LastPass, a popular password management service, is spinning off from its parent company, LogMeIn, and has announced new features to entice users away from competing password managers.
In its official announcement, LastPass was light on the details about the new tools, though said it plans to roll them out at a much faster pace in 2022 than in previous years.
The list of features includes “faster, seamless” password filling, along with an improved, “delightful” mobile app. For its corporate customers, LastPass plans to bring in more third-party integrations. It will also beef up its support channels and revamp its website.
“Don’t worry,” LogMeIn President and CEO Bill Wagner wrote. “There are no changes to your account or data in your vault.”
Wagner said the company is directly investing in improving its offerings based on previous customer feedback.
LogMeIn acquired LastPass in 2015 when it was merely a startup. The company also owns GoToConnect, GoToMeeting, and Rescue, all of which seem to cater mainly to remote work and enterprise users. LastPass currently has about 30 million users and 85,000 businesses worldwide that use its suite, according to Yahoo! Finance.
But this announcement comes as part of a broader strategy to make LastPass more consumer-friendly. Though the company has remained steady and even seen a bit of growth since the pandemic forced us all to work remotely, it also has more competition than before. Companies like 1Password, Dashlane, and Bitwarden offer similar-grade password management, and Google, Microsoft, and Apple all feature secure vaults in some capacity on their respective devices, browsers, and operating systems.
LastPass also ruffled customer feathers earlier this year when it announced a reconfiguration of its free tier. Free users can only use one device at a time as a dedicated password vault, which means you can’t protect your data for both your smartphone and computer — you can only choose one.
LastPass is undoubtedly working on enticing people back over with new features. But a company spokesperson told The Verge that there are no plans to change its pricing, which might prove like a tough sell to consumers. As more online accounts migrate towards using single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA), LastPass will have to figure out how to differentiate itself and make its service worth the subscription.