People who are staying on Plex, have you tried Jellyfin? What about it do you not prefer? (real question)

No because you can’t easily and securely share your library and remote play.

I have a lifetime pass so there’s no need to switch to a worse product.

TL; DR: UX, UI, and memory.

Memory usage is a significant concern. It immediately made my NAS completely crash when attempting to scan the (not even very large) library. Plex, right now, as of writing, when idle, uses 30MB, compared to the 3.1GB reported by Jellyfin when I last tried it, which was the last reading before my NAS died a tragic death of RAM starvation.

The apps are bad. A browser isn’t a good solution - see HDR, 10bit, 5.1, Atmos, and bit-perfect support. Remote access is complex, particularly for those behind CG-NAT, and encryption for remote access is even more convoluted; Plex does it in one checkbox. Some of that is architectural, some financial, but the end result is a worse experience for me.

The UI design is such that any server slowdown affects responsiveness severely, even for simple actions, which unfortunately speaks volumes about how much of a priority the actual user experience is - that’s not something I’m compatible with as a person in general.

Third-party apps are not good either for my platforms, I deemed them to be unusable unstable and amusingly poorly designed - that’s including the Swift and Flutter versions, the latter of which’s design and UX I found incredibly obtuse. Stretching a phone app for desktop use feels a bit like stretching your ballsack into a wind sail - maybe just get a sail mate.

I genuinely wanted to like Jellyfin, I hate proprietary software, let alone paid software, LET ALONE paid piracy software. But JF still has so many areas like these that are just incredibly frustrating to deal with. Plex’s dogshit decisions are not impacting me much (Lifetime), I have established custom setups around the desktop Plex clients to make them usable, so I see no immediate reason to switch until Jellyfin addresses its memory usage and considers using a non-skid language for an application that’s essentially a file server, set of ffmpeg scripts and a metadata database.

Sucks to add users to, users can’t reset their own password, and apparently security is so bad that exposing it to the internet is basically just giving hackers the front door key.

no I have not tried it.

the jellyfin community is toxic af from my personal interactions. they’re always far more concerned with trying to one-up Plex users or just attempting to be always “right”.

not every member is this way, but the loudest among the community certainly makes me think the opposite.

I don’t plan on using jellyfin until it’s my last option.

Jellyfin doesn’t really do anything better than Plex. If someone already does have a Plex pass, then the best you can say about Jellyfin is that you’re glad things are missing (Like Discover/Plex Channels/etc). Also, the level of support for Jellyfin just isn’t there. Plex doesn’t always have great support, but answers to technical problems in Jellyfin are frequently just “Don’t do that”. As others have mentioned too, the experience of sharing your library with isn’t really even comparable. Your chances of sharing your Jellyfin library with your grandma are near zero unless you just do it for her.

The process of setting up Jellyfin as a backup solution actually led me to experimenting with Emby. Unless something crazy happens to my current Plex implementation I’m still not going to proactively switch, but Emby legitimately does (rarely) have some features where it has a leg up on both of them.

Just passing by from all, not much of a self-hoster myself, but I do have Plex running in my home. I just never really do much with it these days…it runs, I log into it and access my media. I’m not sharing with other people. I’m not using the other streaming services it tried to show me, etc. It works for now and I’m not invested enough to put in the work to switch to something else.

I will say/ask this though, I have a ton of music (video is secondary for me). I use plexamp on my phone all the time as my primary source of music. Does jellyfin do well with music + mobile pretty well out of the box?

I don’t have PlexPass btw

Jellyfin people who constantly ask “have you tried Jellyfin?” have never used Plex and don’t know what they are missing out on.

I have Emby lifetime. I have Plex lifetime. I try Jellyfin every year.

Plex wins always. Emby is second. Would not recommend Jellyfin.

I already tried to setup jellyfin for a couple days before I bought the $120 Plex pass. I could not get it to work at all and it was frustrating reading all the vulnerabilities with the internet.

Plex took me 5 minutes to setup and all my friends can access my media no problem.

For ease of use, Plex wins Everytime.

I got Plex working on my network and found that it didn’t have a nice UI, it didn’t match shows to their IMDb titles consistently, it showed duplicates, and I wasn’t able to access things remotely as easily as Plex.

I have both technically running. The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library, or reconfigure the files (absolutely not happening) which I just dgaf enough to do when vanishingly few people would be able to use it, so its only partially set up. It also can’t be accessed by anyone because I’m not dumb enough, nor smart enough, to open it up to the internet (I don’t know how to do it safely and I’m thus entirely not interested in trying).

Plex, by contrast, is already configured (and if I have to scrap the library and start over, as I’ve done several times, its pretty easy to reconfigure), the metadata linking is correct and automatic most of the time, everyone already has access to it, and it just works for them, and thus for me. I’m not giving it up just because a bunch of hyper-nerds on the internet say it’s bad for, frankly, nonsense reasons that don’t apply or matter to me or honestly most people who use it. I’ll wait until it -actually- is bad for my use, or until jellyfin serves the use I have for it, which it absolutely does not do presently, and may never. (And no, a vpn or whatever setup is not a solution, it’s just one more thing to maintain and fuck with constantly to keep it working for people who don’t even know what a vpn is. Hard pass.)

I wouldn’t pay for plex now, nor in the last several years, and I strongly discourage my users from doing so, but spent money is spent, so might as well keep using what I paid for until it doesn’t work for me anymore. I mean really, why not? I genuinely haven’t seen any valid reasons to get rid of it, and lots of reasons to keep it.

I can’t make my family members use Wireguard, they are stubborn, what can I say?

Secondly it’s the guides I saw for some specifics things I wanted, almost everything was with Plex in mind.

Thirdly I just liked how quick it was to set up and intuitive to use compared to Jellyfin.

Fourthly the Users are really easy to manage and create from Plex without me having to manage everyone.

Finally many smart TVs come with a specific subset of apps and Plex usually makes the cut while Jellyfin does not, again, family members, I can’t control what TVs they buy.

I got a lifetime pass for cheap ages ago and while the company isn’t doing so well, Plex itself isn’t getting any worse. Its just not getting better.

As long as that continues, then I’m fine with staying. I only really use it for Plexamp anyway.

I run both, I got the lifetime license for under $100 and it is much easier to have my various family members install the Plex app and then login than to get them on my VPN to access Jellyfin.

Grandma ain’t installing Tailscale