When did you start using a password manager? If it was 20 years ago, you probably were using RoboForm, one of the few choices available back then. The newest version of RoboForm Everywhere maintains the brand’s effective password management and form-filling system, but it’s not as slick and feature-rich as the competition.
How Much Does RoboForm Everywhere Cost?
RoboForm offers a substantial free tier, which includes unlimited password storage, secure note storage, login sharing, and multiplatform support. For $23.88 per year, a subscription to RoboForm Everywhere lets you sync your RoboForm account across all your Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows devices.
By contrast, it costs a lot more to unlock unlimited password storage and secure notes with Dashlane, which is $59.99 per year. On the other end of things, Zoho Vault is less expensive than both RoboForm Everywhere and Dashlane at just $12 per year for the Standard plan. There are totally free password managers such as Myki, too.
Getting Started With RoboForm Everywhere
To get started with the app, you create a RoboForm account online from the RoboForm site. Windows desktop installation is quick and simple, and the program adds extensions to Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. There are also extensions for Chromium-based browsers and Firefox-based browsers. The Chrome extension did not automatically install for me, but it was easy enough to download and install it from the Chrome Web Store. When you’re done installing the software, RoboForm presents you with a webpage full of video tutorials to walk you through the password management process.
Most modern browsers offer to handle your password management, but they’re less secure than a password manager, so you’ll want to import passwords saved in your browser’s manager to RoboForm. RoboForm can import passwords from Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera.
RoboForm can also import passwords from several other password managers: 1Password, Dashlane, Enpass, KeePass, KeePassX, Keeper, LastPass, LogMeOnce, NIS, Password Boss, Sticky Password, True Key, XMarks, or Zoho Vault. If you’re coming from a different password manager, you’ll have to export your data to a CSV file and import it into RoboForm. That’s not many import options when you consider that LastPass imports from more than 30 competing products.
User Interface
Since our last review, RoboForm Everywhere has undergone some minor cosmetic changes. While the RoboForm Editor window looks more modern, the actual credential-organization system is still a mess of paths and folders that’s more confusing than the streamlined look of most other managers, such as Myki or 1Password.
When looking at the password manager’s main window, a left rail menu lets you choose from eight categories of stored data: Logins, Bookmarks, Applications, Identities, Contacts, Safenotes, All, and Shared. Just to the right of this menu is a list of items, which you can organize into a multilevel folder tree. The remainder of the main window displays the selected item and lets you edit the item’s details.
The main window’s organizational system looks the same as it did when we reviewed the software years ago. We believe it’s time for a major facelift. The folder system tree is confusing.
For example, a More menu at the top of the folder tree displays most, but not all, the commands that become available when you right-click an item, and the right-click menu holds most, but not all, the commands from the More menu. Another More menu in the editing area has one command that’s also on that right-click menu. Three free-standing items let you go to the selected site, go to the site and fill in credentials, or go to the site and log in with the saved credentials. These inconsistencies make for a poor user experience and do not instill confidence.
A pull-down menu above the left-rail menu offers a collection of useful functions, including access to program options and the Security Center password scorecard. Security Center also has its own button on the left-rail menu. In addition, some features can only be accessed by logging in to RoboForm online. We prefer the streamlined interface style used by Dashlane, LastPass, and others.
Password Capture and Replay
Like almost all password manager utilities, RoboForm notices when you log in to a secure site and offers to save your credentials. You can give the login (which RoboForm calls a passcard) a friendly name at capture, and you can assign it to a new or existing folder.
RoboForm had no trouble with two-page logins like Gmail’s. If you run across a truly weird login page, one that RoboForm doesn’t capture automatically, fear not. As with LastPass, Keeper, and a few others, you can fill in your credentials and then tell RoboForm to just capture all data fields on that page.
When you revisit a site for which you’ve previously saved credentials, RoboForm displays the matching passcard (or passcards) in a popup menu to the right of the form. You click to fill and submit your credentials. Dashlane and several others fill your credentials automatically or, if you’ve saved more than one set, offer them in a popup menu near the credential entry fields. For security reasons, some password managers, notably Keeper, deliberately do not fill credentials without a user request or permission.
Master Form Filler
RoboForm started life as AI RoboForm, a utility designed to automate filling your personal data into web forms. It very quickly adopted password management as well, but the form-filling ability came first. Not surprisingly, RoboForm is very good at that task. Competitors such as Keeper and Zoho Vault have limited web form filling abilities.
You can create multiple form-fill identities and enter eight types of data for each: Address, Bank Account, Business, Car, Credit Card, Custom, Passport, and Person. You can have more than one instance of each data type in a single identity—for example, three credit cards or two addresses.
To fill a web form with data, you click the desired identity in the toolbar or toolbar menu. In an unusual security touch, it asks for confirmation before filling sensitive fields such as credit card number or your social security number, which is found in the Person category.
Another unusual feature is the option to save personal data for your contacts. A contact is very much like an identity, but it includes only the Person, Business, and Address categories. That’s convenient when you’re buying a present online and having it shipped to one of your contacts.
You can rename the Custom data type and fill in the custom fields with any data you want to include. For example, if you’re not a US citizen and you have an ID number you want to store, you can rename “Custom” to “Green Card” and enter your identification information in the data fields.
Password Generator
The point of using a password manager is to maintain a unique and strong password for every place that requires one. Since you don’t have to remember them yourself, your passwords can be totally random. That’s where the password generator comes in.
You access the password manager via the browser extension’s menu. It’s also installed as a separate application on your desktop system. By default, the password generator just gives you a password, with the option to drag it onto a field or copy it to the clipboard.
