LastPass

Signing up

The sign up is as easy as pie. Once you download the software which is a pretty standard process as password managers go, you just need to follow the steps for set up. All in all, it will only take a few minutes of your time and then you can go on to customising the experience.

Creating your master password is important as it has to be both memorable but secure. No date of births or known information, that’s for sure!

Once that’s done, you can then go on to look at your vault and setting it up – adding passwords, creating favorites, using the security centre for example.

If you have a lot of passwords, you can also search the vault for something specific which can come in handy and save you time.

Don’t forget to take the time to add your all-important emergency access contact, should anything happen to you (say you go into hospital for a lengthy time) and you need someone else to login and pay a bill for you while you are unconscious, you’ll be glad you did.

Memberships

Finally, a password membership geared towards families or larger user groups. Let’s start by looking at this, as it’s by far the best discount for a unit like this on the market.

With a family membership on LastPass, you don’t get the normal 2-4 users but 6 users in total. Many password managers only let you have a couple of users or worse the subscription is based monthly per user.

For $4 a month ($48 billed annually) you can have your whole household on the membership! That’s fantastic value compared to others where you would spend about $180 a year for the same number of users (billed per user, per month).

The memberships in general are also good value, starting at a free account and then premium. For $2 a month, 1 user can reap the benefits of the premium features. Looking at it realistically of course, if you had 2 users in the same house, you may as well get the family membership and convince your besties to join in on the party.

Don’t forget the free membership though, this will help you get to grips with the interface and decide if you like it before committing to a membership.

If you are a business user, you’ll also be glad to know the membership is also pretty reasonable for this too.

However, bear in mind that these premiums also have addition features, so for the extra cost you aren’t just getting the same as the Personal products but much more.

Features

• Every user has a ‘vault’, this means they can personalise their experience and manage their user. They don’t have to stick with the pre sets of one user and can move things around for ease.
• Access the accounts on all devices. Just log in to LastPass on that device and you’ll be away in no time!
• Share passwords with trusted people
• Automatic password remembering and autofill, means you’ll never have to type the same password twice
• LastPass password generator will create long a secure password for you and automatically remember them
• Store backup copies of important notes or documents so you can retrieve them wherever you are
• Security centre, once you have imported your existing passwords you can check their security rating and get LastPass to change it for you if you aren’t happy with it.
• Multi-factor authentication and LastPass verification for extra security
• Emergency access, give a loved one permission to access your information in an emergency such as illness or death.
• Autofill for Windows applications when you open them straight from the tray
• 1gb of file storage

And so much more. Business accounts can also benefit from API access and advanced reporting as well as group management.

Compatibility

You can use LastPass on laptops, PCs and mobile devices such as tablets and phones. All you have to do is download the app from the store and login with your master password, it really is that simple.

There are two ways in which the compatibility works – on laptops/PCs once you have downloaded the software you simply add it to your browser or open the software and launch from there. For mobile devices such as a tablet, you need to open the app so it can access the data and then launch straight from there.