After self-hosting Bitwarden for several years, a longtime user is abandoning the password manager, citing fundamental problems with both the backend infrastructure and client applications. The review details a frustrating journey through "enterprise software hell" with the official Bitwarden server, which requires MSSQL Express and significant resources to run.

Since receiving $100M in growth equity from Battery Ventures in 2022, Bitwarden has made questionable technical decisions. Rather than adopting Vaultwarden—a community-built Rust implementation with three times more GitHub stars—Bitwarden hired the project's developer and released a lighter .NET version that still consumes three times more RAM. The company also quietly added a restrictive SDK license in late 2024, restricting use to Bitwarden services only, before reverting to GPLv3 after community backlash.

The client applications reveal deeper problems. Importing passwords from competitors simply doesn't work as advertised, and support deflects users to community forums. Moving items between vaults requires exporting to JSON, editing manually, and re-importing—a basic feature missing after ten years. For users seeking open-source password management, these failures are harder to excuse from a VC-backed company than they would be from a genuine community project.