Password Manager Review: Dashlane – the popular password manager

If you're reading an overview of good password managers, it's very likely you'll come across Dashlane. The password manager regularly tops reviews and rankings and is available for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. Dashlane is praised by its fans for its low price, broad array of features and easy-to-use interface, making it a true all-rounder for anyone, regardless of experience.

Read our review to find out whether or not Dashlane really is the cost-effective jack of all trades among password managers and how it compares to the rest.

Dashlane is a password manager, digital wallet and general security app all in one. The app is available as a desktop app for Windows and Mac, as a mobile app for Android and iOS, and as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Edge.

Its newest incarnation, Dashlane 6, comes with a vast array of features and even a VPN. So there's a reason behind the app's reputation as the all-rounder among password managers. But one question remains: Can Dashlane reconcile all of its many features in a user-friendly way without losing sight of its actual mission, managing passwords?

It doesn't take much fiddling around to get Dashlane to do what it's supposed to do. The first things users have to do is set up a master password; a process the app is very helpful with. After Dashlane is set up properly, that password is the only password you'll ever have to remember. It's wise to chose something that can't easily be guessed by others yet easy to remember for the user.

In a tutorial, the app then guides you through every step of its basic features. The tutorial shows you how to use the auto-login feature in order to manage your password-secured online accounts with the app.

After the initial login, Dashlane asks you to install its browser extension for whatever browser you're using. Installing it is simple and takes mere seconds. Whenever you log in to a website, you'll get a notification to let Dashlane save and manage that password.

Installing Dashlane is a walk in the park, even for the technically inept. The program will guide you through every step of the way. If you're only using the basic features, you'll be ready to go in no time.

Score: 5 / 5

There's a difference between Dashlane's browser extension and its desktop application. If you only need everyday functionality and simple configurations for surfing the Web, the former will more than suffice. Fine-tuning and trickier adjustments are done with the latter.

Desktop App

The desktop app is divided into three sections.

1. Your passwords, accounts, data, receipts, IDs, and payment methods are stored in the "Vault".

2. In the "Security" section, you'll find your identity dashboard which notifies you of potential security risks. "Password Integrity" will tell you everything you need to know about the general security of your passwords.

3. Via the "Sharing Center" in the "Contacts" submenu, you can share passwords and notes with other Dashlane users.

Using the menu bar, you can manage your browser extensions and make more advanced adjustments to your settings. In the "Security" submenu, you can make use of two-factor authentication.

Browser Extension

The main features are intuitively sorted within Dashlane's simplified browser extension, just like they are in the desktop app. You'll find every website you've connected to Dashlane in your Vault (they can be sorted alphabetically, by date or by category).

The "This Website" section lets you manage your accounts on that website, the app's behavior on that website and report problems.

This is where you can find the password generator. We'll talk a little more about that in the "Features" sections of our review.

There's no hope for users who've lost or misplaced their Dashlane password: There's no convenient method to recover or reset lost passwords. When it comes to deciding between security and comfort, Dashlane chooses the former. User who forgot their password and haven't listed an emergency contact have to manually reset their account – resulting in the loss of their data.

Score: 4.7 / 5

Dashlane has all the features one expects from a password manager: password management, autofill settings, encrypted notes and more. But the app offers more than just the bare minimum and gives some popular features a dash of extra convenience. Users will find themselves surprised by features other providers lack completely.

Password Changer

One of those features is Dashlane's convenient Password Changer. The handy premium feature lets users change multiple saved password all at with a single click. If you're one of those people who use the same password for every website due to, let's face it, laziness (and let's be honest, who doesn't?), and you want to plug that security hole once and for all, you don't have to tediously update hundreds of accounts by hand. The Password Changer lets you check the effectiveness of your passwords and change whatever needs changing.

Password Generator

A password manager wouldn't be a password manager if it didn't feature a password changer. The staple feature is incorporated prominently into most providers' browser extensions and lets users configure and create secure passwords at the click of the mouse. Dashlane's password generator is well-placed within the app, lightning-fast, and intuitive.

Identity Dashboard

The identity dashboard acts as a sort of bulletin boards for your passwords. There, you'll find the overall security score of your passwords, displayed in giant digits. The score is calculated using the complexity of your individual passwords and other factors such as the number of times you've reused a password.

