to hand one person exactly the access they need, and nothing more, keeps everything tidy and secure.
Storage that matches how we actually work
File storage in Keeper is charged per business and shared across everyone, rather than being tied to each user. In practice, one of us stores a lot of files while others barely add any. Paying per person for storage nobody was using never quite added up. A shared pool that the whole business dips into fits us far better, and it keeps the billing simple.
Order when you have over a thousand records
When you are looking after more than a thousand records, organisation stops being a nice to have. Keeper’s folders, and folders inside folders, let us group everything logically and share whole sections in one go. Finding the right login now takes seconds, and setting up access for a new project is a couple of clicks rather than a long afternoon.
One record, two places, always in sync
This one is quietly brilliant. A shortcut lets a single record live in two different folders at once, and both copies stay in sync. Change the password in one place and it updates everywhere. No duplicates drifting out of date, and no wondering which version is the right one.
Sending a client a password without keeping it forever
Every so often we need to send a client a password. Emailing it is a bad idea, and it always felt untidy leaving a copy sitting in our system afterwards. Keeper’s self-destruct records solve that neatly. We share the password, the client views it once, and it removes itself automatically. We keep no long term record of it, which is exactly how it should be.
What this means if you are a client
None of this is only about making our own life easier. The same tools protect the businesses we look after. Keeper is included as standard in our Advanced IT and Complete IT support plans, so clients on those plans get a proper business grade password manager, set up and managed for them as part of a wider managed IT support plan. If sharing passwords safely across your team has ever felt like a headache, this is the sort of thing that quietly sorts it.
To be clear, this is not a case of one tool being good and the other bad. 1Password is excellent, and for plenty of businesses it is still the right choice. Keeper simply fits the way we work today, and that is the honest reason we made the move.
If you are weighing up a password manager for your own business, or you would like a hand getting one set up properly, we are always happy to talk it through. Get in touch and we will point you in the right direction, whether that turns out to be Keeper, 1Password, or something else entirely.
