Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service’s Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.
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- greyhathero@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Probably going to get hate for this. But I have easily gotten 750 dollars worth of value out of my lifetime subscription. I’m sure they are doing this to drive down lifetime subscriptions and increase month to month. But I legit think 750 over 20 years it’s still a legit price.
- Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish16 hours
It;'s probably about 800 euro, but that is still 800 euro more than Emby/Kodi/Jellyfin or whatever other altnerative. I had a lot of issues with Plex due to them requiring that proof of ownership thing which didn’t really work on TrueNas core I think it was?
Jellyfin is way easier imo
- xnx@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
I wish jellyfin and the apps could ship with something like wireguard setup by default so people that use the jellyfin apps could instantly watch media outside their house without learning what wireguard/tailscale is
- LordKitsuna@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
The fact that’s needed at all is the problem. Developers need to stop making monolithic structures that have access to everything ever and putting it on the user to maintain to maintain a VPN network for security.
There’s no reason I should not be able to just use an nginx reverse proxy for remote access to my jellyfin and have that be safe. It should at worst give people a copy of my media if there’s a security issue.
Personally I went out of my way to make this be the case, i have my instance locked into an unprivileged lxc whitelist only on syscalls which took a while to figure out the minimum needed for function but I got there. The host System is using the hardened kernel from Upstream and a series of sysctl lockdowns for example P Trace is not allowed even if you are the root user.
So I do indeed just nginx reverse proxy my instant because the worst case scenario even if they got complete shell access to the system they would be locked into an unprivileged container that had no access to any files other than my media files but the fact that I have to go to this level is already ridiculous
- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish1 day
It should at worst give people a copy of my media if there’s a security issue.
that’s not the worst possibility. the worst possibility is an RCE into your server.
Personally I went out of my way to make this be the case, i have my instance locked into an unprivileged lxc whitelist only on syscalls which took a while to figure out the minimum needed for function but
that’s a pretty exotic setup. Exciting, but for most people learning to manage a VPN is easier
- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish1 day
It should at worst give people a copy of my media if there’s a security issue.
that’s not the worst possibility. the worst possibility is an RCE into your server.
Personally I went out of my way to make this be the case, i have my instance locked into an unprivileged lxc whitelist only on syscalls which took a while to figure out the minimum needed for function but
that’s a pretty exotic setup. Exciting, but for most people learning to manage a VPN is easier
- LordKitsuna@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
I am aware that an rce is the worst possibility I’m saying it shouldn’t be. The web portion is already its own isolated binary that you have to install but it’s designed with seemingly very little attention to security.
To the point that jellyfin has already had several major RCE and despite having full support for running over the web with http developers are basically just like you should not be using this without a VPN which is overall a pretty pathetic stance for a media server
- flux@lemmy.mlEnglish16 hours
Recently nginx had an RCE, so if your web server interface has an RCE, it doesn’t matter if jellyfin code is top-notch, if you happen to use a proxy with RCE in front of it. Wireguard has never had an RCE and I’m relatively certain it never will, because I believe you must be in possession of some keys to go very deep in the wireguard code, which in itself is not very large piece of code.
But yes, in principle I agree that we should code securely instead of depending on VPN to solve it for us, unfortunately it’s not the reality today. Memory safe programming languages help, but don’t completely protect against logic errors. VPN is general is pretty good for defence-in-depth.
- LordKitsuna@lemmy.worldEnglish16 hours
The nginx rce relied an a series of requirements that affect almost nobody. You had to be using a very specific module and processing a specific type of data reverse proxy was not affected.
But regardless I get your point that anything can have an RCE. However as you say at the end in principle that does not mean you should just give up and expect external projects to handle your security. VPN is a great way to access your services and it is good defense and depth, but for the sake of being a successful project to the masses? It’s basically a dead end Road
- WandowsVista@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
there are a lot of us still on Plex that hadn’t reached the threshold of issues vs effort that would motivate us to migrate to something like jellyfin.
looks like we’ve arrived.
- FlexibleToast@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
I haven’t. I bought lifetime Plex Pass something like 15 years ago. A price change doesn’t effect me. It’s all their shitty updates and removing of features that makes me keep an eye on Jellyfin. I already have a sync setup for my watch status and a couple of my main users. Jellyfins apps are still worse.
- frozenfoxx@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
Why not run both? That’s what I do, then if Plex is an issue for someone I can make them a Jellyfin account
- Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish1 day
I have the lifetime pass, bought it for like $80 many moons ago.
looks like we’ve arrived.
Agreed, this is the tipping point. This is where we will see Plex start to abandon the lifetime pass in favor of “imaginary money line go up forever” subscriptions.
- slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
A gentle reminder that Jellyfin exists to those thinking of alternatives.
- kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish1 day
A gentle reminder that Jellyin more or less requires you to set up a reverse proxy and a secure VPN to use it outside of your home.
- curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish2 days
As someone who picked up lifetime for like $45 or whatever it was (I think a 50% off sale?) what must have been 15 years ago…
I run jellyfin. Its just a better experience IMO.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish2 days
I’m sorry but you can hate Plex and prefer jellyfin all you want, but you don’t have to lie. Nothing about jellyfin is a “better experience” than Plex.
What are some examples?
- Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish16 hours
Jellyfin is easy to prove you are the owner off. While Plex has issues with that on systems like TrueNas when you don’t have full access to the server
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish1 hour
Why are you having to prove you’re the owner of it exactly? What you’re describing is “user error”.
- Grapho@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
Don’t have to make an account, for starters. Gives you more detailed control of transcoding options, audio playback and whatnot.
The UI looks much worse, that much is true, but that’s not the end all be all of user experience.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish2 days
Making an account is what allows the easy library sharing and remote streaming, something that Plex is significantly better than JellyFin at.
What transcoding options does it have that Plex doesn’t?
- LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zipEnglish2 days
How is Plex significantly better than Jellyfin at those things? I can just create a user in 2 seconds on the admin dashboard for Jellyfin, set a temporary password and my friend can log in and change it to whatever they want.
I can even limit the streaming bitrate to the account if I need to avoid bandwidth issues.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish1 day
Unless your user comes and logs in on your network, and only streams when they’re at your house, then you’ve just opened your server to the world.
Plex has bandwidth controls.
- keyez@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
They mentioned remote streaming which jellyfin doesn’t have a secure way to do by itself
- JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.netEnglish18 hours
Does Plex? Have they ever been security audited or are we just taking the word of closed source software because they make it easier? Like Microsoft who just got caught adding backdoors into billions of computers and (pick one) closed source software company who has had major security breaches in the last decade.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish2 days
It’s not better in any way other than cost. That cost comes with massive drawbacks.
- MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish2 days
If you ignore the mostly horrendous UI, the security problems, the worse transcoding performance, the harder setup, the difficulty to access it remotely in a safe way,… Yeah sure, way better
- Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish16 hours
Plex doesn't have hardware transcoding unless you pay almost 800 euro
- MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish15 hours
I, and I assume everyone on this forum who has one, paid around 50-100€ for their lifetime pass. My hardware encoding works great and doesn’t need me to tell it about each and ever codec in existence and how to handle each one.
The new price is insane, but that was not the topic of this thread.
- xnx@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
The ui can be improved with community addons like moonfin but i agree it would be nice if they improved these out of the box
- MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish1 day
I couldn’t care less about the client design, since you have free choice there. If only the devs could be arsed to fix the issues that prevent me from just putting it behind a reverse proxy. If I could let people use it without exposing what is essentially an open door or forcing them to install a vpn, I would probably do that and slowly ween off Plex
- non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
This is a good illustration of the tradeoff of free software.
Jellyfin is core software, its mission is serving media, not providing auth or secure access. Those can be handled by other projects.
When you say “the devs can’t be arsed”, I think you’re misunderstanding that they won’t ever work on this, because that isnt the model.
The tradeoff with “free” (both in terms of free speech and free beer) is that work you need to do yourself to connect those pieces.
- webhead@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
How are other projects going to handle using the Jellyfin app to log into Jellyfin? I don’t understand this. I see sentiments like this pretending Jellyfin is perfect like they don’t understand why people use Plex. I want to give my mom a URL that she can login to (or even better she gives me a code) after she downloads an app. What is the point of Jellyfin itself not handling this? It’s pointless. If I’m going to have a half baked server app, I might as well just use Kodi. They can be as stubborn as they want with this but people need these very basic things. I’d actually donate money to the project if they didn’t stubbornly REFUSE to do the main thing every Plex user wants. Other projects don’t need to do this. The Jellyfin developers need to. I first tried Jellyfin 6 years ago and this is STILL an issue and so I just stay on Plex because I’ve already got lifetime. I WANT to move to Jellyfin but I need to give normies access to my stuff and apparently that’s a wontfix for them?? I can host all this shit myself. I just need it all built in and for the apps to support it. I don’t think anyone is crazy to want this right?
- Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish15 hours
You just give those people the name of the app your recommend (Jellyfin, Moonfin etc) and give them the URL and their username, then they create a password.
It’s not that difficult for most and if it is you help them once with it.
- non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
What the hell.
This is self hosted and you’re screaming about not having an easy button.
As I mentioned, jellyfin is not an auth platform, nor a reverse proxy. And they will never be. Build your own, there are many products out there. Or hire someone, Christ.
Either way, quit bitching, put on your adult pants and either add auth to jellyfin, use Plex, or shut the fuck up.
- 2 days
The Jellyfin vs Plex thing always struck me as odd. As in - why are we holding JF to a different standard to (say) Immich, Syncthing, Pi-hole or any one of a thousand different programs people self host?
