Password managers are an essential tool these days, but if you want something that's reliable, trustworthy, and unlimited, you typically have to pay up. Bitwarden is an example of a great solution for a password manager, and it actually has a free tier that's fairly functional, but there's also a premium subscription that gets you extra features like an authenticator, the ability to send files securely to other devices, and more.

But you don't actually have to pay to get access to these features. Thanks to Vaultwarden, you can self-host your own server for Bitwarden so you can store your passwords, and as a bonus, you get access to all the paid features at no additional cost, too. It's pretty easy to set up, and it comes with some nice benefits.

Vaultwarden runs on your NAS

No cloud storage required

The first big benefit of Vaultwarden is that it's completely housed in your home without data ever leaving your network. It's an app that's available for TrueNAS, and you can easily install it by just following the standard steps for installing any app in TrueNAS, which is all fairly easy. You can then set up the administrator page for Vaultwarden, where you can manage users and the like.

You can access your passwords remotely and securely by setting up a reverse proxy, which you can also host on your TrueNAS instance using something like Nginx and Tailscale. It's a very capable password manager and it can help keep your data extra safe.

My whole family can use it

Extra savings

Perhaps the main draw of Vaultwarden is that not only can you save money on a single subscription, you can save even more if you have multiple people at home. Bitwarden's cloud-based solution requires the more expensive family plan if you want to have multiple accounts, which costs $4 per month. Not a huge amount, but certainly a noticeable number.

With Vaultwarden, you can create multiple user accounts on your server without having to spend any extra money. I can have accounts for myself and my wife, and if we had children, they could have their own accounts, too. That's a pretty big way to save money while still keeping passwords safe for all your family.

Vaultwarden also lets you set up emergency access, so you can make your passwords accessible to someone you trust in case you're not able to access the server yourself for any given reason. By default, each user on the server has a completely separate account and the passwords and vaults are user-specific, but if you do want to give access to someone else, you can do that. Just keep in mind this will only work for other users in your Vaultwarden server, not people with a public Bitwarden account or their own separate server.

Extra security features

I can see security reports

There's a bit more to the premium capabilities of Bitwarden, too. One such feature are security reports, where you can take a look at leaked passwords and breached accounts for items you have saved in your vault. Vaultwarden will look through all your items and compare them against known leaks to find potential breaches. It can also find websites where you haven't set up two-factor authentication, so you can tighten up the security on all your accounts.

Another cool tidbit is the built-in authenticator, which you can use for two-factor authentication with one-time codes. Bitwarden offers a separate Authenticator app you can use for free, but a small benefit of the Premioum plan is that you can sync information from the Authenticator app to your main Bitwarden app, making all your one-time passcodes available in one app, and more importantrly, without even having to open it.

With this integration, you can link your one-time passcodes to a specific login item in Bitwarden, and as soon as you enter your login information from Bitwarden, the app automatically copies the corresponding passcode to your clipboard. All you have to do is paste it into the field, and you're good to go, no app-hopping needed. If I'm being completely honest, I had no idea this was possible until I started writing this article, and now I'm in love with it.

Built-in file sharing

It's nice to have options

While it's not something I'd consider major, the final notable premium feature for me is the ability to use Bitwarden Send to share files with other users. On the public instance, Bitwarden send supports sending text in the free plan, but it also supports files in the premium plan. And of course, if you're self-hosting, file sharing is possible too, no extra cost needed.

That does come with the same caveat that, normally, you won't be able to share these files with people outside your home. They can be accessed remotely, but you need to have access to your home server, and that's something that may require some extra setup unless you're willing to expose your services to the internet (which you shouldn't).

Vaultwarden is amazing

All of this just helps prove that self-hosting is incredibly cool, and Vaultwarden is just one of the many tools at your disposal once you start investing in it. Vaultwarden has become a major tool in my day-to-day life, and especially with the built-in authenticator feature, I want to keep it around going forward. If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend it.