I started selfhosting just because throwing cash on subscriptions at big corpos is not feasible since subs are increasing on a year-on-year basis. To my mind, if I’m going to self-host to yet again pay sub prices defeats the sole purpose of selfhosting.
That money you can pocket and invest in your own hardware for spare parts, upgrades & the like
You could also consider donating it to the projects you are hosting. Because developing that software still takes a lot of labour and these devs really need it
I was a big supporter of PLEX for a lot of years but I don’t want all the streaming options and ads and crap it was giving me. All I want is a solid media server application and Plex was no longer it.
JellyFin has been fantastic. I’ll never go back
My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don’t want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription.
The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let’s be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don’t want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.
I’m reminded of a few things. Enpass giving away Pro subscriptions, then years later on adding a higher tier, Premium. Nova’s Prime will apparently become just one tier of many premium tiers for the app. Podcast Addict adding another subscription on top of the premium IAP.
This kind of shit happens all the time, and Plex could do it. Good thing I’m already with Jellyfin.
I have paid for lifetime years ago and I’m still using it. They may introduce new features and try to entice me to pay for them, but so far no one is trying to cut me off from what I paid for
Isn’t that kinda exactly what the OP was saying with their comment about MBAs realising they have non-paying users?
I don’t run Plex so I don’t know, but from your comment it sounds like the Plex Pass isn’t “all past, present and future premium features”?
Or were you theorising about a future where they do ask you to pay more?
I’m not missing any features I got when I paid for it (I believe they’ve added some), so no complaints from me.
To me this means they know they don’t have a viable business model. It’s possible they took on a lot of debt years ago, and now they have to enshittify to pay it back. I paid for the lifetime membership years ago, and I would say I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth and I’m mostly still happy with Plex, but I would drop them in a heartbeat if jellyfin was a viable alternative.
People don’t like to admit it, but jellyfin doesn’t have feature parity yet. I think they could solve a lot of the issues if they went the federation route, but until then, it’s just easier for my family and friends to each have 1 plex account instead of N jellyfin accounts. Not to mention the jellyfin vulnerabilities that prevent me from considering hosting it openly.
People don’t like to admit it, but jellyfin doesn’t have feature parity yet. I think they could solve a lot of the issues if they went the federation route, but until then, it’s just easier for my family and friends to each have 1 plex account instead of N jellyfin accounts. Not to mention the jellyfin vulnerabilities that prevent me from considering hosting it openly
Could you maybe elaborate on the feature parity? What is missing? I also don’t get the info about N jellyfin accounts, as in separate jellyfin account per each different jellyfin server?
Why would you host it openly rather than in a VPN like Tailscale or whatever wire guard is?
Could you maybe elaborate on the feature parity?
- I travel often. There are a lot of devices in hotels, bnbs, and friend’s houses that have native plex support. Not so much for jellyfin.
- Casting to cast-compatible devices is very hit-or-miss, but mostly miss. I know the casting ecosystem is already a mess, but as far as user experience goes, Plex has spent more effort ironing it out.
- The native Plex client works with a controller on my bazzite HTPC when launched from the steam ui, while the native jellyfin client doesn’t.
I keep trying jellyfin out every few months, but so far keep hitting enough friction that I can’t reliably make the switch.
as in separate jellyfin account per each different jellyfin server?
Yes, if me and 5 of my friends have jellyfin servers, we all need accounts on each other’s servers. I then need to juggle accounts to access their content.
Jellyswarrm is a reverse proxy plugin I could run to mask the problem for myself, but it’s not a solution for mom who may have access to my server, and one other friend’s server that I don’t know.
The correct solution is federated accounts, but the devs have already stated that they don’t want to do that.
Why would you host it openly rather than in a VPN like Tailscale or whatever wire guard is?
Then friends and family have to be on my VPN to stream anything.
They will release Plex-a-rama or Plex 2.0, stop providing security patches for 1.0, proxy routing, tmdb caching, epg caching, and add ads to your experience. They will then require the people connecting to you to have subs.
They were hoping to sell out and buy an island by now. Eventually, it will change hands or go public. Your features will be stripped as necessary to keep making money. Look at what happened to PlayOn’s lifetime subscription.
It’s already lasted WAY longer than anyone expected.
Not that I want to defend Plex which is definitely enshittifying, but I don’t think most people are buying Plex to stream their own media. They’re doing it so other people can stream their media. Not wanting to buy a domain and set up port forwarding or a reverse proxy or whatever doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. My grandparents are never going to use Tailscale, and even if they did, I don’t think there are any Tailscale smart TV apps.
Disclosure: I run Plex and Jellyfin (and Navidrome) in parallel, and bought a lifetime pass years ago.
They’re doing it so other people can stream their media
and they went to a subscription model, in part, so they could get their ‘cut’ from plex shares.
