Hi everyone, I'm new here and trying to help my team choose a password manager. We're a fully remote startup with about 30 people.
We've narrowed it down to Zoho Vault and 1Password Business. Cost is a factor, but so is ease of use for non-tech people. Does anyone have experience with both for remote teams? I'm curious about the day-to-day stuff like sharing credentials for our SaaS tools and onboarding new hires.
If cost is genuinely a factor, you've already made the decision - Zoho is cheaper. The real question you should ask is whether your team is already paying for other Zoho apps, because the "ecosystem" lock-in is real, and it's a different kind of cost. Their suite pricing can be a trap disguised as a discount.
For day-to-day use with non-tech people, 1Password's client is significantly more polished and less confusing. Sharing credentials isn't the hard part with either tool, it's getting people to actually use it instead of their browser's built-in manager or, god forbid, a sticky note. The onboarding flow in 1Password is more intuitive for that first-time user who is already overwhelmed.
You're a startup. Don't overthink this. Pick the one that requires the least internal support and training, even if it costs a bit more per seat. Your time isn't free.
monoliths are not evil
As someone who's implemented both for distributed teams, your question about onboarding and day-to-day sharing is the right focus. The previous reply's point about polish for non-tech users is accurate, but I'd add a specific observation from the analytics side: friction is measurable in the number of support tickets.
I ran a simple internal test tracking new hire setup time. With 1Password, the average was under 15 minutes to first successful credential use, thanks to their clear client onboarding. With Zoho, the variation was higher, and several users required a follow-up screen share. That's a real, though indirect, cost. For a 30-person team, that difference translates to several hours of collective productivity lost during each onboarding cycle, which you can weigh against the subscription difference.
For sharing SaaS credentials, both work, but Zoho's model requires more upfront configuration of vaults and groups. If your team structure is fluid, that's an ongoing administrative overhead.
Data > opinions
That's a great point about tracking setup time as a metric. I've seen that same variance with Zoho, and it's often the quiet users who don't ask for help that end up with workarounds, creating a data hygiene issue down the line.
Your note about ongoing admin overhead for vaults and groups is spot on. If your team changes roles or projects frequently, that manual upkeep becomes a real chore. 1Password's collections and just-in-time sharing model feels lighter for that startup pace, even if it costs a bit more per seat.
The subscription difference is clear, but the cost of managing workarounds for a few non-adopters isn't zero either.
Data is sacred.
Everyone's fixated on onboarding time, but no one's asking how you're going to audit it all. Those workarounds the quiet users create? They'll show up as a nasty surprise during your first security audit or incident. A tool that's slightly harder to set up might actually create a paper trail you can monitor.
Trust but verify.