Sharing overview
The three ways to share in PulsVault — vaults, single items, and secure links — who you can share with on each plan, and how sharing stays zero-knowledge.
PulsVault lets you share secrets without ever sending them to the server in plaintext. There are three sharing modes, each with its own scope and audience. The Sharing Center (Console → Sharing) is the home for everything you've shared and everything shared with you.
The Sharing Center#
The Sharing Center has two views, switched at the top, and a search box that searches whichever view you are in ("Search shared vaults and items..." or "Search outgoing shares and links...").
Shared with Me is what other people have given you:
- Vaults — each shared vault with who it is from, how long ago, and your access level. Select one to open it.
- Items — a table with the columns Name, Shared By, Access and Date. Select a row to open the item.
Manage is the sharing you take part in, in four tabs:
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Received | Shares you accepted. Leave removes you from one. |
| Pending | Invitations waiting for you, with Accept and Decline — see Invitations & approvals. |
| Sent | What you have shared and with whom. Select the access level to change it, or Revoke the share. |
| Secure Links | Your live secure links, each with Revoke. |
A count appears on a tab when it has something in it. Lists are paged, five, ten or twenty-five to a page. If the Center cannot reach the server it says We could not load your shares and offers Try again — nothing about who you share with has changed, only your view of it.
Three ways to share#
| Mode | Scope | Recipient | Stays up to date? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share a vault | Every item in the vault | A registered PulsVault user | Yes — live access via the vault key |
| Share an item | A single item | A registered PulsVault user | Snapshot, refreshed when you edit the item |
| Secure link | A single item, read-only | Anyone with the URL — no account needed | One-time snapshot with expiry and view limits |
Your primary vault can't be shared by any method. Move or copy an item into a secondary vault to share it.
Who you can share with#
- Anyone with a PulsVault account — vault and item shares use the recipient's account email; the recipient must already be registered.
- Anyone at all — secure links work without an account, so they're the right choice for one-off handoffs to people outside PulsVault.
- Your circle — Family plans can share full vaults only inside the family, though single items can go to outside contacts. Team and larger organizations keep all sharing inside the organization unless an admin enables external sharing, and admins can additionally require approval before a share activates.
Plan limits#
| Plan | Active shares | Share vaults | Share items | Re-sharing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3 | — | ✓ | — |
| Premium | 20 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Family | Unlimited | ✓ (in the family) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team / Business / Enterprise | Unlimited | ✓ (in the organization) | ✓ | Admin-controlled |
How sharing stays zero-knowledge#
Every user gets an RSA key pair when they sign up. When you share, encryption happens on your device:
- Vault shares re-wrap the vault's data encryption key (DEK) with the recipient's public key. The server stores only the wrapped key; the recipient unwraps it locally.
- Item shares re-encrypt a snapshot of the item with a fresh one-off key, which is then wrapped for the recipient — the vault key itself is never exposed.
- Secure links put the decryption key in the URL
#fragment, which browsers never send to the server.
In every mode the server sees the shared secrets only as ciphertext. It does see metadata — who shared what with whom, at which access level — and, as for any item, its name and non-secret fields (what is and isn't encrypted). See Vault sharing & DEK re-wrapping for the full cryptographic picture.