Most access management software is built for large enterprises. Tools like Okta, CyberArk, and Microsoft Entra ID give security teams granular control, including single sign-on, federated identity, session monitoring, and privileged account management. These features work to help reduce security threats and make it easy for your team to securely access the tools they need to do their jobs
But if you're running a small or midsize business, access management software like Okta and CyberArk is potentially overkill. Either you end up paying for features you don’t need, or you pay for a tool that you can’t easily set up across your organization. Without adoption by your employees, an access management tool isn’t effective. Your team will fall back on bad habits, like creating a spreadsheet of shared logins and re-using the same weak passwords across multiple tools.
In this post, we look at the key features a small business needs from access management software, like vault management, admin policies, and SaaS monitoring.
Note: We made LastPass to help small to midsize businesses securely and easily manage access amongst their team. This includes setting up an encrypted vault, making it easy for teams to log in to their tools, and giving your company oversight on which apps and tools your employees are using. You can sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo to learn more.
What to look for in access management software for a small business
Enterprise buyers evaluate access management on key things like federated identity and privileged session recording.
As a smaller business, your criteria are different and simpler. In our experience working with small to midsize businesses, these are the features that matter the most to them:
-
They want a tool that’s fast to set up and easy to run without a dedicated IT team. Often small businesses either don’t have an IT team or they have an IT team that has a significant backlog, so they can’t take the time to train employees on complicated software with a steep learning curve.
-
They want to control how people log in. They want to be able to require MFA and set other login rules, like how complex a new password has to be or whether or not the person can log in from a TOR network. Further, they want to be able to scope those rules to specific users or groups. For example, it’s common for different teams and individuals within the same organization to require different security levels.
-
Credentials live somewhere secure and shareable. An encrypted vault is the foundation of any good password manager or access management software. Organizations want a vault that they can set permissions on, so they can give the right people access and revoke as necessary, like when someone leaves your company.
-
They want to be able to see which SaaS and AI tools their team is actually using. Employees sign up for new apps constantly, and the ones IT never hears about are the ones creating access risk. Companies can't govern access to a tool that they don't know exists. This is often an overlooked part of access management software for small businesses. But as more and more employees try new tools, managing shadow IT and SaaS sprawl is becoming more relevant and pressing.
-
They want to be able to restrict access to tools as necessary. A key part of access management is managing which tools your team can easily access. You want to be able to block specific sites or give your team information on why you’d prefer if they used a different site.
With this criteria in mind, we’ll review different access management software below.
LastPass: the best access management software for small businesses
LastPass is access management software built for small and midsize businesses. It gives your team a secure place to store and share login credentials, lets you set the rules for how people log into your company's tools, and shows you which apps employees are signing up for on their own so you can decide what to do about them.
You get all of this without needing a dedicated security team to set it up or keep it running. Below, we'll walk through how it works: how you control the way people log in, the vault your team uses every day, and how you see and manage the tools they access on their own.
Determine how users can log into approved tools and websites
When you set up LastPass, you create a business account that you control as the admin, and each person on your team gets their own vault inside it. They install the browser extension and log into their vault, where their work logins sit in one place, organized into folders. (LastPass uses a zero-knowledge approach, meaning we never have access to what's stored in that vault.)
From then on, your team logs into their tools straight through the extension: when someone lands on the sign-in page for an approved app, LastPass recognizes it and fills in their stored credentials. On desktop, it fills in their MFA code too, so logging in is a single click instead of a password prompt and a code lookup. When this is set up, which only takes a few minutes, your team is no longer typing passwords by hand, reusing the same one everywhere, or stashing them in a browser or on a sticky note.
Because logins run through LastPass, you can set rules for how people are allowed to log in. We currently offer over 120 admin policies that you can scope to specific users or groups instead of applying one blanket setting to the whole company.
For example, you can set up multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements, which asks for a second proof of identity beyond the password — a prompt on a phone, or a one-time code. You can require MFA across the board, or only where the risk is highest. For example, you can require it for your finance team when they access banking portals, while keeping a lighter rule for people whose roles don't touch sensitive systems.
