this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Bitwarden lite self-host deployment, formerly unified, is now generally available! This self-host option is a more lightweight and flexible deployment alternative, ideal for homelab enthusiasts and community members who want to get started quickly with self-hosting Bitwarden. With the release of general availability, Bitwarden lite users can benefit from enhanced performance and reliability.

Seems to be an official alternative to Vaultwarden

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I don't trust my setup for something like this.

My server and NAS go down in a fire, and I'm not gonna have the key I need to get the backup so I can restore my password manager lol

[–] abeltramo@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The nice thing about Bitwarden is that all vaults are locally saved on every device where you access it. So even if your NAS, server and whole house burn in fire you still have all the keys on your phone.

That's good, if at least one surviving synced device survives then you still have access. Still a big "if" in a catastrophe, but a much better proposition.

What is the data retention policy for the local vaults?

[–] EarMaster@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That is true for a single person - but in a multiple person household that would mean that everyone needs to carry a copy of their with them. So this mechanism is no replacement for a solid backup of the server somewhere else…

[–] abeltramo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

You are missing the point; the original comment was about not having the keys to restore the (I assume) encrypted backups. With Bitwarden you can still access the vault even if the server is offline/lost. It's not a replacement for a backup strategy.

[–] InnerScientist@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

No? Everyone who uses the bitwarden app or browser extention has a local copy of the database that is used for read operations. You can't disable this so everyone who uses bitwarden can still use their passwords even if the server dies.

[–] ammonium@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Unless your phone also burns down together with the house, which is not unlikely

[–] abeltramo@lemmy.world -1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ammonium@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

What do you mean? If my house burns down the chance all my devices went up in flames is high. This is one of the reasons I'm not self hosting Bitwarden.

[–] abeltramo@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

If you don't do off-site backups there's no recovery from your house burning down. Which self hosted alternative will survive without backups from all your devices burning? You are completely missing the point.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You'd need a good backup somewhere. But that's the same for bitwarden cloud. You cannot just assume it will never have issues

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, my problem is that I need my password manager to access my backup, and I need my backup to get my password manager.

[–] philpo@feddit.org 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That is a bad setup then. Not an issue of the software or hardware.

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Thanks for your useful and actionable feedback that clearly explains the problem. So trustworthy /s

[–] SapientLasagna@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Seriously though, this is what break glass accounts are for. Create an account that can access your backups (preferably only the backup system) with a really long password and keep it offline in a safe place. Like a safe. Set up alerting if the break glass account ever gets used.

[–] Buckshot@programming.dev 0 points 1 day ago

I had the same issue which is by I don't self host bitwarden. If my house burned down the same day Bitwarden had a catastrophic outage I'd probably have issues but that seems unlikely.

Probably worth storing the key in another place as well, like keepass on your phone or just print it out on paper and store it.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I can't say I particularly trust even Bitwarden's servers. I export Bitwarden passwords to a spreadsheet once a month and rsync it along with SSH keys to a USB key. Takes a couple minutes.