A password manager for freelancers, agencies and solopreneurs

If you handle dozens of client and tool logins, you need a password manager with categories, fast search, a generator and a safe way to hand over a single login. Secure It Password Manager has all four. It keeps your encrypted vault in your own Google Drive, and it is a one-time purchase of US$4.99 (local prices vary by country on Google Play).

One caveat up front: Secure It is built for one person who sometimes shares single entries. It is not a team vault with roles and an admin console. If that is what your agency needs, the section on limits below tells you so plainly.

The problem: one more login for every client and every tool

A freelancer's password list grows in steps. A client gives you access to their Instagram and Meta Business account. Another sends a CMS login by email. You sign up for a scheduler, an invoicing tool, a stock-photo site, a design app. Then comes the AI stack: a chat assistant, an image generator, a transcription tool, each with its own account.

Within a year you can have a hundred or more logins, and the pressure is always the same: be quick, don't lock yourself out, don't mix up clients. That is how people end up reusing one password across five client accounts, or keeping logins in a spreadsheet, a notes app or a chat thread.

Reuse is the real risk. If one small tool is breached and its password also opens a client's account, the damage lands on your client and your reputation, not just on you. A password manager removes the reason to reuse: you never have to remember the passwords, so every one can be unique and random.

NIST agrees on the principle. Its current password guidance (SP 800-63B-4, section 3.1.1.2) says services "SHALL allow the use of password managers and autofill functionality", and that they must not force periodic password changes or impose composition rules like "one symbol and one capital". Length and uniqueness matter more than tricks.

What to look for: a checklist

Use this list when you compare tools, ours included.

• Categories and tags. You need to separate Work from Finance from Social, and ideally add your own groups, such as one per client.
• Fast search. With 150 entries, scrolling is not an option. You should find "acme" in two keystrokes.
• A real generator. Length slider, character sets, one tap to copy. Long random passwords for every account.
• One-tap copy. Copying a username or password without revealing it on screen helps when you work in front of clients or on a call.
• A way to hand over one login. Not the whole vault, and not by pasting into a chat that lives forever.
• Recovery that works. If you lose the phone, you must still reach every client account. Ask what the recovery path is before you commit.
• Cost over time. A yearly subscription for each tool adds up. See the table below.
• Where the vault lives. Who holds the encrypted file that contains every client's keys?
• Platforms you actually use. Phone for approvals on the move, desktop and browser for daily work.
• Import. You should be able to bring in what the browser has already saved.

How to organise client accounts in Secure It

Secure It's features line up with that checklist. Here is a workable setup for a freelancer or small agency.

1. Use categories as your first filter. The app comes with Work, Gaming, Social and Finance, and you can add your own. Keep Social for the channels you manage, Finance for banking and invoicing, and create one custom category per large client or per type of account.

2. Name entries so search finds them. Put the client first: "Acme – Instagram", "Acme – Shopify admin". Search then returns everything for one client with one query, and a naming habit is more reliable than memory.

3. Generate, don't invent. Use the password generator with the length slider and character sets. Set a long length for accounts that allow it, and fewer symbols only where a site rejects them.

4. Copy with one tap. Copy the username, then the password, straight into the login form. Nothing needs to be typed or read aloud.

5. Import what you already have. Secure It can import saved passwords from Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave and Firefox, so the logins already scattered across browsers end up in one vault. After importing, clear them from the browser.

6. Work where you work. The Windows app (free on the Microsoft Store, unlocked by the Google Play purchase) and the Chrome extension (also unlocked by the purchase, and it installs in Brave and Opera too) mean your vault is at your desk as well as on your phone. See download for the current status of each.

Unlock is by fingerprint or the master password, and there are light and dark themes, which is a small thing when you spend all day in it.

Handing over a login without handing over your vault

The VA who needs the scheduler for a day, the designer who needs one CMS account: these are the cases where agencies tend to paste passwords into chat.

Secure It shares a single entry instead. It makes an encrypted copy of that one entry in your Google Drive and gives you a link that expires after a time you choose, from 15 minutes to 7 days. You can add a passphrase, and send the passphrase through a different channel than the link. The rest of your vault is not part of the share.

