On the usage side of things there are standalone vaults and membership vault. Standalone vaults are not tied to any particular purchase. As such it is possible to use standalone vaults with either a membership or a standalone license. They can sync via iCloud or Dropbox. But they don’t include some of the features that membership vaults do. Membership vaults are, as the name implies, tied to a membership. They can’t be used with a standalone license. They only sync via 1Password.com. The Mac App Store requires a 1Password membership, but if you go into the advanced preferences you can actually enable standalone vaults. It is possible to change between membership vaults and standalone vaults fairly painlessly, but you lose the sharing features of membership vaults as well as some other features like Documents by going to standalone.