Password Manager - mSecure

Security-ease of use

TIRED OF THE ANNOYING pop up begging for the paid tier. I get it, you profit from this. But you shouldn’t be annoying your customers who got you here. Yes, I can tap the X to close it but it basically reappears every time because the app doesn’t stay open all the time in the background. It’s simply aggravating. Glad there’s better options these days.

I purchased mSecure in May 2010 for $2.99. In 2016 I paid again for a feature upgrade. I was a loyal, paying customer for nearly a decade with zero complaints. Then came the bait and switch. Around 2019 the app was quietly migrated to a subscription model with a bloated new interface. When I raised concerns I couldn't even export my own password data, data I had trusted to this platform for nearly ten years. I have support ticket history with your team (ask Mark) documenting exactly what that experience was like. The developer has now responded twice, and the response is built on a single semantic trick: that they never used the literal word "Lifetime." I never claimed they did. So let's talk about what is true. Your own authorized promotional listing on StackSocial described mSecure as: "Universal App, Buy once and run on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch." That is your marketing language, not mine. "Buy once" has a clear meaning. When I bought this in 2010, App Store subscriptions for utility apps did not exist. Apple didn't support subscription apps until 2011, and broad support across all categories didn't arrive until 2016. Every consumer who paid for a one-time purchase in that era had every reasonable basis to treat it as permanent access. Nothing in your marketing said otherwise. On your own support forum, a user described v5 as the "current pay once for license plan" before v6 changed it. Your team left that uncorrected. My interpretation was not a fringe misreading. It was the near-universal understanding of your customer base, reflected in dozens of reviews from long-term users who felt exactly the same way. The developer's latest reply leans on a "perpetual" 50% legacy discount as proof of good faith. Read the fine print they themselves provide: it disappears permanently the moment you cancel, and reinstating it requires emailing them to ask. A discount that vanishes when a customer makes a normal consumer choice is a retention hook, not a courtesy. I am not disputing your right to change your business model. What I objected to then and object to now is that customers who paid under one model were quietly converted to subscribers with no meaningful choice and no clean exit. The painful export process I went through to reach Bitwarden tells you everything about how much this company values your autonomy versus your recurring payment. Bitwarden is free, transparent, and works better in every measurable way. If you are shopping for a password manager, skip this one. The product has declined, the pricing model changed under existing customers without fair notice, and when those customers speak up with documented facts, the developer calls them liars. Note that I have no way to reply to the developer's response directly. The App Store only lets me revise my own review, so this is the complete and final record from my side.