Plex is a series C for-profit company and is 100% beholden to its investors who expect a handsome return on investment; the enshittification & price hikes are literally guaranteed to continue. Existing users can, and should expect to be squeezed for profits until they have nothing left to give
Strange, I haven’t paid another cent since I paid like AUD$50 for the lifetime pass well over a decade ago.
You can’t say their service hasn’t gotten worse though :)
I paid $75 USD, but they took my plugins, (pour one out for youtube on plex for my DanTDM obsessed kid back in the day) made my interface hard to navigate, try constantly to shove their own content down my (and my users) throats. Hey, remember when you used to have that sync feature that kept you up to date with a selection of titles, then you could use the client on your phone to serve to other phones even offline, god that was awesome with kids on vacation.
made my interface hard to navigate
How? What is hard to navigate in Plex?
try constantly to shove their own content down my (and my users) throats.
I assume you don’t know you can customize your home screen and menus? You can only have your own content showing if you want.
You can’t say their service hasn’t gotten worse though :)
I absolutely can. It has only improved since I’ve been using it, which is from the very start.
How? What is hard to navigate in Plex?
That last ui update was a open abomination and every plex forum out there was all over it, you can’t hide that by saying nuhhahhhh
Since you’re so enamored with plex and I’m quite versed on it, Let’s talk about the horrors of plex
They are collecting data on your and your friends, what you’re watching and what media you have. If the country or state you live and ever decide to go after pirates, they will absolutely hand that data over to whatever state wants it for a song.
Using plex is selling your self and your family out.
They have consistently removed features that people loved and used to focus on delivering you ad content and enshittifying the average experience until they pay. And how much are you paying to watch your own content? What other services could you be spending that on?
I assume you don’t know you can customize your home screen and menus? You can only have your own content showing if you want.
I assume you’re either shill for the company or an outright PR plant, that last ui change was pushed to put their content first. that’s BS. I had my stuff customized, I disabled their crap, they undid it again. My family had to have me go and dig through those tiny top menus on roku to find my own shares. The average person watching my stuff complained to me that i put ads in my stuff. that’s not by fucking accident, it’s a business decision to give me and mine worse content so they can make an extra buck off me. Every change they make is company first, every requrest we make is forums for user helpful change is years old.
The whole company is absolutely horrible and selfish.
I absolutely can. It has only improved since I’ve been using it, which is from the very start.
How about give me examples instead of just shilling. The people here are owed the truth, not your company first attitude.
Literally all of that is lies lol
The second you start calling people shills you’re just admitting defeat.
Troll, PR company or just Sycophant , either way you’re BLOCKED BABY byes
One thing is the price, a whole another thing is the cluttered UI with too many features. I just want play a movie/tv series. Switched to Jellyfin and not looking back.
Just hope Jelly doesnt suffer the same fate. 🙂
I heard Jellyfin is doubling prices next year
Its ok. Send me a DM and I can give you a 75% off discount code
😀
Jellyfin was created by just such a move and nobody talks about Emby any more.
If Jelly suck, Jelly fork.
Jelly works well for me. Simple, intuitive, hw encoding works great. Responsive app. I had Plex installed on a Phillips TV. It got slower and slower.
But I do understand Plex. They have a business case and need to earn money. Sadly the UI got more and.more confusing.
I’ve been running a Jelly server for 2 years now on a used desktop I bought for cheap. It’s just been good and zero effort since setting everything up.
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I never understood why you would pay to do things that you can do for free
I give money to LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Armbian, the Wikipedia, and so on. I don’t have to, but it shows my appreciation, and maybe helps them do more in some small way.
I dont have a problem with donations, thats different from “you must pay me to use my thing”. As donations is an opt in, I would do that. Paying to host my own content on my own server is taking the piss
Purchasing is an opt in too. I use both but paid for a Plex lifetime pass almost 10 years ago. It was easier to set up remote access. Setting up a server was new to me at the time so anything I could find that made it easier was worth it. I also bought an unRAID lifetime pass for the same reason (among other reasons).
I’ve been on a lifetime Plex subscription for the last 15 years. The only nothing preventing me from switching to Jellyfin (I have it running in parallel) is giving elderly family members, who live in 3 other countries than me, access.
If I were to start today though, I would not even consider Plex though, but momentum is a bitch.
I used plex for over a year before spending 80€ on a lifetime supscription. So it was a okay proposition for me, espacially as jellyfin still misses features plex had back then.
I switched to jellyfin after plex broke my setup with some verification change. Still missing some features, but atleast i dont have to deal with entshitification.
Two reasons:
-
because “free” often means there is an ulterior motive for providing the service (see: search)
-
because developers need to eat, and servers cost money. Paying for goods and services helps keep them from collapsing under their own weight.
Big for profit businesses are generally bad, but small dev teams transparent about their costs just trying to live comfortably? They can have my money.
- because “free” often means there is an ulterior motive for providing the service (see: search)
Maybe this is true for some cases, but it’s not for jellyfin. It’s simply open source and free like tons of other utilities people work on for the fun of it. If it were closed source maybe you’d be right.
