How to share passwords with a team safely
The safe way to share passwords with a team is through a password manager’s shared vault or shared item, not by email, chat, or a shared spreadsheet. Sharing through a vault lets you decide who sees which login, change a password once for everyone, and remove a person’s access the day they leave, without anyone copying passwords around.
How to share passwords securely with your team
Use the sharing feature of a password manager, never an email or a chat message. When you paste a password into an email, a copy stays in your sent folder, in the recipient’s inbox, and in every backup of both, long after the person needed it. A shared vault keeps one copy, controlled by you. This is the team side of our guide to password managers, and the providers’ help pages, such as Bitwarden’s guide to sharing, describe the mechanics in detail.
Sharing well comes down to three decisions: who needs which login, how long they need it, and what happens when they no longer do.
Who you share with decides the method
| Who | What they need | Best method |
|---|---|---|
| A business partner or long-term colleague | Ongoing access to several logins | A shared vault or collection in a team plan |
| An accountant or bookkeeper | One or two logins, for months | A vault limited to those logins, or a guest account where offered |
| A contractor for a single project | One login, for weeks | A shared item, removed at the end of the project |
| Someone who needs one password once | A single use | A time-limited sharing link, then change the password |
| Family members helping with the business | Occasional access | The family plan’s shared vault or, on Apple devices, a shared group |
How the main apps share
The mechanics differ, according to each provider’s help pages checked on November 10, 2026:
- Bitwarden shares through collections inside an organization. The free organization covers two users; paid team plans have owner, admin, and user roles. Its Send feature shares text through a link.
- 1Password shares through vaults in a Families, Teams, or Business account, with guest accounts limited to specific vaults: five on Families and the Teams Starter Pack, 20 on Business. It can also share a copy of an item through a link that expires, even with someone who has no account.
- Proton Pass shares vaults with three permission levels: viewer, editor, and admin. The free plan allows two shared vaults with three people each; paid plans allow 50 vaults and 10 people per vault.
- Dashlane shares individual items on its personal plans; collections and sharing groups are reserved for its business plans. It cannot yet share passkeys.
- Keeper shares records and folders with permissions such as edit, share, read-only, or transfer of ownership, and offers a time-limited one-time share link.
- LastPass shares through folders with per-user permissions on its Teams plan and above; its free plan shares one password with one person at a time.
- NordPass shares items on its Premium and Business plans only. Accounts in its US data center cannot share with accounts in its EU data center.
The built-in options are more limited. Google Password Manager only shares with members of your Google family group. Apple’s Passwords app shares through shared groups with family and trusted contacts on recent Apple devices.
When someone leaves
Removing a person from a shared vault stops their access to the vault, but it does not erase what they already saw or copied. The safe sequence is:
- Remove the person from every shared vault, collection, or group, and from the team plan.
- Change the passwords of the accounts they could see, starting with email, banking, and anything with customer data.
- Remove their access in the services themselves, for example their user in your accounting software, rather than relying on a shared login.
- Check the recovery email and phone number of the shared accounts: they should not point to the person who left.
Accounts that support individual users are always better than shared logins: each person signs in as themselves, and leaving means disabling one user.
If a colleague loses access
Account recovery by an administrator is where team plans differ most:
| Provider | Who can recover a member’s account |
|---|---|
| Bitwarden | Administrators, on the Enterprise plan only |
| 1Password | The family organizer, or a team administrator or owner |
| Proton Pass | The administrator, except for members set as “private” |
| Dashlane | Administrators on business plans, if recovery was enabled in advance |
| NordPass | The organization’s owner only, not admins |
| Keeper | Through an account transfer policy set by the administrator |
Set up recovery before anyone needs it. Otherwise, a forgotten master password can mean a lost vault.
Choosing a plan that shares the way you work
Sharing features vary by plan as much as by provider. Our side-by-side look at the main apps for a small team shows which plans include roles and recovery.
Budgeting for the whole team
Team plans are priced per user, and some have minimums. The page on the yearly cost for a team of eight works through the numbers.