NordSec, the same company behind the well-known NordVPN, has a password manager called NordPass. As a result, it has come to the world’s attention with the same aggressive marketing tactics; let’s see if it lives up to its hype.
Overall, NordVPN belongs among the best password managers, though only by its fingernails. As a business option, it’s one of the best out there, but its offerings for individuals fall flat, mainly thanks to a confusing and slightly misleading pricing scheme.
How Much Does NordPass Cost?
Is NordPass Included With NordVPN?
NordPass Business Plans
Using NordPass
The NordPass Client
Autofill and Other Features
Is NordPass Safe?
Should You Sign Up for NordPass?
How Much Does NordPass Cost?
When it comes to pricing, NordPass falls more or less within the same range as the competition, though it’s far from straightforward to figure out. There are different plans, and, like with NordVPN, the price for first-time users is significantly lower than for anybody renewing their subscription.
The first and maybe most interesting plan is the free one, which offers all the basic functionality you’d expect from a password manager. You can store all the passwords and other data you’d like, with the only downside being a minor annoyance that you’re signed out whenever you switch devices.
The paid plan removes this annoyance and adds a password as well as a web scanner, which detects if any of your accounts have been breached. However, there are some issues with pricing. For example, if you decide to sign up for the regular plan for just one year, you pay just south of $24, which is a great price.
However, when you renew, you pay just under $36, which is more or less the same as what other password managers charge. Like with its siblings NordVPN and Surfshark, you need to look a little beyond the sticker price with NordPass to see what it will cost a little further down the road. This is even more important if you sign on for the two-year plan.
At just under $36, NordPass’ two year-plan is a great deal. However, when you renew it, the password manager costs $72, which is double the one-year plan. Sure, you’re saving money on the first go-around, but I think NordPass should be a little clearer that it’s just a one-time thing and you’re on the hook for the whole thing once the initial term expires.
The Family plan suffers from the same issues but stands out in that it’s more expensive than the competition. Its “real” price is $72 per year, which gives you the same functionality of the regular plan only for up to six people. At this price, it’s more expensive than 1Password and almost double Bitwarden’s.
Dashlane is a bit more expensive at $75 per year but includes a VPN for that price, making that the better choice by far for people trying to squeeze the most out of their subscriptions.
Is NordPass Included With NordVPN?
Speaking of VPNs, naturally, you can also buy a bundle that includes both NordVPN and NordPass. Interestingly enough, NordVPN is the primary product, so you buy that and get NordPass included, not the other way around.
For the details of that pricing, you may want to check out my NordVPN review, but overall I’m not blown away by the value on offer here. There are some more shenanigans here, with steep discounts on first-time signup, but the real price starts at $160 per year and goes higher—a lot higher—from there.
In a market where you can get cheap VPNs like Private Internet Access for $40 per year and even cheaper password managers like Bitwarden for $10 per year, paying $160 is just too much by any stretch of the imagination.
NordPass Business Plans
Finally, NordPass also offers a Business plan. It costs $3.99 per user per month if you sign up for one year or $3.59 per user per month on the two-year plan, without any re-up issues like with the personal plans. For this price, you can have up to 250 users per plan, and you get access to a company-wide dashboard and settings, plus SSO through Google Workspace.
Overall, this is a pretty good deal. It’s a good whack cheaper than most other password managers’ business plans, which start around $5 per user per month but can get as high as $8. That said, different providers throw in different extras with these advanced plans, so you should definitely shop around before making any decisions.
There is also an Enterprise plan which offers more SSO options, plus some other advanced sharing features. The price you’ll need to negotiate with NordPass.
Using NordPass
As much as I dislike NordPass’ pricing scheme, I have to say its ease of use is pretty good, though I found it a little less smooth than some other password managers. Part of this is unique to NordPass: For some reason, the developers insist that you have to have a client running on your desktop to use it rather than the web client most competitors use.
