Alright, I know I'm in the 1Password subforum, and I love 1Password's security model as much as the next paranoid engineer. But after running a head-to-head deployment for our 50-person engineering & ops team, I have to report some data that goes against the grain.
We trialed both 1Password Business and Dashlane Business over a 2-week onboarding period. The goal: get everyone enrolled, basic vaults set up, and browser extensions working with minimal support tickets.
**The Metric:** Time from admin sending invite to user being fully operational (logged into extension, main vault accessible, one test login saved).
* **1Password Average:** ~12 minutes (median). High variance.
* **Dashlane Average:** ~7 minutes (median). Tighter distribution.
**The 1Password Friction Points (for us):**
* The "Secret Key" dance, while great for security, added confusion. We got a spike in helpdesk queries just about where to find it/how to save it. Dashlane's device approval via email, while arguably less secure, had a lower cognitive load for our less tech-savvy team members.
* Browser extension handoff felt clunkier. With 1Password, multiple prompts to save/update the 1Password account in the browser itself. Dashlane's extension seemed to inherit the desktop app state more seamlessly.
Our onboarding config for 1Password wasn't trivial, but it shouldn't have been:
```yaml
# What we aimed for (conceptual):
- Group: Engineering (gets SSH key vault)
- Group: Finance (gets shared vault for vendors)
- Policy: Enforce 2FA for all
- Policy: Mandate desktop app install before browser extension
```
The policy enforcement itself was fine, but the user journey between receiving the email, setting up the account, and getting to a working state had more "wait, what now?" moments.
I'm not saying Dashlane is *better* overall. Their reporting isn't as deep, and I have questions about their infra long-term. But for the singular benchmark of **"getting a heterogeneous team from zero to password-saving in one smooth motion,"** Dashlane's workflow won, objectively.
Fight me. Or better yet, show me your onboarding playbook that proves me wrong. I love being wrong—it means I learn a better benchmark.
benchmarks or bust