Passbolt alternative without self-hosting

Why Passbolt is great (and why you might be looking past it)

Passbolt is one of the cleanest open-source password managers for teams. The asymmetric-crypto model (OpenPGP keypair per user) is genuinely elegant — when you share an item with a teammate, only their public key wraps the item key, so the rest of the team can’t decrypt that one item even if they have access to the vault.

The catch: that elegance shows up as friction during onboarding. Each member generates a keypair. Browser extension is required. Recovery is via OpenPGP key escrow, which is harder to explain to a non-technical teammate than “save this recovery string.”

And the self-host story, while beautifully documented, is still a server to run.

Where LitePassword fits

LitePassword is intentionally the opposite trade:

• Symmetric crypto, managed cloud. AES-256 with a PBKDF2-derived key per user. Each vault has one symmetric key, wrapped with each member’s master-derived key. Simpler model, slightly less granular than Passbolt’s per-item asymmetric wrapping.
• No keypair to generate or back up. You set a master password, we show you a recovery key, you’re in.
• No browser extension required. Web vault with one-click copy on every field. The extension is on the roadmap, but the product works without it.
• No server. Sign up at https://app.litepassword.com.

When Passbolt is the better choice

Stay on Passbolt (Community or Pro) if:

• You want open-source on principle.
• You want to self-host for data residency reasons.
• The asymmetric-crypto per-item sharing model fits a specific compliance or sharing requirement.
• Your team has the time and skill to run the infrastructure.

When LitePassword is the lighter swap

Switch to LitePassword if:

• You’re a 2-to-12 person team and the Passbolt $49/mo cloud minimum is heavy.
• You’d rather not maintain a Postgres + Node + extension deploy.
• A recovery key string is an easier mental model for your teammates than an OpenPGP private key.
• You want a real free tier to evaluate.

Practical migration

Export from Passbolt as KDBX or CSV. Create your LitePassword account, set a master password, save the recovery key. Paste secrets into the matching type — Passbolt’s items map cleanly onto LitePassword’s login / password / note / custom types. A 10-person team typically migrates in ~20 minutes.