Agree on number 2 though.
-
Because the free version usually isn’t as good.
Jelly fin, as of a year ago, was still using a mouse cursor for remote use. It was a dumpster fire compared to Plex. And that’s before you have to include hosting a reverse fucking proxy to share.
You want me to go through the full list of shit that’s been broken on my steam deck? A device that should be polished and ready to the consumer? Do you think shit like steak decks are as polished and easy to use as a switch?
It’s not hard to figure out if you drop the biases that come with most foss community members.
hosting a proxy server is part of self hosting, so I would to that anyway. asking me to pay for that is not going to fly
How is the headline ragebait? Ragebait is the cynical production of content to increase clicks and engagement. The author clearly actually is that passionate about FOSS self-hosting over paid gatekeepers like Plex, and the tone of the article is adequately reflected in the headline.
An opinion author stating a strong opinion in the headline isn’t automatically “ragebait” just because you personally aren’t as passionate. And I say that as someone who isn’t as passionate as the author.
Projects like Plex, they started out from the open source community, had free contributions, and then monetized. People are bastardizing open source.
The reason Plex is as popular as it is is because of their infrastructure and software that lets users stream video and music remotely on any device at the press of a button. That costs money to build and maintain.
It certainly doesn’t cost what they’re charging. They have a cache, a relay and an auth service. I’ll grant them some more allowance for an active security team. They’ve wasted manyears on features nobody wants and have eliminated any feature that costs them any amount of money to maintain if they can’t make money off it. (sync, client serve, yada yada)
It certainly doesn’t cost what they’re charging.
That’s how services and products work. If they sold their product at cost, they’d go bankrupt. They’re actually charging peanuts for the service they provide.
Their entire infrastructure required to do that proxy and caching is at most 10k a month. Thats a couple thousand users.
What you’re actually paying for is their research and development of all that add ridden content they’re trying to shove down your throat. Then selling your data, and selling you and your watchers ads.
That’s some really expensive peanuts you’re suggesting
Really? Cuz Jellyfin literally does the same thing and doesn’t cost money.
JellyFin does not do the same thing. JellyFin doesn’t securely allow users anywhere in the world on any network to stream your media.
I run both concurrently, but Plex has had a rash of outages recently that led to it and any services relying on it completely useless. It’s insane that an online service outage would cause me to be unable to stream media locally, so yeah Jellyfin has been all but essential, recently.
That’s a big red flag for privacy imo
Oh, I generally couldn’t agree more. In this specific case it was actually their authentication service that was down, but it meant if you use multiple accounts with Plex or have a pin on your singular account that you were essentially locked out. But I agree it’s a bad look to have remote dependencies at all.
Imo anyone who stayed with Plex after they required you to create an account is insane, especially considering there have always been good alternatives.
I’ve been using Jellyfin for about 4 months as a home media server on an old laptop I installed Debian on and… I have nothing to add to the conversation, I just wanted to brag about that because it works really well and I was afraid I would fuck it up.
Anyway, Plex no good.
I had Plex long enough to try to watch a movie from outside my house and realize I had to pay to do it. Luckily swapping to Jellyfin on unraid was just uninstalling Plex and using the same folders
You can get around this by extending your network with a VPN. I know that’s an extra config, but a lot of people who are setting up home labs are already doing this anyway.
How does jellyfin offer remote streaming without a VPN?
It has User accounts and have people access with a login through port forwarding. myIPaddress:8383 effectively, which directs to my movie NAS
I tried to do a VPN with Tailscale and just couldn’t wrap my head around it.
So, it sounds like it doesn’t offer a remote streaming service like Plex then. You just publicly expose or use a VPN like you can with Plex.
If I was starting new today I’d go for Jellyfin but my family is all set up for Plex now and I’m not going through that painful process again :D
Completely reasonable. And ud probably use Plex still if I didnt loose my watch status.
I literally pay the same for Nebula, which is decidedly not my own media. Paying a subscription for your own media playback is so stupid.
Plex stopped being useful to me in 2019. At the time I had only about 300 movies and the same number of TV episodes. The database kept getting corrupt, causing long load times of video info pages, or perpetual spinning progress indicator. After fixing the database (and losing all watch metadata each time) three times in one year, I moved to a plain file share served from the NAS with Kodi running on my Nvidia Shield.
In seven years, Kodi’s local DB has never corrupted. I now have 900+ movies and 2500 TV episodes. I can handle any file type, any video CODEC, can play thousands of games from the internet game library. The DB can be easily backed up and imported into a new install if needed.
And the best part? I didn’t pay anyone to access any of the media I own, and no corpo gets access to my library or watch history.
Forget Plex.
I’ve never used Plex, but I have my own server at Hetzner with large drives and I love my Jellyfin server. I use it every day for shows, movies, and tons of music at home, in the metro, and walking around town and traveling. I’ve never had a problem with it. Honestly, it’s fantastic.