Yes, JF ships multi-user accounts and client apps etc. I get it, “multi-use” is implied, so the comparison isn’t totally unfair. But there’s a difference between ‘this feature exists’ and ‘this is the primary purpose of the tool’.
The fact that you CAN share it externally doesn’t mean everyone running JF is doing that, or that it should be the benchmark the whole project is judged by.
To me, self host means “I host it, myself” not “I host it and then pretend to be Netflix for family and friends”. If that’s the use case, then of course, Plex away.
It’s cool that you CAN share JF externally, and it’s cool that Plex does that differently / better. We shouldn’t hold one to the standards of the other.
- R1x38rexrper@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
Never used Plex. Jellyfin has always met my needs, so I never bothered to try it.
- 49 minutes
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol NAT Network Address Translation Plex Brand of media server package SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) nginx Popular HTTP server
[Thread #302 for this comm, first seen 20th May 2026, 01:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
- Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish2 days
Jellyfin has lots and lots of tutorials, fyi. it’s not as intimidating as it seems once you get going with it.
- MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish2 days
And Plex doesn’t require any. It’s okay to accept that one product can be more polished than the other, and Plex has a lot of stuff that “just works”
- SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish2 days
Just out of interest as someone who has recently set up a Jellyfin server - what’s the main “value add” of using Plex compared to Jellyfin?
It seems to do everything I want, so I’m not sure why people would pay for Plex over the FOSS version.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish2 days
Ease of use, and actual secure and usable external access.
Friends/family make an account and tell you their account name or email address, you invite them to your library and that’s it, they can watch/listen to your media on pretty much any device they have. No vpn needed.
Jellyfin is not meant to be exposed to the internet for remote viewing. It also doesn’t have a client on most devices people use to watch tv/movies.
- electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
I’ve got a bunch of friends accessing my jellyfin server. It has clients for most devices now.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish2 days
I didn’t say it’s not possible, I said it’s not secure and/or easy.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish1 day
Doing it insecurely is easy.
The secure part isn’t debatable. Even the devs will tell you it’s not secure.
- electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish1 day
Secure isn’t a binary. Depending on your threat model, using Plex is impossible to use securely!
- 2 days
I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of the $74.99 I paid for Plex Pass Lifetime several years ago. If they ever get rid of my Plex Pass and try to say “Lifetime didn’t actually mean Lifetime”, I’ll be gone.
- non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
We’ve seen other companies pull this move by saying “lifetime” only applies to X version.
- badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
While that’s true, it is in the standard VC playbook to make that move. Since they seem to be using that playbook, there will come a point in the monetization program where the lifetime membership becomes a blocker, which is overcome by diluting the lifetime account to increase the appeal of the subscription by comparison.
So, while nobody in here is named Nostradamus, it does not take a clairvoyance to see the future in this case. Countless other companies have followed this same program, with only minor variation, to extract revenue from the product like a strip mine. If I see 100 companies perform a 15-or-so step monetization spiral, it is not a leap of logic to think Plex is going to do steps 9-15 since we’ve just seen them do steps 1-8.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish1 day
The lifetime membership will never be a blocked thanks to this price update.
I’ve never had a lifetime license be taken away other than the company going out of business.
- badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
No, they can’t just breach the contract you have with them, of course, but the VC playbook has a play for that.
What they will do is create a different service tier that does not include the same features as the standard or lifetime plans have. That tier will initially have some “value adds” that are of little interest to most users. Then, slowly, features will disappear from the other tiers, and a greater percentage of users will be drawn to that one because the “standard” one is increasingly lacking.
Eventually, Plex Standard will be quite anemic, with at least a couple must-have features available to only GigaPlex members. Because you’re a “valued lifetime customer”, you’ll get the option to convert your lifetime membership into 90-365 days of free GigaPlex.
So, Plex wins their game. The lifetime members practically all either switch to monthly premium service or leave, both of which are outcomes that are to their benefit. Nobody took away your lifetime membership, they just transformed it to garbage.
Its not every company, but it is every company owned by venture capital.
- FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish53 minutes
You can live in fear of your made up scenarios like this, but I’m just going to continue using Plex with my lifetime license.
- Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
The company’s blog post also described a number of improvements they plan to make
After you pay: “oops, we won’t”
- teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish2 days
As a lifetime owner, the number of features they’ve deprecated is probably the worst part.
- Photo support (luckily Immich came along)
- Tidal integration (no idea if that was Plex or Tidal’s decision)
- Plugins (god forbid anyone add the functionality they keep removing)
It’s close between that and the last app overhaul that removed a bunch of functionality.
- 1 day
Watch Together isn’t removed, but it’s been deprecated and has stopped working on at least one platform (Chromecast).
Really shitty move to be removing/deprecating functionality and then asking for more money.