RoboForm Review | PCMag

Why should you have to remember strong and varied passwords for each of your online accounts when capable, easy-to-use password managers exist? Stop writing all your passwords on sticky notes or using the same password everywhere, and instead, store your personal information and credentials in Roboform’s encrypted vault. Roboform Premium subscribers can sync unlimited passwords across all their devices, and they get emergency access and advanced sharing options. The free version is quite limited, so we still recommend Editors’ Choice winning free password manager Bitwarden. If you’re looking for a wide selection of excellent features, Editors’ Choice winner Dashlane has you covered.

How Much Does Roboform Cost?

Roboform offers a free service tier, but it’s very limited compared with competitors such as Bitwarden and LogMeOnce, which offer unlimited password storage on all platforms and password syncing across all devices. Roboform’s free password manager is limited to one device and doesn’t include features like web vault access or shared folders. Credential sharing and emergency access options have significant limits, too.

Signing up for an account on Roboform’s website gets you a 30-day free trial to try a premium personal or business account. The annual-only subscription model differs from the month-to-month subscriptions the competition offers. Once a free trial expires, Roboform reverts to a free account, complete with the device limitations, rather than defaulting to a paid account, which we appreciate. A spokesperson told us via email that Roboform offers lapsed trial account users the chance to switch to a different device three times.

The Premium tier is $23.88 annually and adds password syncing across all your devices, full emergency access, sharing rights, and two shared folders. A Family subscription is $47.76 per year for five premium accounts. These service tiers are less expensive than much of the competition, as LogMeOnce’s comparable personal premium plan is $39, while NordPass’ and 1Password’s premium plans are $35.88. Bitwarden still offers the lowest premium service tier at $10 per year.

Getting Started With Roboform

Roboform offers browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. There are also desktop clients for Linux, Mac, and Windows, plus apps for Android and iOS. Sign up on Roboform’s website or download one of the apps and create an account.

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Like 1Password, Roboform offers a helpful video tutorial and a step-by-step guide to the product’s primary features to help people who are new to password management apps.

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Roboform can import credentials from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers. The app can also import them from the following competing password managers: 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, Enpass, Keeper, LastPass, NordPass, True Key, and the now-defunct Myki app. Switching to Roboform from your old password manager? You can also upload an unbranded CSV file saved from a different password management system.

What are Roboform’s Authentication Options?

After signing into your vault, click on My Settings and then open the Security menu to set up your multi-factor authentication (MFA) method.

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Activate the appropriate toggle in the MFA section, complete the provided instructions, and sign up. You can authenticate your identity using an email address (activated by default), SMS, or a mobile authenticator app. LogMeOnce offers a wider variety of authentication options that range from hardware security keys to voice calls.

What Is Two-Factor Authentication?

Data Privacy and Security With Roboform

Before we review and test a password manager, we send a list of questions to the password management company inquiring about its privacy and security practices. We want consumers to have plenty of information about the companies handling their data. We’ve included Roboform’s responses to our questions below.

Has your company ever had a security breach?

No.

What unencrypted information does the password manager store in user vaults?

None. All user data inside the RoboForm account is encrypted, and we cannot access it.

What is the company’s policy regarding master passwords?

Personal/Premium:

8 characters minimum.

4 characters must be non-numeric.

Business:

Same as Personal/Premium by default, but admins can increase the complexity of their company’s deployment.

What is the company’s policy regarding user data collection and data sales?

We do not sell user data.

How does your company respond to requests for user information from governments and law enforcement?

Requests for user information must be for specific account(s) and be served to us through a court order. From there, we would review the request for validity and comply in accordance with US law.

Roboform’s answers to our questions match the company’s privacy policy. We encourage anyone looking for a new password manager to browse privacy policies to learn more about how companies collect, sell, or store user data. Decide how comfortable you are with data collection and act accordingly.

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Roboform offers a password hygiene feature on the app’s Security Center tab. The Security Score panel lets you see your password strength ratings and identifies any reused or duplicate credentials in your vault. Roboform doesn’t offer unique account security options like LogMeOnce’s Mugshot, nor does it have data breach alerts for personal accounts like Dashlane.

Hands On With Roboform

We tested Roboform using the web vault, the Windows app, the Chrome browser extension, and the iOS app.

Roboform’s Web Vault

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After we imported our test lists, buttons featuring icons for each login on the list appeared in the web vault, which is a nice touch. We’ve seen similar user interfaces in many mobile password manager apps, and Roboform offers this highly accessible layout by default. If you prefer to use a file tree or you like the look of smaller icons, you can change the view by clicking on the view options on the right side of the window.

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We like that the traditional folder system view includes a column showing your password strength. If you hover your mouse over the password hygiene alert, Roboform urges you to replace weak passwords with more complex credentials. Access to your logins, bookmarks, and any notes you create is via a menu on the left side of the screen. A menu at the bottom left (cropped out of the screenshots in this article) lets you use a password generator, access Roboform’s authenticator, check your password hygiene via the Security Center, share passwords, and designate emergency access rules for your account.

Roboform’s Browser Extension for Chrome

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The Roboform browser extension worked as expected in testing. We were able to access our imported passwords and log in to our test accounts with one click. Capturing existing credentials, generating new passwords, and saving our new logins was also painless.

You can choose how you want Roboform to fill in your credentials. Navigate to the Settings menu in the browser extension or the web vault, and visit the Autofill section. From there, you can decline to autofill the credentials, Roboform can prompt you each time there’s an opportunity to fill in a password, or you can choose for Roboform to autofill without your input.

