this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
1408 points (96.4% liked)

Selfhosted

46685 readers
321 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639

I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.

They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.

I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.

Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.

And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:

  • YES I know I'm unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
  • My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don't understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn't have to, that's why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
  • Plex is still removing functionality. I don't care that "People should pay their fair share". If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that's completely okay. They are removing functionality.
    • "But they have cloud costs". Remote streaming is negligible to them. It's a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That's it.
    • "Good luck finding another remote streaming" - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that's a separate conversation). All "remote streaming" is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported "free" content that they're probably losing money on.

In short, I don't care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They're removing functionality that has been free for years. I'm not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.

(page 15) 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I got the same email.

I haven't had plex installed for over 7 years, and I've NEVER used the shared libraries feature.

We noticed that you’ve accessed libraries from friends and family in the past

They've apparently noticed activity that's never occurred.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This was announced several months ago

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (23 children)

I'm a server owner and had no idea. If I did, I would have left then.

load more comments (23 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

I've been a lifetime Plex pass holder since forever. And that even covers my brother accessing the server? He doesn't even need one?

Seems fair to me for a platform I use daily for a decade.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Indeed. The entitlement that some folks online have towards Plex is embarrassing sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

Correct, only the server owner needs the pass.

This has caused a lot of controversy because it was a free feature since Plex started and they're now locking it behind a subscription.

[–] [email protected] 216 points 4 days ago (63 children)

I never got the idea of selfhosting but paying (except for enterprise-grade support or donations) anyway.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Immich has a weird "buy a licence" model which literally does nothing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

Immich, I believe, is linked to Futo. And Futo has a license model that's basically "if you like this app, and want to support the development, consider buying a license."

Sounds like it might be similar with Immich.

Better than "donate to this project", since a license seems more like the user is getting something out of it, even if it's basically a glorified donation 😂

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I never even saw that, while running my own instance lol

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (2 children)

With Plex, you're getting the easy ability to grant access to users. You get a single pane that can search across multiple Plex instances, and NAT traversal/port forwarding. Jellyfin makes you figure that out yourself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It's not exactly difficult if you use Tailscale or really any VPN. So I really don't see the value for the cost; if you're even considering self hosting a Plex server/instance, there's a list of basic knowledge you should have or learn (like what you mentioned).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I paid for a lifetime license years ago which is significantly cheaper than that.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (12 children)

Its not difficult for technical people like you or me, but my friend who just wants to watch their favorite show on my Plex on their TV won't know how to traffic engineer the traffic over a Tailscale network to my network. My mom won't be installing Tailscale on her laptop and phone.

load more comments (12 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 57 points 4 days ago (6 children)

For a good while, Plex was the only game in town that did the job well, and they put the transcoding feature behind the paywall.

Given it wasn't that expensive for a lifetime pass a number of years ago (I remember it was cheaper than a game anyway) and they still seemed relatively user-centric at the time, many people like me felt like they were supporting developers building something that was useful to us.

I still run my Plex server since it's not really costing me not to, but I've been running Jellyfin too for a little while and it more or less can do the same job these days

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yup, for the time it was worth it. I got about 7 years out of my "lifetime" plex pass, and I got it on sale. All in all, I won't say the money was wasted.

It's 100% a waste if anyone pays for that BS monthly streaming fee though.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You can selfhost for free however you want but software developers have the right to ask for money to use their software. I selfhost about 60tb of media and have paid for Plex monthly for about 10 years now. They are still so far above the competition for ease-of-use that I wouldn't even consider switching at this point, even to save $7/month.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (16 children)

They have the right to ask, but I don't have to pay. I've been playing with Jellyfin for about a month now, and I have to say, it's just as easy as Plex is. The only thing I had to do myself was make my own users. In fact, I tried Jellyfin a few years ago and was unimpressed - now all I see is Plex making stuff to make advertisers happy while Jellyfin is adding stuff to make it's users happy, to the point where I think Jellyfin has surpassed Plex.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Exactly. This is a bet that Plex is going to lose with the proliferation of Jellyfin.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (59 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›