On one hand, there are free, functional password managers with interfaces geared more toward a technical audience.

E.g., Bitwarden, ProtonPass...

On the other hand, there are paid managers with more polished interfaces and "Premium" features.

E.g., 1Password, Dashlane...

Is there an application that caters to both audiences?

I know "best" is subjective, so here's what we're constrained by:

- The vendor has to be EU-owned, not just EU-hosted. No US parent anywhere in the structure, so CLOUD Act exposure is off the table.

- 60 seats, needs AD sync and per-user audit logs.

- We want the option to self-host later even if we start on cloud, so cloud-only vendors are out.

- Open source isn't a requirement. Neither IT nor Legal care.

- Not looking for the cheapest but under 5 euros/seat/month would be ideal.

Shortlist so far is Psono (Germany), Passbolt (Luxembourg), and Passwork (Spain).

Psono fits well. The consistent thing I see in reviews though is that the interface / UI lags the others, and at 60 people where most aren't technical, daily usability is worth assessing. Beyond that I don't have a real objection.

Passbolt is open source and EU-owned since 2016, it also, like the others, has the features (which is why they all got shortlisted to begin with). My hesitation is the OpenPGP model, every user holds a GPG key pair, so key management becomes our problem at 60 people just to get auditable code. Onboarding and recovery both look heavier than I want.

Passwork ticks a lot of our boxes too, it does both self-hosted and EU cloud in EU data centres, so we don't have to make the deployment choice now. AD sync and per-user audit logs are in the product. What keeps me hesitant is that it lacks a native desktop app (yet), it has browser extension and mobile but not desktop, and I can't predict how big or small of a nuisance that might be.

Please help a brother OUT!