Quick answer
Yes — Vaultly is a one-time-purchase alternative to 1Password Teams. It costs $39 once, while 1Password Teams runs $7.99/user/mo — about $96 per year, every year. Bitwarden-style zero-knowledge vaults, shared teams and TOTP, self-hosted with no per-seat fee. It is for people who want the job done on their own hardware without a renewal date — not for teams that live inside 1Password Teams's ecosystem.
The verdict
Switch to Vaultly if you are an individual or small team paying 1Password Teams $7.99/user/mo for work your own machine can do. Five months of 1Password for a five-person team already costs more than Vaultly, which then never charges you a per-seat cent again.
Stay with 1Password Teams if your workflow depends on its integrations, you need enterprise features (SSO, admin controls, SLAs), or your team is large enough that per-seat collaboration tooling is worth the bill. Vaultly does not try to replicate those.
Head to head
| Vaultly | 1Password Teams | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $7.99/user/mo |
| 5-person team, 3 years | $39 | ~$1,438 |
| Zero-knowledge encryption | Yes | Yes |
| Your data on your server | Yes | No |
| Shared vaults | Yes | Yes |
| TOTP codes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit log | Yes | Business tier |
| Works offline / air-gapped | Yes | Limited |
| Source you can read | Yes, MIT | No |
| 5-year cost | $39 | $480 |
Where 1Password Teams still wins
- Ecosystem and integrations. Established tools accumulate years of third-party integrations, templates and add-ons. If your workflow is wired into 1Password Teams's ecosystem, switching means rebuilding that plumbing — a real cost.
- Team and enterprise features. Shared workspaces, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs and a vendor to call when something breaks — that is what the higher subscription tiers actually buy, and a pay-once app does not come with it.
- Familiarity and hiring. 1Password Teams is the name people already know. Onboarding a team onto a tool nobody has used before takes time the subscription never charges for.
Where Vaultly wins
- Price, permanently. $39 once versus $96/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- Zero-knowledge client-side crypto. PBKDF2 at 600k iterations into AES-256-GCM via the Web Crypto API, so a server compromise is not a vault compromise.
- Shared team vaults. Vault keys are wrapped with each member RSA-OAEP public key in the browser, and the server only relays wrapped keys it cannot read.
- Logins, notes and cards. Store logins, secure notes and cards with folders, search, a strong password generator and a strength meter.
The math
Five months of 1Password for a five-person team already costs more than Vaultly, which then never charges you a per-seat cent again.
- After 1 year: Vaultly has cost you $39 total — 1Password Teams has cost $96.
- After 3 years: Vaultly is still $39 — the subscription is at $288.
- After 5 years: Vaultly is still $39 — the subscription is at $480.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. Vaultly is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/password-manager-selfhosted-mvp and always will be. The $39 buys the packaged 1-click installer and setup; building from source is free.
Where does my data live, and what can the server see?
On your own server, as ciphertext. The server can see email addresses, item counts and timestamps, vault names and audit metadata, but not names, URLs, usernames, passwords or notes, which stay inside the encryption.
What if I forget my master password?
It is unrecoverable by design; there is no reset. Export regularly (the export is ciphertext too) and store it safely.
Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $39 once, no renewal, no per-seat billing, no license server. Deploy it on your VPS and it keeps working regardless of team size.
Try Vaultly — $39, one time
Or get Vaultly plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.