We don’t recommend auto-filling your credentials without notifications since criminals can deploy attacks that abuse the feature and steal your passwords, but we like that the options are available. Overall, we like the smoothness of the credential capture and replay system exhibited by the browser extension.

Roboform’s Password Generator

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Using the Roboform password generator, users can set a password length of up to 512 characters and choose whether to include capital and lowercase letters, digits, hexadecimal characters, and symbols. Currently, the default password generation length with Roboform is 16 characters, but a company spokesperson tells us that the default will change to 22 characters in the next update. We recommend making all your passwords at least 20 characters long for extra security. You can also create passphrases up to 8 words long that include capital letters and numbers.

Roboform for Windows

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The Windows client’s design is pretty spartan, and the layout differs greatly from the web vault. We like it when password managers offer similar user interfaces across platforms because it makes it easy for new users to use the app without remembering where the features are located. Using the Windows desktop client, we explored the password manager’s data storage capabilities and sharing options.

Storage and Form Filling With Roboform

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As expected from the company that started its life as a form-filling utility, entering our information into Roboform was easy. You can store your personal information in the Identities section, an option that doesn’t appear in the web vault’s menu until you create an Identity entry using a different platform. Roboform contains the most thorough personal data entry system we’ve encountered recently. You can add a wealth of data to help you fill in web forms faster and create custom fields for any other text you want to store. We had no trouble filling forms around the web using the data stored in the vault.

Users cannot upload files using the Roboform app. Some password managers, such as Dashlane, allow you to store small files in your password manager’s vault.

Password Sharing With Roboform

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You can share individual passwords and two folders of credentials with a premium account. Sharing individual passwords with other Roboform users is easy; just click on the three dots next to the vault entry, then choose Share and enter the users’ email address associated with their Roboform account. If your intended recipient does not use Roboform, enter their email address, and they will receive an email from Roboform asking them to create a free account so that they can access the credential. You can designate up to five recipients per login and remove access whenever you wish. Changing the password after you revoke access is probably wise so that other people can’t continue to access the account.

Free users can send passwords to other users but do not have access to sharing controls, which are a premium feature. In testing, we found that the sharing controls are applied when sharing folders. You can choose whether the folder recipient can have the following types of access: full access, which allows outside users to add or delete other folder recipients, edit the credentials, and adjust folder permissions. There’s also read and write access, which allows the user to edit the credentials, or login-only access, which lets the user log in without viewing the password.

Unlike the advanced sharing options in LogMeOnce and other competitors, you cannot specify how long the recipient can access your folder. We’d also like to see sharing access levels applied to individual credentials.

Roboform Emergency Access

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Paid Roboform subscribers can designate an emergency contact who can access their credentials in the event of their death or incapacitation. Roboform allows users to choose how long to wait to grant access to a designee if they don’t want them to get access right away for some reason, up to 30 days after designation. You must invite your emergency contact to sign up for a free Roboform account before designating them as such.

Roboform Mobile App Experience

We used Roboform’s iOS app on an iPhone 12 mini running iOS 17 for mobile device testing. Roboform also offers an Android app. The iOS app has a simple grey user interface, and the app’s features include an authenticator that generates and fills in 2FA codes, an in-app web browser, and the same comprehensive identity-filling system found in the Windows desktop client.

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We downloaded, installed, and logged into the app without any issues, and the app filled in our passwords and captured new credentials without incident. Like the other password managers we’ve reviewed, LogMeOnce’s mobile apps support logins using FaceID. You can enter your master password or designate a PIN code to unlock your vault on your device.

One addition we’d like to see in a future iteration of Roboform’s iOS app, if possible, is screenshot detection and blocking. Bitwarden’s Android app does not allow screen captures by default, which is a stellar security feature.

Is Roboform Good for Business?

Small business owners can sign up for a 14-day free trial to try out Roboform for Teams and Business. After that, the service costs $39.95 per year per user, with discounts available based on the number of users. The plan includes password hygiene reports that are accessible by administrators.

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Some highlights from the business version of the password manager include the extensive and impressive onboarding tutorial, which walks administrators through adding employees to the business account, explains sorting accounts into groups, and offers a video showing how to add credentials to the users’ vaults. You can add a company logo to the software client at the end of the tutorial.

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After logging into our admin account, we sorted a couple of test accounts into different groups. We like that you can designate group-based credential access. Limited access keeps the passwords hidden from the users, while Regular access allows users to edit and view the passwords.

You can also keep employees from accessing credentials outside the workplace by designating allowed IP addresses. There’s also an option to disable access from certain platforms. This feature is helpful if your employees use one app, client, or browser extension. Any non-admin user using a different platform from the one you choose for your business’ password management cannot access your team’s credentials, even if they somehow get an employee’s vault credentials.

You can view your employee’s password hygiene scores by visiting the Reports tab on the Business dashboard. We prefer Zoho Vault’s business password manager user interface, which features visual reports detailing employee password habits and tips for improving hygiene scores.

Should You Use Roboform?

Roboform’s free version is limited, and its credential-sharing options aren’t as advanced as those offered by competitors. These complaints seem small, however, when you consider that its apps and browser extensions are very easy to navigate, its security features are helpful, it’s very good at filling in forms, and its subscription tiers are inexpensive. Our Editors’ Choice winners in the password management category are Bitwarden for its generous free password management tier and Dashlane for its excellent for-pay user experience and advanced feature offerings.