Bitwarden lite self-host deployment, formerly unified, is now generally available! This self-host option is a more lightweight and flexible deployment alternative, ideal for homelab enthusiasts and community members who want to get started quickly with self-hosting Bitwarden. With the release of general availability, Bitwarden lite users can benefit from enhanced performance and reliability.
Seems to be an official alternative to Vaultwarden
It’s a pretty normal model. You offer a free version to help make your product popular. People will use it at home and then at work they will gravitate to the thing they are familiar with. Small companies will start on the free version and eventually upgrade.
Yeah it’s a normal model, but BitWarden is a bit special in that their original server-side implementation was enough of a pain to self-host on a small scale that an alternative implementation Vautlwarden was created. And Vaultwarden became very popular in self-hosted circles. And now many years later BitWarden offers a Lite server which scales down. I think it’s a good thing, just a bit unusual. I’m struggling to think of similar examples.
I’m sure Vaultwarden still funnels plenty of enterprise use of BitWarden, since Vaultwarden users still use official BitWarden client.