A few other examples of what you can set and scope:
-
Password requirements: Enforce a 16-character minimum for your IT staff while keeping general employees at 12.
-
Network restrictions: Block logins from TOR networks across the whole company, or from devices like jailbroken phones.
-
Different rules for different people: Apply one set of policies to contractors and another to full-time staff, or prohibit offline vault access for anyone working on a shared computer.
You don't have to build all of this from scratch. When you first set up LastPass, you start from a recommended set of default policies and adjust from there.
Plus, your team saves new logins to their vault as they go
Your team doesn't have to stop and manually enter credentials to build their vault. When someone logs into a site for the first time, LastPass offers to securely save their credentials, so they're there for next time. When they create a new account, LastPass generates a strong, unique password right in the browser, so people aren't falling back on a weak password or reusing one from somewhere else.
They can also add entries by hand, and store more than passwords, such as API tokens, Wi-Fi credentials, payment cards, and anything else that shouldn't be sitting in an email or a Slack message. Everything they save syncs to the browser extension and the mobile app, so it's available wherever they're working.
As the admin, you can also create shared folders, like one for the marketing team's social accounts, one for finance's payment cards, one for vendor logins, and grant access to the right people or groups, so everyone reaches only the credentials they're meant to.
A core part of access management is making sure that when someone leaves, they lose access to your confidential credentials while the rest of your team keeps theirs. Without access management software, that means resetting every shared password the departing person knew.
Forsters LLP, a London law firm with more than 500 employees, knew that problem well — with people regularly joining and leaving, every departure put the firm's system access at risk. As InfoSec Manager Neil Bell put it: "The risk of losing access to systems when people left the firm was high."
With shared credentials held in LastPass, none of that is necessary. When someone leaves, you revoke their access, and the credential stays in the vault, still working for everyone else. (Read the full Forsters LLP case study.)
See which un-vetted tools your team is accessing and set up restrictions
Everything above is about the tools you've approved for your team to use. But your team is also signing up for software you haven't had a chance to vet.
For example, a designer can start using a new AI image tool, someone in marketing can connect an analytics app to analyze data, and a few people are using ChatGPT. This is shadow IT, and it's widespread: in the Cloud Security Alliance's 2025 State of SaaS Security report, 55% of organizations said employees adopt SaaS tools without checking with IT first. You can't manage access to tools you don't know exist. LastPass gives you two features to close that gap: SaaS Monitoring to see what's being used, and SaaS Protect to do something about it.
SaaS Monitoring works through the same browser extension your team already uses to log in, so there are no separate agents to deploy. It shows you which SaaS and AI apps people are using, how they're logging in, such as whether they logged in with SSO, a vaulted password, a passkey, or an unvaulted password typed in by hand. Plus, you can see whether they're on corporate or personal accounts.
For example, in the dashboard above, you might see that four employees are using ChatGPT: two on corporate accounts and two on personal ones, some logged in with Google, some with a password they created. You can see when each person last logged in. From there, you decide what to do. You can approve it as a standard tool, move everyone onto a corporate account, or restrict it.
That's where SaaS Protect comes in. Once you know what's being used, you can act on it in three ways:
-
Block an app outright. People who try to open it see a LastPass block screen in the browser, which you can customize to explain why it's blocked or point them to an approved alternative.
-
Add an informational pop-up. For softer guidance, you can customize a pop up that will appear when someone tries to access the tool in question, but not block access completely. For example, say your company has an account with DHL, you can show a note when someone visits UPS or FedEx reminding them to use the DHL account instead.
Other key access management features
Beyond controlling access and surfacing shadow IT, a few other features round out what LastPass does for a smaller business.
-
You get an informative Security Dashboard. The Security Dashboard gives you a single security score across everyone enrolled, and breaks down where the weak points are: who has weak passwords, who's reusing credentials, and whether any employee's email has turned up in a known data breach through dark web monitoring. You get a read on your organization's credential health without ever seeing anyone's actual passwords. This is what Paul Longega of Love Struck relies on: "LastPass alerts us to password vulnerabilities, checks if any credentials have appeared in data leaks or on the dark web, and rates the strength of our passwords. Having that level of automated monitoring has been incredibly valuable." (Read the full Love Struck case study.)
