We know you have choices. There are alternatives and competitors.

Our main criticism of many of them isn’t features—it’s price. Some charge up to $30/user/month. Others charge per push and charge for API access. How can security become the default when adoption is that complicated and expensive? That kind of pricing shuts out smaller teams and orgs that need it most.

Apnotic is a small, dedicated team. We have open source roots, no venture funding, no debt, and we’re profitable. No outside investors or pressures—just a long history of building Password Pusher (since 2011) and a focus on making a sincere, honest, and secure product.

We believe these tools should be priced so that entire organizations can have access—not just the few who use them every day. That’s the position we’re coming from.

Self-Hosted Pricing

We priced Self-Hosted with one goal: let you roll the tool out to your entire organization without per-user sticker shock with all the features you need out of the box.

We don’t charge for every user. Each plan includes a base number of seats: Starter (5), Advanced (25), and Enterprise (50). Need more than the base? We charge for extra seats—but not at competitor rates. Additional seats start at $1/user/month and go down on larger plans.

What’s more, we never limit pushes or requests, and API access is always included.

With Self-Hosted Password Pusher Pro, your data is yours. We even declare this in the EULA:

To be absolutely clear: Apnotic has no ability to access Your Data, and we never will. Your sensitive information, passwords, user content, and all other data stored within your self-hosted deployment remain completely private and inaccessible to Apnotic. We cannot see it, we do not want to see it, and we have designed the Software specifically to ensure that your data stays within your control at all times.

We hope you see the same value we do in this approach. As always, we’ll keep listening to the community and evolving. Password Pusher is what it is today because of the feedback, suggestions, and ideas you’ve shared over the years.

See Self-Hosted pricing at the links below. Where you purchase determines your customer data residency:

• US — us.pwpush.com
• EU — eu.pwpush.com (GDPR compliant)

Peter Giacomo Lombardo

Founder & Principal, Apnotic · Creators of Password Pusher

A Single German IP

For over a year, a single IP from Germany has been generating 8,000–10,000 anonymous pushes daily on pwpush.com, far exceeding the activity of any other single IP. Initially, I wondered if this was spam or abuse, but it could also have been a legitimate automated use case—who’s to say? With no complaints or harm reported, I let it slide.

Then, a few weeks ago, this IP ramped up to 90,000–100,000 pushes per day, dwarfing all other activity.

More recently, it spiked to a staggering ~200,000 pushes daily, pushing our system to its limits. This surge began to impact the experience for other users, so I had to take action.

Here’s the story, along with some context about how Password Pusher handles push expiration and what we’ve done to keep the service running smoothly.

How Push Expiration Works

In Password Pusher, pushes (and their associated requests) are designed to expire automatically based on either a view limit or a duration limit. Once a limit is reached, the secret URL self-destructs, ensuring sensitive data doesn’t linger.

• View-Based Expiration: This is straightforward. When a push reaches its final allowed view, the application displays the payload and immediately deletes the push.
• Duration-Based Expiration: This requires periodic scans. Background jobs run at intervals to identify pushes that have exceeded their duration and trigger their deletion.

To ensure no expired pushes slip through, we re-verify expiration limits whenever a viewer requests a push. If the limits are exceeded, the push is deleted on the spot, and the viewer sees an expiration message. This approach guarantees that expiration rules are always enforced, even if a background job hasn’t yet processed a push.

The Impact of the Anonymous IP

As the IP’s activity surged to ~200,000 pushes per day, our background expiration jobs took longer to complete. This increased system load and began affecting other users’ experience. While I’d like to believe there was a valid use case behind this activity, the strain it placed on Password Pusher’s infrastructure was undeniable.

Of course I can scale out more workers and increase resources but this all has a financial cost. For the single anonymous source with unknown motives, this wasn’t an option.

So to address this, I made the tough decision to block the IP—a step I’ve rarely taken. I also optimized the performance of the background expiration job and tightened API throttling to better manage high-volume usage. These changes have helped stabilize the system and ensure a smoother experience for all users.

Looking Ahead

Password Pusher is an open-source project at its core, built by the team at Apnotic to serve the community.

We’re committed to providing anonymous access and supporting diverse use cases, but we also have to prioritize the availability and performance of the service for everyone.

A Message to the Owner of that IP

If you’re the user behind this IP and have a legitimate use case, please reach out! I’d be happy to discuss how we can support your needs without compromising the experience for others.

You can contact me directly, and we’ll work to find a solution.

Alternatively, if your use case involves high-volume pushes, you might consider self-hosting your own instance of Password Pusher to better suit your needs. Here’s how you can get started:

Run Your Own Ephemeral Instance

Set up a DNS record to point to your server (e.g., pwpush.example.com).

Run the following command:

docker run -d -p "80:80" -p "443:443" --env TLS_DOMAIN=pwpush.example.com pglombardo/pwpush:latest

Browse to https://pwpush.example.com.

Or Alternatively

Use one of our production-ready Docker Compose files with persistent databases for a more robust setup.

Thank you to our amazing community for your continued support. Password Pusher thrives because of you.

Background

Up to this point, I’ve been happily working on Password Pusher since it’s inception in 2011 in my free time and it’s been greatly rewarding.

But over the last few years, popularity has grown to such a point that, because of the large backlog of work to do, feature requests have had to wait sometimes a year or more before I can even get the point of implementing them.

