I have a Jellyfin server as backup, but its clients are shit for anything that uses subtitles. I bought plex pass years back for $80 on sale, can’t complain, but I’m never going to wholly rely on something closed source that requires online credentials.
Plex’s price hikes prove I was right to switch to Jellyfin
Submitted 1 month ago by KatherinaReichelt@feddit.org to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://www.androidauthority.com/plex-price-hikes-get-jellyfin-3663600/
Comments
tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 month ago
little_tuptup@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Projects like Plex, they started out from the open source community, had free contributions, and then monetized. People are bastardizing open source.
Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe 1 month ago
If I could get Jellyfin to work remotely I would never use Plex again quite happily. I pay £4 a month and my in laws have to pay £2 a month for remote access, it’s starting to add up for content I download and host on my storage.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 month ago
Buy a Lifetime Plex pass.
Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
Why would I do that, i now have JF working remotely and it’s free and there is no streaming shite attatched
TyrionBean@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
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.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I can’t comment on Plex vs JellyFin, but it’s an interesting perspective that $3/mon for remote access is too much
I use another piece of opensource software, where I consider that a plus. It takes the headache and security issues off my hands, while I can support the developers with a small contribution for an optional feature
an0nym0us_dr0ne@europe.pub 1 month ago
Tried Jellyfin, lacked critical functionality, got Plex, was amazed and got a lifetime pass and never worried about it again
biscuit@lemdro.id 1 month ago
In fairness to Plex, I bought a Lifetime subscription during a Black Friday deal over a decade ago and it’s still serving me well to this day.
I have jellyfin set up ready to go but Plex has the UX down at this point. I’ll keep using it whilst my lifetime subscription remains valid.
MrSulu@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
You were right to switch whether the price increased or not.
meathappening@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Imo anyone who stayed with Plex after they required you to create an account is insane, especially considering there have always been good alternatives.
Phantaloons@piefed.zip 1 month ago “But my parents can’t use a VPN!!”
Was that line in the sand drawn before or after footing the bill, installing a media server, and an entire arr stack?
Their house is right there, bro.
ItsNotImportant24@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I’ve been self hosting for about 2 years now. I never gave Plex a thought. I immediately went with Jellyfin and setup tailscale for remote access and its been awesome. We have our phones and tvs with android boxes all connected. Only we use Wholphin on the android boxes bc its better but extremely happy with the Jellyfin/Tailscale setup.
cmeu@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Plex still costs the same to me. Lifetime pass means no price hike, and it “just works.”
cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
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.
alekwithak@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
bagodogs@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago I run Jellyfin for myself and Plex for others. The Jellyfin android tv app almost pushed me back to Plex, but Wholpin works quite well.
Hippy@piefed.social 1 month ago I run both side by side and I’m very thankful that Plex exists. Jellyfin is my backup app and would be very painful to get setup in my families houses.
RxBrad@infosec.pub 1 month ago It’s been a year or two since I gave up on Jellyfin, so maybe it’s better now… But the Android TV client was rough, rough, rough when I tried using it.
If you watched Live TV, the transcode buffer would just keep going and fill your entire disk over the course of a few days after you shut down the client and stopped watching.
It was a coin toss whether you’d actually be able to stream any given movie. If you had media with more than 6 audio channels, and also needed to transcode (because you live in the U.S. and don’t have unlimited upload bandwidth)… playback would just die right around the 5-10Mbps range. I spent a weekend on the forums chasing down the exact scenarios that caused this one, someone had a Pull Request that fixed it in a matter of hours (by mimicking the transcode logicr of the official desktop client)… and the dev told them to kick rocks
Zink@programming.dev 1 month ago
I have a pretty old lifetime Plex pass that I got on sale.
I’m still 100% a Jellyfin convert. Keeping my Plex server while trying out Jellyfin myself lasted even less time than my Windows partition after I had linux installed.
Nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago jellyfin just runs and looks better, too
blinfabian@feddit.nl 1 month ago
when making a media server i first went for plex. but when i heard it costs money to view my own files in 4k i had to use jellyfin instead
mrodri89@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Jellyfin is nice that even a noob like me can struggle a bit but get it working. :)
vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Several years ago I was looking to set up a media server and initially grabbed Plex because I’d heard so much good about it at the time. The moment it asked me to create an account with Plex during setup and I discovered this wasn’t optional I immediately uninstalled it.
I remain baffled that anyone was okay with needing an externally managed account in order to use software running entirely on their own hardware, let alone the litany of additional enshittification that has happened since.
soratoyuki@piefed.social 1 month ago 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.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month ago I find it wild that Plex even got so popular among PC users and not just people who only had a phone and a roku. There have always been better options for PC; the best being built right into the god damn OS so you don’t even need other software.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 month ago You just made those words up.
/s
KbSez@piefed.social 1 month ago
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
mr_sunburn@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
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.
Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 1 month ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability IP Internet Protocol NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation Plex Brand of media server package SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPN Virtual Private Network
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #283 for this comm, first seen 11th May 2026, 12:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’ve had so many instances of free to use, lifetime licenses, and purchased software that have turned into subscription services that I refuse to install anything that requires an account unless it can’t be avoided. The fact that Plex required an account be created to view my own local content years before they started charging for use made it obvious subscription fees were coming.
Jellyfin works great. Combined with Wireguard it works great anywhere.