The client is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, I had some pretty serious issues getting it to work on my Debian system (Mint 20.3, to be exact). After having the app crash more than once, I switched to my backup Windows machine, where it worked a lot better, though I did have to restart Windows 11 twice. NordPass doesn’t get high marks for stability.
Besides desktop, NordPass can also be used on mobile devices, namely Android and iPhone/iPad. I had far fewer issues here, I have to say, so maybe the desktop issues have more to do with the relative novelty of the OSes involved.
The NordPass Client
Once you get it working, the client is pretty good. The presentation is slick, with clear categories for all the different kinds of items you can add, like passwords, secure notes, credit cards, and more. I also like how NordPass gets you familiar with the program using a small checklist of tasks.
The whole thing feels a lot more polished than most other password managers, with even top-shelf providers like Dashlane feeling like throwbacks to an earlier era. However, it’s all surface level, and once you start digging, you’ll find there’s not much beyond that initial impression.
NordPass presents entries well in a simple list that gives you a decent
summary of what’s going on. That said, there don’t seem to be any
organization options to speak of for each category, meaning that if you
have more than a few password entries, you’re going to have to search
for them manually. There are no tags like in 1Password.
The closest thing to organization is that you can add folders, but they exist outside of the set options. For example, I created a folder for all the media sites I have an account with, but it’s not nested under the passwords label, instead existing alongside it. It makes it hard to organize your passwords.
There are also few options for the entries themselves. Most password managers give you the option to add all kinds of notes, or add extra security—or even let some passwords be used automatically. None of that with NordPass. You get to add a username, password, and a few custom options, and that’s it, pretty much.
As a result, NordPass is very easy for beginners to get to grasp with. Some of our favorites like Dashlane or 1Password—not to mention KeePassXC— can be a bit intimidating for first-time users. However, I feel NordPass has swung too far the other way, offering a program that’s just too light.
Autofill and Other Features
Of course, no password manager would be complete without a browser extension. In the case of NordPass, the extension is available for Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari. It’s extremely lightweight, offering no menu or anything, all it does is pop up a small NordPass icon on any empty login field.
I have to say, the autofill function works very well and is pretty reliable. Also, since NordPass never seems to switch itself off, you only need to unlock once per device session, so it saves some hassle.
Other basics that NordPass has included are the now-ubiquitous breach scanner, which scans the web to see if any of your personal details have shown up in breached files. It mainly seems to check if your email accounts are associated with a hack, as far as I can tell.
There’s also a password checker that lets you know if your password is strong or weak and how to fix any issues. It seems to have a strong preference for symbols in passwords, but it’s solid overall.
Is NordPass Safe?
Overall, NordPass seems to be a secure place to keep your passwords. It stores all the information you enter, be it passwords, credit card details, or personal data, in a personalized vault, which is encrypted with the XChaCha20 algorithm. On its site, NordPass claims this algorithm is “considered the future of encryption,” though it doesn’t specify who is doing that considering.
That said, though it’s not a very widely used encryption method, XChaCha20 seems secure and is used in all kinds of applications. The best example is probably that it’s a popular way to secure Shadowsocks connections.
However, the proof in any pudding is in the tasting, which in the case of password managers is to take a look at their history. NordPass aces this test with no breaches or scandals to speak of in its history.
Other products from the same company also have few blemishes on their record, though NordVPN suffered a small breach in 2018. In this case, a hacker gained access to encrypted files. Though customer data wasn’t at risk—encrypted files are useless without a password—the company failed to disclose the breach until a few years later.
Though it’s not a deal breaker in my view, I can understand if you would prefer to deal with a company that’s a bit more willing to admit mistakes. Other than that, though, I see no reason not to use NordPass for security reasons.
Should You Sign Up for NordPass?
NordPass has a good interface and decent security behind it. However, the lack of organization and the increased price following your initial subscription period makes it hard to recommend. As it stands, NordPass doesn’t have anything that makes it stand out in a good way except for companies looking for a cheap password solution. Anybody else may want to look elsewhere.
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