Dashlane is the world’s best password manager and digital wallet, with millions of users that already entrust them to secure their digital lives. Dashlane can offer secure storage of personal information, automatic login on every website and autofill of personal data on the web, and more.
Dashlane is a mobile and desktop app that gives you a shortcut for everything you do online. Log in instantly, fly through forms, and breeze through checkouts on every device you own.
Passwords are all about identity—you prove your identity to a site by logging in with the correct password. Conversely, anybody who guesses your password can pretend to be you. Using a strong, unique password for every site minimizes the possibility of password theft, but nobody can remember all those passwords, not without the help of a password manager. Dashlane performs all the basic and advanced tasks of a password manager and it does so with flair.
It also bundles a VPN and scans your accounts for weak and compromised passwords. It all adds up to an Editors’ Choice password manager. It’s expensive, however (especially if you already have a VPN) and it had some trouble with multipage logins in our testing.
Three Ways to Make the Most of Dashlane
There are a few simple steps you can take to make the most of your Dashlane account.
- Get the app on all your devices
- Install the browser extension
- Turn off other password tools
CHOOSE THE PLAN FOR YOU
Easily upgrade from Free, or switch from Premium within 30 days to get your money back. Dashlane offers a free version, but it has several limitations. For example, you can only use it on a single device, without the ability to sync with your smartphone, tablet, and so forth. That’s a nonstarter for most people and impractical in the age of smartphones. The free edition also imposes a 50-password limit on new users, and you are limited to only sharing five accounts.
The free LastPass supports smartphone-based authentication, like Dashlane, and even includes the low-tech option to authenticate using a printed wallet-sized grid. LastPass Premium adds authentication by YubiKey, fingerprint reader, or a specially configured USB drive, but doesn’t support U2F. True Key’s, core functionality centers on multifactor authentication. Factors include possession of a trusted device, fingerprint authentication, and facial recognition. In fact, with sufficient authentication factors, True Key lets you reset your master password, something few others do.
If you are switching from another password manager or use your browser’s built-in password manager, Dashlane gives you a chance to import your data. You can migrate your passwords from LastPass, RoboForm, 1Password, and a few others. LastPass is even more welcoming, with the ability to import from several dozen competitors (though most are obscure). Dashlane can also import passwords from Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
Password Generator
Any time you click in a password field to create a new account or change an old password, Dashlane offers to generate a secure password for you. This offer appears right below the password field, so it’s easy to click. However, you don’t get an opportunity to configure the password generator at this point.
If you want more control over how the password generator works, click the browser toolbar button, and then the Generator tab. Here you can set the generated password length and choose from four character sets, digits, letters, symbols, and ambiguous characters. You won’t find an equivalent of Enpass’s phrase generator, which can churn out passwords with pronounceable words.
How Strong Are Your Passwords?
Getting all your passwords into Dashlane is a great first step, but you can’t stop there. You need to clean up your passwords, fix any that are weak, and replace any that you’ve used on multiple sites. Don’t worry; Dashlane makes this process extremely simple. Click the Password Health item on Dashlane’s left-rail menu for a quick percentage rating of your security level, much like what you get with the Security Challenge in LastPass.
Below the percentage health score, Dashlane offers lists of Compromised, Reused, and Weak passwords. There’s also a list of passwords you’ve excluded from the health rating (perhaps because passwords policies on the site involved require a weak password) and a toggle to only show critical accounts (those that Dashlane deems as containing the most sensitive information).
Emergency Access
What happens if a self-driving bus runs over you tomorrow? Will your heirs tear their hair out, trying to figure out how to access your accounts? Dashlane’s emergency contact feature ensures that you can pass along your digital legacy after your demise, and it doesn’t even require probate.
Setting up an emergency contact to inherit your passwords is just as simple as sharing one password, with one important difference: you can set a waiting period for full access. If your heir tries to get your credentials while you’re still above ground, you can respond to the notification email to deny access. And then you should look for a more trustworthy heir.
Advanced Form Filling
Once a product can fill username and password fields, it’s only a small step to filling other fields on
web forms. Like many password managers, Dashlane can also help you with filling personal data in web forms, though it’s not quite as flexible as other competitors. For instance, RoboForm Everywhere supports more entry fields. 1Password and Enpass allow you to add custom sections and fields, something Dashlane does not offer.
Dashlane divides personal info into name, email, phone, (snail-mail) address, company, and website sections. You can add any number of each type. When Dashlane detects a web form, it puts a tiny Dashlane icon in each entry field. You click in any field and select the desired entry from the popup menu.
Inbox Scan
Dashlane’s Inbox Scan is a mobile-only feature that, with your permission, rifles through your inbox seeking email messages that its pattern-matching algorithm suggests involve the creation of an online account. The scan took only a few seconds to go through an eight-year backlog of email. It reported finding 93 accounts. The summary display offered a breakdown of accounts in often-hacked categories such as Business, Health, Shopping, and Social. The scan also identifies any accounts that may have been compromised. You should take action to make sure those accounts are secured.
Dashlane for Android and iOS
Except for its macOS-specific interface changes, Dashlane on the Mac is identical to the Windows edition. Dashlane’s Android app and iOS app are also very similar. We tested the experience on a Google Pixel 3 running Android 10.
Both the Android and iOS editions support auto-login for apps and websites. You can also use biometric (both face and fingerprint) logins to access your account (and reset your master password if you forget it) on Android and iOS devices.
Dashlane is safe, easy-to-use, and packed with bonus features that help make my online life easier and more secure.