-
You can monitor tool usage via your Adoption Dashboard. Rolling a tool out only helps if people actually use it, and the Adoption Dashboard shows you whether they are. Your dashboard gives you three numbers at a glance: your license consumption rate (how many of the seats you bought are in use), your enrollment rate (how many invited people have activated their account), and your active usage rate (how many enrolled users have used LastPass in the last 30 days). That tells you who still needs a nudge and whether you're paying for seats no one's touching. LastPass is designed to be easy to set up and use, which makes adoption more likely, even for a larger company like HOLT CAT, a Caterpillar equipment dealer with more than 3,500 employees, which used all 2,500 of its initial seats in year one, expanded to 3,500, and hit 70% adoption by year two, with employees requesting access before anyone pushed it on them. (Read the full HOLT CAT case study.)
-
You can use LastPass on desktop or mobile apps. The LastPass mobile app for iOS and Android syncs the same vault your team uses on desktop, so their logins are available on their phones too. It unlocks with Face ID, Touch ID, or a fingerprint, and autofills credentials inside other apps and the mobile browser. It also supports passkeys, which your team can save and use anywhere they're accepted.
If LastPass seems like it can be the right access management software for your organization, or if you’d like to learn more, you can:
Other access management software for businesses to consider
NordPass
NordPass is a password manager from Nord Security, the maker of NordVPN, positioned as the budget option for teams that want straightforward credential management. With NordPass, every user gets an encrypted vault — NordPass uses XChaCha20 encryption — along with autofill, a password generator, and extras like email masking and 3GB of file storage per user.
For access management specifically, NordPass is lighter than the other options on our list. NordPass includes around 8 admin policies as of this writing, which is the fewest of the tools on this list.
NordPass also doesn't offer SaaS or AI visibility, so you won't be able to see which tools your employees are logging into or control access to unapproved applications. Support is chat and email only, with no phone option.
NordPass is a reasonable fit for a small team that mainly needs affordable credential storage and sharing and doesn't need to enforce detailed access rules or see what software employees are adopting on their own.
To learn more, you can:
Policy and feature counts reflect each vendor’s publication documentation as of this writing.
1Password
When you use 1Password for access management, every employee gets an encrypted vault for their work logins, with autofill for logging in and the ability to share credentials with individuals or with groups you organize by team or role. On the admin side, you can control how people log in, such as setting account-password requirements, requiring two-factor authentication, and using firewall rules to allow or deny sign-ins from specific locations or IP addresses. These policies apply across your whole team, not to specific users or groups, so everyone is held to the same sign-in rules. Groups come in on the vault side: you can grant each group access to only the vaults its role calls for.
For the visibility and control side of access management, 1Password offers SaaS discovery and device trust: seeing which SaaS and AI apps employees are using, including unapproved ones, and enforcing that only secure devices can reach company resources. These capabilities are part of 1Password's Extended Access Management, a separate part of its lineup from the core password manager.
You can compare current plans on 1Password's business page.
Policy and feature counts reflect each vendor’s publication documentation as of this writing.
Bitwarden
Bitwarden is the open-source option here, and it fits teams that want transparency about how their password manager works, as their code is public and independently audited. It may also be the right fit for companies that want the choice to self-host their vault on their own servers instead of using Bitwarden's cloud. That appeals most to technically comfortable teams, though the hosted version runs like any other cloud tool.
For access management, Bitwarden organizes shared credentials into collections, which you can nest by team or project, and controls who reaches them through groups, roles, and per-collection permissions (view, edit, or manage). You can grant access to a group or an individual and override a group's access for specific people when you need an exception, so people only see the credentials their role calls for; Enterprise plans add custom roles for delegating specific admin tasks. Its enterprise policies (around 18 as of this writing, including master-password complexity, enforced two-factor authentication, required SSO, and vault-export restrictions) apply across the whole organization, and it provisions and deprovisions users through SSO, SCIM, or its Directory Connector for onboarding and offboarding.
