Dashlane 6.2450.0

★ Winner of Best Passwords Managers in 2017 and 2014.

Overview

Take a moment and think just how many times per day you enter a password while you’re surfing the internet, and then think how much better your digi-life would be if you had all your passwords stored in a secure place and entered automatically for you whenever you needed them. This is exactly what Dashlane does; it saves your passwords along with relevant information, and when you need them it automatically fills in the password boxes. This is just the basic concept of the app, so keep on reading for further info.

Installation

Installing Dashlane is just a matter of a few clicks. Throughout the process you’ll have to select which browsers you wish to integrate with the app (supported browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer for Windows, and Safari for Mac OS X). Follow the rest of the steps and you’ll be ready to use the software in no time. When installation is finished, a check will be performed in the browsers you selected in order to see if the Dashlane extension/plugin is successfully installed in them.

Dashlane is available for Windows XP/Vista/7/8, Mac OS X, iOS 6/7 and Android devices (v2.3.3 and above).

Interface

The program works as a background app and you can access its main interface through its system-tray icon. There, you can see a list of categories on the sidebar (Passwords, Security Dashboard, Secure Notes, Personal Info, IDs, Payments and Receipts) and the main screen changes according to the currently selected one. Next to the menu bar there’s a search box that you can use to find any of your saved information. At the bottom left corner you can see the Synchronization and Backup statuses of the program’s data.

Pros

When using Dashlane as a password manager you can rest assured that your saved data will be safe and inaccessible by anyone without the master password. In fact, the encryption method used is AES-256 with more than 10,000 rounds of PBKDF2 salt, making it a truly impenetrable fortress.

The Security Dashboard is there to notify you of weak passwords among the ones you have saved in Dashlane. It displays detailed a detailed analysis of your passwords’ strength as well as a general percentage of the overall security.

First-time users can enter their personal information in Dashlane so as to create a profile that can be used in websites in order to save time from typing required information, such as name, email address, phone number, address, company and website (of course you can have more than one profile). For more user-specific usage, there is the IDs category in which you can create IDs and add details from your ID Card, Passport, Driver’s License, Social Security Card and Tax Numbers.

Online payments and receipts can be stored in the app too in their corresponding categories.

One of the most important features in Dashlane is the auto-fill function; the installed plugin/extension takes care of this task. Whenever you find yourself in a login page for which you have a saved password, just click on the little impala that appears in the textboxes and select the profile under which you want to login. Then, depending on your settings, Dashlane will either log you in directly or ask you for your master password first. The same goes for sign-up pages, with the only difference that Dashlane will fill in all textboxes that has saved information about. With this feature, typing usernames and passwords belongs to the past.

A secure password generator is implemented into the program. Every time you want to create a strong password, this tool is your best buddy.

You can import passwords from other password managers, including 1Password, LastPass, RoboForm, PasswordWallet, KeePass or even a plain CSV file.

Premium users get to taste the synchronization feature, which basically synchronizes all data between the same Dashlane account in different devices. This isn’t the only difference between free and premium accounts, however. Accounts with premium status get to upload backups of their Dashlane contents in the cloud and access them remotely, anytime. In addition, they also have web access to their passwords and a top-priority queue when requesting support from the Dashlane team. Those are pretty tempting features actually, and for the price of only 30$ (29.99$ to be exact) per year you would probably say “Shut up and take my money!”.

If you have a password saved in Dashlane from a website with a reported security breach, the app will immediately notify you and advise you to change your password as soon as possible so that your account in the website will not be compromised.

The support desk in Dashlane is does a very professional job and unlike in other services, it’s really helpful and quick to respond. When we had a problem with Dashlane (which was actually a problem from our end and not the program itself), we contacted the support team in Dashlane and they quickly helped us fix the problem by giving us clear steps in a very polite way.

Cons

Absolutely no cons.

Alternatives

A very popular and good password manager like Dashlane is LastPass (freemium). They share more or less the same features (auto-login, strong password generation, etc.) and it’s mostly a matter of preference for users since they are two of the best password managers available. Other alternatives are KeePass (free, but only serves its purpose as a password vault and nothing more), 1Password (paid) and RoboForm (freemium).

Conclusion

To sum up, Dashlane does one hell of a job categorizing and securing your passwords. With all the features it has, the term “password manager” hides most of its true capabilities. If you're not convinced yet, then you should know that every new user gets 30 days of free Dashlane Premium. Seriously, go get it now.

Worth reading LastPass vs Dashlane - Comparing the Top Password Managers.