Additional v7 standalone licence?!

Hell I’d buy a second standalone license if they agreed to this, just to support the maintenance.

@claus - thanks for the suggestion. We sold standalone licenses for 1Password 7 for Mac for about three years, from May, 2018 through a few months ago. Anyone who wanted one was welcome to purchase it during that period. We stopped selling licenses recently in large part because we knew that 1Password 8 would not include standalone licensing nor local vault support and we did not want users purchasing licenses for a version that would soon be replaced, with no path to use/transfer their license. The presumption (which is borne out by multiple commenters here) is that those users who intentionally sought out standalone licensing are not interested in a subscription, and we didn't want anyone feeling we'd sold them a license that we knew shortly would have no non-membership upgrade path to the new version.

That said, 1Password 7 for Mac is not "going away." It is still available for download from https://1password.com/downloads, and it will be for some time to come. Licenses already purchased for version 7 (or any other version, for that matter) never expire, so they can be used to license 1Password for as long as you have hardware and OS versions and browsers that are compatible with the version for which you have a license. And we have always committed to applying security fixes if necessary to older versions. Eventually, over time, 1Password 7 for Mac is likely to be less compatible with newer versions of web browser technologies and versions of macOS, just as 1Password 3 for Mac will not run on the last few versions of macOS. But there will be no switch thrown to "turn off" 1Password 7 for Mac on the day that 1Password 8 for Mac is released. I think this is (mostly) what you were asking for anyway, so hope this is helpful in clarifying the path forward. :)

we knew that 1Password 8 would not include standalone licensing nor local vault support

I think there is sometimes a bit of confusion with the use of the phrase "local vault". 1PW does have local vaults in the sense that the vaults always exist on the device and can be accessed even if there is no internet connection. What it does not have, going forward, is standalone vaults, which can be synchronised between devices without a cloud connection (to 1password.com or .ca or .eu).

Some people, particularly those who use these forums, want standalone vaults for excellent reasons. I can see significant disadvantages to standalone vaults for the less computer literate, and that could be a reason to get rid of them.

But notice that AgileBits are currently surveying whether users might want a self-hosted web server, which removes the disadvantages of the cloud. They weren't even able to consider it previously as they felt that WebDAV (for instance0 had too many technical issues. This possibility seems to me an advantage of the new back-end.

Hey @danco! :) You're quite right that the terminology can be a little confusing especially if you're new (which I know you are not). Yes, there is always a local cache of all your 1Password data on any device on which you've installed 1Password (Mac, PC, iOS device, etc). And I too am eager to see the results of the self-hosting survey. We've been getting questions about self-hosting an instance from various customers ever since we launched 1password.com accounts, so now interested users can register their interest for it more formally.

@Lars Since the app is already keeping a local cache of passwords, logins, etc., and all the engineering work needed in order to support offline use will already have to be done, why not officially allow for a standalone/offline-only mode of operation for users who (for whatever reason) are just not going to be able to use a cloud-synced solution? This wouldn't even necessarily preclude a subscription-only pricing model; it would just allow users who can't do the cloud syncing thing to keep using the product.

Indeed, users could simply store the vault in their iCloud Drive folder and syncing would be done automatically.