For visibility, Bitwarden Access Intelligence (Enterprise plans) reports on weak, reused, and breach-exposed passwords and surfaces apps in use that IT may not know about, with guidance to get employees to fix at-risk credentials. It's built for detecting and remediating credential risk rather than blocking access to specific apps.
To learn more, you can:
Policy and feature counts reflect each vendor’s publication documentation as of this writing.
Dashlane
Dashlane fits teams that want a password manager that's easy for non-technical employees to adopt, with proactive credential-risk monitoring built in. Every employee gets an encrypted vault for logins, passkeys, and secrets like API keys, and can share credentials with groups through collections rather than over Slack or email.
For access management, Dashlane connects to your identity provider over SAML 2.0 (Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace) for single sign-on, and provisions and deprovisions users automatically through SCIM — the piece that handles onboarding and offboarding at scale. Its SSO and SCIM run inside isolated AWS Nitro enclaves, so encryption keys stay inaccessible to Dashlane even during authentication.
Dashlane has 18 admin policies, which is fewer than some of the other options on this list. Plus, these policies, when applied, apply across the whole organization rather than being scoped to specific users or groups.
On visibility, Dashlane's Omnix platform focuses on credential risk rather than SaaS discovery. It monitors both vaulted and non-vaulted users for compromised credentials, sends AI-powered phishing alerts, and delivers automated nudges through Slack and the browser extension that prompt employees to fix risky passwords.
Dashlane has retired its older lower-cost Starter and Team tiers; the current business options are Dashlane Business and Dashlane Omnix.
To learn more, you can:
Policy and feature counts reflect each vendor’s publication documentation as of this writing.
Keeper
Keeper fits teams with strict regulatory requirements, or that need privileged access management alongside a password manager. Where it stands apart from the other tools here is government-grade compliance: on top of the SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications common across business password managers, Keeper adds FedRAMP High, StateRAMP, and FIPS 140-3, which matter if you sell to government agencies or work under regulations that require them.
For access management, each employee gets an encrypted vault, and you share records with individuals or teams using granular per-record permissions (view, edit, share, or owner), plus time-limited and one-time shares. Where Keeper goes further than the other tools here is policy scoping: it organizes your company into nodes — departments, locations, or business units — and each node can have its own roles, admins, and enforcement policies, so one part of the company can be held to stricter rules than another instead of applying one policy everywhere. Keeper connects to your identity provider through SSO (any SAML 2.0 IdP) and provisions and deprovisions users through SCIM or an Active Directory bridge, and a departing employee's vault can be locked and transferred automatically. It also adds privileged access management through KeeperPAM — brokered connections to servers and databases where the credential is never exposed to the user, plus session management and a secrets manager for developer credentials.
On visibility, Keeper's Admin Console includes a security dashboard for weak, reused, and MFA-gap issues, with dark web monitoring available through its BreachWatch add-on, but that's credential-health monitoring, not discovery of which SaaS and AI apps your team is signing up for. Keeper's per-seat pricing tends to start low, though some customers report significant increases at renewal, so it's worth confirming multi-year terms. You can compare current plans on Keeper's business page.
To learn more, you can:
Policy and feature counts reflect each vendor’s publication documentation as of this writing.
Final thoughts: choosing access management software for your business
The right tool depends on how your business is set up. If you have engineering teams that need to manage secrets in code, 1Password's developer tooling is built for that. If you're in a regulated industry or need privileged access management, Keeper goes deepest on government-grade compliance and PAM. If you want an open-source tool you can self-host, Bitwarden is the one to look at. NordPass covers the basics at one of the lowest price points, and Dashlane pairs an easy-to-adopt vault with proactive credential-risk monitoring.
When you use LastPass, you get the credential vault and sharing every tool here offers, plus admin policies you can scope to specific users and groups, and SaaS Monitoring and SaaS Protect to see which SaaS and AI tools your team is using and control access to them — access management built for a small or midsize business, without the enterprise deployment or a dedicated security team to run it.
If LastPass seems like it can be the right access management software for your organization, or if you’d like to learn more, you can:
