I’ve paid for 1Password for years. It’s really one of those things that have just gone out of my wallet for a decade without me thinking about it. Today I canceled. Suggestions for what to move to at the bottom!
It isn’t the product. The product is fine. It’s who they’ve decided to cut a check to, and defend in follow-ups.
What happened
At the end of August, 1Password and 37signals each pledged $100,000 a year for three years to the Omacom Foundation, the nonprofit behind Omarchy. That makes 1Password a “Distinguished Corporate Patron.” The foundation’s phrase, not mine 🤢.
If you don’t live in this corner of the internet: DHH made Ruby on Rails and Omarchy and is co-owner and CTO of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY. For the last couple of years or so he has used his personal blog to publish racist, xenophobic essays. It started with dog whistles and “well, he’s just European I guess 🤷♂️” and now is fully mask off.
I’m going to quote him, because we’ve moved far beyond “problematic”.
In “As I remember London”, published in September 2025, he wrote that London had become “alien” because it was “no longer full of native Brits.” He called the flags at a Tommy Robinson march “heartwarming.” The march he was praising was led behind a banner reading “REMIGRATION NOW”, a demand for the forced removal of immigrants and their descendants.
Then, in July, he published “Wolves, sheep, and gypsies”. “Gypsies” is his word. The post compares Romani people living in Copenhagen to a growing population of wolves. It ends:
When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn’t hard, it isn’t cruel. It’s the basic logic of self-preservation.
That’s a call for ethnic cleansing. He took an ethnic group, compared its members to predators overrunning a habitat, and prescribed removing them from the country. I’m not the only person who read it that way. HE SUCKS.
Why this is the line
Of every open source project 1Password could have funded, they picked his.
Their reasoning leaked. In a memo to staff, CEO David Faugno said Omarchy is now the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password customers, and that the money goes “to the Omacom Foundation, not an individual.” He also said 1Password does not endorse DHH’s “hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views.”
I don’t buy it. If you don’t endorse someone’s views, you don’t sign a three year pledge to his foundation and announce it in a joint post with his company. The announcement went out on the foundation’s own site, alongside 37signals, which DHH co-owns. Someone at 1Password knew about the wolves post (the memo says as much), weighed it against the install numbers, and signed anyway. That looks like an endorsement to me. The disclaimer was for staff.
Publicly, 1Password has said nothing. The Verge asked the company for comment on August 31 and then asked again before publishing on September 2. It did not respond. Those were two chances to explain the decision or walk it back. It took neither.
So the reason is: DHH’s users are 1Password’s users, and that’s worth $300,000. The “not an individual” part is a distinction I’m supposed to find comforting. The foundation exists to support his distro. He is its president. The distro is his. The blog is his. He has an iron grip over the things he has created, which is his right, but that doesn’t mean we all have to use them.
I don’t need my password manager to agree with me about anything. I need it to not write checks to a foundation run by a man who says Romani people should be handled like wolves and who spends his fortunes on whatever this is.
Where I went
Bitwarden. It is open source and can be self-hosted, which means I have the option not to hand my vault to another company. Bitwarden also has a guide specifically for importing from 1Password.
If privacy and jurisdiction are your top concern, Proton Pass is the other reasonable choice. Proton is based in Switzerland and operates under Swiss law, and it has its own 1Password import guide. If you live entirely inside Apple’s ecosystem and want zero effort, Apple Passwords works, though its cross-platform support stops at Apple devices and Windows browsers.
Migrating took an afternoon. Export from 1Password, import into the new one, spot-check that logins and 2FA seeds came across, and delete the export file because 1Password exports it unencrypted. If you have passkeys, use the mobile Credential Exchange flow where your new manager supports it; desktop exports do not include them. Then cancel.
One subscription
Nobody at 1Password is going to notice mine. I want them to notice ours.
Companies keep making this calculation because the association is free. They get DHH’s audience and his reputation in one corner of the industry, while everyone disgusted by his politics is expected to complain for a few days and keep paying. I want that calculation to stop working. I want attaching your logo and your money to DHH to cost customers.
Angry posts they can wait out. Cancellations they can’t.
If you moved too, tell me where you landed. I’m keithlaugh.love on Bluesky.