Bitwarden lite self-host deployment, formerly unified, is now generally available! This self-host option is a more lightweight and flexible deployment alternative, ideal for homelab enthusiasts and community members who want to get started quickly with self-hosting Bitwarden. With the release of general availability, Bitwarden lite users can benefit from enhanced performance and reliability.
Seems to be an official alternative to Vaultwarden
Wonder what’s the reasoning behind offering this Lite version. I don’t imagine competing with Vaultwarden is very lucrative financially.
VaultWarden has contributors working on paid BitWarden features. For instance I’ve been following the LDAP PR for a while now. If they pull users away, they may have users who are unaware when those features release.
That being said, I won’t complain when for-profit companies based on FOSS support self-hosters. It’s good for the industry.
Edit:
This is why I won’t switch to it, though:
My homelab only has one home to phone, and it’s not someone else’s home.
It’s a pretty normal model. You offer a free version to help make your product popular. People will use it at home and then at work they will gravitate to the thing they are familiar with. Small companies will start on the free version and eventually upgrade.
Yeah it’s a normal model, but BitWarden is a bit special in that their original server-side implementation was enough of a pain to self-host on a small scale that an alternative implementation Vautlwarden was created. And Vaultwarden became very popular in self-hosted circles. And now many years later BitWarden offers a Lite server which scales down. I think it’s a good thing, just a bit unusual. I’m struggling to think of similar examples.
I’m sure Vaultwarden still funnels plenty of enterprise use of BitWarden, since Vaultwarden users still use official BitWarden client.
I don’t trust my setup for something like this.
My server and NAS go down in a fire, and I’m not gonna have the key I need to get the backup so I can restore my password manager lol
The nice thing about Bitwarden is that all vaults are locally saved on every device where you access it. So even if your NAS, server and whole house burn in fire you still have all the keys on your phone.
Unless your phone also burns down together with the house, which is not unlikely
The point: .
You
