If you were also a former Xmarks user, back in September you would have received an email from Xmarks alerting you that it will soon be closing it’s doors and advising you to go elsewhere for browser synchronization services. Regretfully, this is exactly what we did, turning to Firefox Sync. While Firefox Sync provides a descent alternative, I find the Xmarks platform to be superior. On December 2nd 2010, exciting news was announced that LastPasss, our favorite online password manager would be acquiring Xmarks and ensuring the survival of this wonderful service.
Xmarks is a free browser synchronization service allowing you to seamlessly access your favorite websites across computers and browsers. The cross browser add-on is being used by over 4.5 million users and is supported on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari (MacOS only), Google Chrome, and iPhone. Password synchronization is also offered by Xmarks, but this service is rather basic compared to the preferred LastPass service.
Xmarks will transition to a “freemium” model similar to LastPass, where you can use the basic service for free, or pay $12 per year for premium service with new enhanced features like priority support and access to mobile apps such as Android and iPhone. Unfortunately, some features that used to be free, like synchronizing open tabs, will now only be available to premium users. Also offered is a bundled premium annual subscription of both Xmarks and LastPass for a reduced rate of $20 per year. For now the two services will continue to run as independent platforms, but we anticipate sometime in the near future the two services will become integrated as one.
We are excited that Xmarks will live on, especially knowing it is now in the hands of our favorite password manager LastPass. This is certainly great news and makes for a solid team providing superior data-syncing tools.
Only one thing left to do, deactivate Firefox Sync and reactivate Xmarks. If you work on more than one computer, always have access to all your favorite web sites, just download Xmarks for free. But don’t stop there, download LastPass to manage all of your online user-names and passwords. Business mergers don’t get more complimentary than this. Two online syncing tools we use daily and suggest you do too.