Some of these requests are:

• Extended Branding: More logos & custom text on more pages
• SSO & LDAP
• More Password Generator Options
• Bulk push operations
• Automatic Emailing of Pushes
• Large (>4GB) file uploads
• and a lot more…

These would be great additions to the project but have been delayed over and over again just because of the sheer number of requests and limited time.

Which Direction Forward?

So what to do?

My options are that I can either:

• Option 1: maintain the current pace with recreational coding in my free time, adding a few big features each year

or

• Option 2: find a way to to accelerate this project, make it self-sufficient and start to add the features users are asking for now

…we are going with the second option.

Feature Pipeline

The feature pipeline is a set of premium and pro features over and beyond the open-source code base that is available through subscriptions.

As development progresses, many of these premium features will periodically be moved to the open-source code base.

Organizations that subscribe get immediate access to these premium features and support open-source development.

Going forward, some newly developed features may be premium at first only, others will go straight to open-source.

This model creates a “pipeline of features” that progress from premium to open-source. It will allow me to work far more on the project and really accelerate development.

Self-Hosted: What’s Changed?

Absolutely nothing has changed but do expect more features faster in the open-source version coming soon.

Note: A self-hosted version of the Premium/Pro features (Self-Hosted Pro) is now available. See Pro Self-Hosted and Self-Hosted Pricing.

pwpush.com: What’s Changed?

You get a ton of new features immediately (without a subscription).

And for those who want to subscribe, there are even more features aimed at professionals and teams. Read about them here.

But there is one feature that is now subscription limited that wasn’t previously: file uploads. Read on for more.

pwpush.com: File Uploads

For a long time, on pwpush.com, anyone could upload files and attach them to pushes. Essentially anonymous file uploads.

It started out well but lately there has been some hints of abuse and after thinking it through, I’ve realized that anonymous file uploads pose a real risk to myself and to the project.

I really tried to keep these free but unfortunately, the risk is too great and hence are now only available to subscribers.

This only affects users of pwpush.com. Those self-hosting the application are unaffected.

Note: To utilize file uploads, you can either subscribe or self-host Password Pusher which doesn’t have any limitations on file uploads.

My apologies on this one. I really tried to keep file uploads free but unfortunately it’s just not possible.

Editions

There are now three editions of Password Pusher:

• OSS: The open source version as always available in the Github repository
• Premium: A Premium edition on pwpush.com with file uploads, a personal policy & extensive branding
• Pro: A Pro edition for teams collaboration, custom domains & team policy enforcement

Where are these editions available? Here’s a table to illustrate:

See the subscription pricing here.

Note: The Pro self-hosted option (Self-Hosted Pro) is now available. See Pro Self-Hosted and Self-Hosted Pricing.

How to Subscribe

Thank you for even considering to support the project. Pricing for the new subscriptions is here.

Summary

My hope is that the introduction of subscriptions and this new feature pipeline will allow me to build out Password Pusher to better secure you and your organizations and to to hopefully make your professional lives a little bit easier.

And ultimately, to have the open-source version as the eventual & final benefactor of new features.

Wrap Up

Thanks to the Password Pusher community for the trust, support & feedback over the years.

As always, if you have any questions, problems or feedback, feel free to contact me anytime: pglombardo at the pwpush.com domain or see the Support page for other methods.

See Also

• Pipeline New Features
• Subscription Pricing

This page explains and illustrates the new features introduced along with subscriptions and the new Feature Pipeline.

Note: These features are not yet available in the OSS edition. Read about the Feature Pipeline for more info.

For All Users

Two Factor Authentication

User accounts now include the option of enabling two-factor authentication. Make sure to download your backup codes.

Google & Microsoft Single Sign-On

Login with your Google and/or Microsoft account

Personal Policies

Set Push defaults, preferences, limits and even hide options entirely.

Multiple API Tokens

Create a Unique token for each tool that you connect with.

You can even revoke tokens now.

Multiple Accounts

One for you, one for your day-time job and others for whatever your needs are.

Easy switch between accounts without having to change your log in.

Set your timezone, preferred language and more.

Finally - show dates/times in your local timezone.

Premium

Premium & Pro subscribers get personalized branding and can attach files to pushes.

File Uploads

Add files to text pushes:

Or push only files:

Users receive branded pushes with files:

Logo Branding

Add a logo to your pushes.

1-Click Retrieval Step Branding

The 1-click retrieval step page can be customized to increase end-user confidence with a logo or custom text. You can even change the text of the “Click Here to Proceed” link if you wish.

Passphrase Page Branding

The passphrase page can be branded with custom text, links and a logo.

Delivery Page Branding

Customize the push delivery page according to your organization’s needs.

Expired Page Branding

Pro

Pro subscribers get everything above plus…

Custom Domain

Use your own custom domain on Pushes.

Invite the Team

Invite colleagues to collaborate and manage pushes

Team Roles

Decide who is admin and who is a member. Authorize others to set policy and to add/delete users.

Team Collaboration

View and manage all pushes created by your team

Team Policies

Enforce security policies on your team; hide or force options, set defaults

Summary

I hope you find the new features useful. As always, if you have any issues, questions or feedback, feel free to contact me anytime!

🤔 Still need something for you or your organization that you don’t see here? Let me know!

See Also

• Subscription Pricing
• Features Matrix
• Introducing the Feature Pipeline - Announcement Post