How to Start Using Passbolt for Your Team
Passbolt is an open source password and secret management platform built for teams. To start using it, you have two entry points: Install on-prem for self-hosted control, or Try Passbolt Cloud for a hosted trial. The right choice depends on whether your team needs to keep credential data on its own infrastructure or wants to evaluate the product with minimal setup.
What Passbolt Is
Passbolt is an open source credential platform built first for security-conscious IT teams, but designed to be simple enough for company-wide adoption. According to the site, it is used by 50,000+ organisations worldwide, including governments, defence agencies, and IT companies.
The platform positions itself around collaboration, compliance, and control — teams share credentials constantly, and Passbolt's goal is to let them do that securely rather than blocking the behaviour.
Two Ways to Get Started
| Option | What it means | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|
| Install on-prem | Self-hosted deployment on your own infrastructure | Teams that need to control where credential data lives |
| Try Passbolt Cloud | Hosted trial of the platform | Teams evaluating the product before committing to a deployment |
Both options are reachable from the Passbolt homepage. The on-prem path is linked directly from the pricing area of the site, and the Cloud trial is offered alongside it as the lower-friction starting point.
Choosing between them
- Pick on-prem if your organisation has requirements about data sovereignty, internal network isolation, or infrastructure control. The site describes Passbolt as "sovereign" and "adaptable," and notes it scales from a team of 5 to an organisation of 5000.
- Pick Cloud if you want to see how Passbolt works for your team before investing in a self-hosted setup. This is the faster path to a working environment.
What to Check Before You Commit
The site lists several signals worth verifying against your own requirements:
- Audited: SOC 2 Type II compliant
- Privacy: GDPR compliant
- Origin: Made in Europe
- Standards body: Member of the FIDO Alliance
- Certification in progress: Passbolt has entered the ANSSI CSPN certification process
If your organisation requires specific certifications before adoption, confirm the current status of each directly with Passbolt, since certification processes change over time.
Who It's Built For
Passbolt's own framing is that it is built first for security-conscious IT teams while remaining simple enough for company-wide rollout. Named users on the site include Bosch, the French Ministère de l'intérieur, GLS, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, TU Graz, ZIT-RLP, Hochschule Ruhr West, Information Services (Bulgaria), and CTIE (Luxembourg).
That mix — large enterprises, government bodies, and universities — suggests the platform is intended to work across both regulated and general enterprise environments. If your team shares credentials regularly and needs an auditable, self-hostable option, Passbolt is worth evaluating through one of the two entry points above.