Premium users have access to a rather ominous-sounding feature called "Dark Web Monitoring". Dashlane security experts check if your data or passwords have been misused on the Web.

VPN

Ever since its sixth iteration, Dashlane's password manager comes with a VPN feature (Virtual Private Network), available to premium users only. The feature offers users an extra layer of data security, especially when browsing on public Wi-Fi networks.

Compared to specialized VPN tools, Dashlane's VPN feature is rather basic. Instead of giving you the option to choose from a list of servers, it automatically connects you with the nearest one. If you want to use a VPN to "trick" location-dependent services such as Netflix, you're going to need a 'real' VPN program. Dashlane is no substitute. Still, we commend the incorporation of the feature and the added layer of security.

Overall, Dashlane is packed with convenient features and offers one of the best packages on the market. Unfortunately, many of the more useful tools are hidden behind a paywall.

Score: 4.7 / 5

Dashlane saves your passwords in accordance with the AES 256-bit encryption standard. This type of encryption is considered to be extremely secure.

How secure your master password is depends on you. Because there's no way of recovering your master password, – besides adding one or more emergency contacts – no one can abuse the recovery feature in order to obtain your master password. This makes Dashlane more secure than some of its competitors.

You can reinforce your Dashlane logins using two-factor authentication. You can decide whether two-factor authentication shall be used for every login or only once when logging in with a new device.

Using the mobile app poses a potential security risk. In addition to the master password, users can use their fingerprint to log into websites. You have to decide if using this feature meets your security requirements.

Score: 4.7 / 5

Dashlane apps are available for Android and iOS devices. The mobile apps are so similar to the desktop version that using them feels intuitive from the get-go. With its auto-login feature, Dashlane remembers the passwords to your apps. The mobile apps come with an internal browser and can be used as authenticator apps if you want to apply two-factor authentication.

If you want to avoid constantly typing in your master password, you can use your fingerprint to log in. iPhone X users can also use Apple's Face ID.

Score: 4.7 / 5

There are two ways to contact Dashlane's support team. Support in languages other than English is only available via e-mail. When we were writing this review, it took Dashlane's support team around two hours to respond to our queries – and even longer when we had further questions.

The support chat offers faster support, but only in English. When conducting this review, all our questions were answered promptly.

Score: 4 / 5

There are three versions of Dashlane available. The free version limits the amount of passwords you can save to 50 and the amount of devices the application can be used on to one. You can use the same account on the mobile version but synchronizing them is not possible.

The premium package will cost you around $3.33 a month if you subscribe for a year. It offers an unlimited amount of passwords you can save, synchronizing throughout all your used devices, VPN services, Dark Web Monitoring and more.

Dashlane's business package is about $5.00 per month and user.

Dashlane 6 was put on the US market and with it came an increase in price: Since 2018, the premium package is $60 – 50 % more than the $40 it used to be. Additionally, Dashlane offers a Premium Plus package for $9.99 a month. It comes with additional insurances and monitoring features. Whether prices will be raised and the Premium Plus package be made available in other regions is yet to be decided.

Thanks to its current prices, Dashlane is one of the more affordable password managers on the market

Dashlane definitely deserves to be number one in all those rankings it regularly tops. That's because only few providers offer a more cohesive and comprehensive package. The basic functions of the password manager work and the dashboard is intuitive to use. There are many features behind the very reasonably and justifiably priced paywalls that make surfing the Web even easier and more secure.

We do have to make point deductions for to Dashlane's support chat only being available in English and its e-mail counterpart for languages other than English being quite slow. Additionally, there might be some price increases making their way from the US to the European market. Dashlane offers a free version, so you can check it out risk-free at the following link:

Dashlane is a popular choice among customers. Check out their ratings:

There's no shortage in password managers. On the contrary: Those who aren't entirely convinced by Dashlane for one reason or the other can check out this list of alternatives. You can find a selection here:

The Dashlane desktop app wasted tested with Windows 10 on a Lenovo Laptop. The browser extension was tested on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. The mobile application was tested on an Android device (version 8.1.0).