In an improvement since our last review, default passwords are now 16 characters and contain numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and symbols. That’s a strong password. 1Password defaults to 20 characters.
Application Passwords
Not all passwords unlock websites. There are also programs that require their own passwords. LastPass, Myki, and RoboForm Everywhere all handle passwords for Windows applications as well as websites.
When it detects a password-entry dialog, it appends a toolbar to the bottom of the program. You enter your credentials and save them to RoboForm, much the way you let it capture website logins. If there’s already a password saved, you can click a button on that toolbar to fill in your credentials. You can also click the passcard in RoboForm’s main window to launch the program and log in.
Multi-Factor Authentication
If the only thing protecting your password stash is a master password, then anybody who gets hold of that password totally owns your credentials. Multi-factor authentication means that authentication requires something more than just the password. It could be something you have, such as a smartphone or a security device, or it could be something you are, such as your fingerprint or facial recognition.
Dashlane, LastPass, and a few others are compatible with Google Authenticator and its workalikes. LastPass and Keeper have their own authentication apps.
As for RoboForm, you can set up multi-factor on your account by logging into your RoboForm Online Account, selecting Security from the My Settings dropdown menu, and in the One Time Password Option section, choose Email, Google Authenticator, or Phone (SMS).
RoboForm does not support hardware security keys. Dashlane supports authentication using a U2F (Universal Two Factor) device such as the latest Yubikey. LastPass offers more multi-factor choices than the rest, ranging from high-tech devices to a simple paper grid that you keep in your wallet.
To further supplement your master password, you can require fingerprint authentication, but only with a Windows Biometric Framework device.
Emergency Password Access
If you were to be hit by a bus tomorrow, would your heirs be able to access your digital assets? With RoboForm Everywhere, setting up your digital legacy is easy.
In a previous edition, setting up emergency access was as easy as entering your contact’s email address and specifying a time-out period. The current version of RoboForm requires you to ask your emergency contact to install RoboForm on their device.
Dashlane lets you offer a subset of your logins to an emergency contact. With LogMeOnce, you can bequeath your whole password collection to an heir or assign logins one at a time to inheritors. In a work situation, business-grade accounts allow an administrator to take over an employee’s passwords if, say, that employee leaves the company. That’s how it works in Zoho Vault, for example.
Secure Sharing
RoboForm permits sharing individual logins in several ways. On the right-click menu for a passcard are two options, Sharing and Send. With either one, you simply enter the email address of the recipient. But as with giving someone emergency access, RoboForm sends the recipient an email requiring that they sign up for a free RoboForm account, download the software, and install it on their devices.
When you make changes to a shared passcard, changes sync to the recipient. If you choose Send, the changes do not sync. Those using the free edition can receive passcards, but they can’t share their own with others.
Like Keeper and 1Password, RoboForm lets you create a folder for sharing logins. Create the folder, drag some logins into it, and add one or more users to share it. For each user, you choose a role. Limited means the recipient can log in using the passcard from the browser menu but can’t view or edit it. A Regular User can both use and edit the passcard, and any changes they make sync to all users of the shared folder. Finally, in the Manager role, the recipient can add new shares or edit existing users.
Security Center
The Security Center page lists all your logins, identifying weak ones on one tab, reused passwords on another, and total duplicates on a third. If you have a low security score, it’s time to start making improvements.
Your first move should be to check the reused passwords because when you use the same password on multiple websites, you multiply the effect of a security breach on any of them.
A similar feature in Dashlane, LastPass, and LogMeOnce includes the option to automate password change for specific popular sites. With RoboForm, each listed site has a link to the login page, but you must handle changing the passwords yourself, possibly calling on the password generator for help. When you’re done, RoboForm records the changed passwords.
With the dupes out of the way, we recommend going back to the main list and sorting by password strength. Starting with the worst of them, fix a few every day until you see nothing but Strong in the password strength column. Now you’re using your password manager in the best possible way!
Mobile Editions
RoboForm offers mobile editions for iOS and Android. The mobile editions have nearly the same functionality as the Windows and Mac desktop editions.
On an iOS device, launching a passcard opens it in RoboForm’s internal browser. RoboForm works in much the same way on Android devices.
Typing your master password on a smartphone can be tough, but you shouldn’t leave your password manager unlocked. The mobile editions let you protect a logged-in session with a PIN or Face ID.
RoboForm for Business
RoboForm’s business software makes password security a priority. The password report for RoboForm is easy to read, devoid of the graphs and images found in LastPass’ administrator panel. An admin can quickly note which employees have a high security score, and which employees need some help with their password security.
Though RoboForm does not support all forms of multi-factor authentication, it encourages employees to use one-time password emailed codes, or time-based one-time passwords received through authentication apps by noting their two-factor authentication status on their report.
Each employee has their own password vault where they can keep their work-related credentials and join groups where they can share passwords with other RoboForm-enrolled employees.
Unlike competitors Zoho Vault, Dashlane, and LastPass, RoboForm does not have the option to enable single sign-on (SSO). SSO reduces the number of passwords an employee must memorize to get into their work accounts. RoboForm for Business has integrations with XenApp and XenDesktop. LastPass has integrations with more well-known and widely used services such as Google Workspace and Okta.
Powerful, But Not Very User Friendly
RoboForm Everywhere has strong form-filling abilities and capable password management. However, in an age when many competing products are updating user interfaces and working on ease of use, RoboForm’s UI leaves something to be desired. The mess of folders and trees on its desktop app needs streamlining, and finding some features takes more time than expected.
Our Editors’ Choice products have more to offer. Dashlane is the poster child for slick interface and ease of use, while Myki is a full-featured free password manager with a modern user interface and excellent security features.