When the job is done, change the password for that account. That habit, more than any tool, keeps handed-over access from living on.

Your vault, your Google Drive

Every client login in one place makes the question "who holds that file?" important. Secure It's answer is simple.

Secure It is a zero-knowledge password manager that stores your encrypted vault in your own Google Drive: no company servers, not even ours. The vault is encrypted on your device with Argon2id and AES-256-GCM before it leaves, as a single file, and uses the narrow drive.file scope. Without Google sign-in it works fully offline on one device. Sync across Android, Windows and the browser extension needs a Google account, because sync goes through your own Drive. More detail is on the security page.

Compare that with where the others keep your data:

• Bitwarden cloud accounts are stored in Bitwarden's cloud, in a US or EU region (Bitwarden). Self-hosting is possible, but needs your own server with Docker, a domain and open ports (Bitwarden).
• 1Password hosts your account data in the region you choose at sign-up (1Password).
• Dashlane names AWS (Ireland, Germany) as its subprocessor for storing encrypted data (Dashlane).

For an agency, that difference matters: a client's credentials are not sitting in a central store alongside every other customer's vault.

Recovery if you lose a phone

Losing a phone should not mean losing access to forty client accounts. Secure It gives every user a 12-word recovery phrase and an Emergency Kit PDF that includes an offline recovery script. Print it or store it somewhere safe, away from the device.

Other managers handle this differently. Bitwarden says it has "no way to access, retrieve, or reset your master password" (Bitwarden), and Dashlane says it cannot help you if you lose your master password with no recovery method set up (Dashlane). Both offer options you must set up in advance. With Secure It, the recovery phrase is part of creating the vault.

Cost over a year (and three)

Subscriptions add up, especially when you are a one-person business watching every line of the P&L. Prices below are in US dollars, as of 20 October 2026, and exclude tax.

Sources: 1Password and Bitwarden pricing pages (checked 20 Oct 2026). Dashlane and NordPass prices are from security.org and security.org, since both vendors' own pages did not show amounts to us; confirm on the vendor's page before you buy. The 1Password three-year figure assumes the promotional first year, then the regular price.

Two honest notes. Bitwarden also has a free plan with unlimited passwords and devices, so it costs nothing if you do not need its paid extras (the integrated authenticator, file attachments, vault health reports and emergency access are paid features). And Dashlane ended its free plan in September 2025 (Dashlane), so there is no free tier there.

What the table shows is the one-purchase model. Secure It's single purchase covers the Android app, and the Windows app and Chrome extension are included. Read more on pricing.

Honest limits: who should pick something else

We would rather you know now than find out in the middle of a client project.

• No team vault. Secure It's feature list has no shared team vaults, roles or admin console. It is built for individuals who share single entries. If you need to onboard and offboard staff, set permissions per person, or audit who opened what, choose a business-oriented manager with an admin console.
• Not independently audited yet. 1Password and Bitwarden publish third-party audits (1Password); Secure It does not have one yet, and we are a small, independent developer rather than a large security company.
• Android is in closed testing, so the app is not on sale on Google Play yet. The Windows app and Chrome extension are live. The Edge listing is in review; until it is live, Edge users can install the extension from the Chrome Web Store.
• No iOS app yet. It is coming soon to the App Store, with no date. If your clients or your team live on iPhones, factor that in.
• Multi-device use needs a Google account, because sync goes through your own Google Drive.

If you are a solo freelancer, a VA-assisted creator or a very small agency where one person owns the credentials, this model fits well. If you are a 15-person agency where several people need standing access to the same vault, it does not, today.

Putting it together

A setup that works whichever manager you choose:

1. Move every login into one vault and delete the spreadsheet.
2. Replace reused passwords, starting with email, banking and every client's admin accounts.
3. Name entries by client first.
4. Share single logins with an expiring link, and rotate the password afterwards.
5. Print the recovery phrase and keep it offline.

Secure It does all five, with the vault in your own Drive and no subscription. More answers are on the FAQ page, and the full spec is on the facts page.