- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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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I think it’s important to recognize what Plex is saying with this announcement: their current business model isn’t sustainable. That means those who already have lifetime passes are vulnerable to Plex going away. If/when that happens, what will those users do then? That’s the conversation worth having now.
A gentle reminder that Jellyfin exists to those thinking of alternatives.
For free (FOSS), and is way better than Plex
If you use it weekly it shouldn’t be free to you, certainly if you use it more frequently than that. Give money to the projects you depend on or they will disappear.
Supporting software that you use by paying for it?
Ew.
/kidding
I’m a very happy lifetime membership owner and have zero problem with them removing features from the free version. Free doesn’t pay the bills unless you want to become the product.
It’s not better in any way other than cost. That cost comes with massive drawbacks.
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.
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?
Don’t have to make an account, for starters. Gives you more detailed control of transcoding options, audio playback and whatnot.
The UI is worse, that much is true, but that’s not the end all be all of user experience.
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?
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.
They mentioned remote streaming which jellyfin doesn’t have a secure way to do by itself
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.
No, but that’s easy to setup with Tailscale or a myriad of other solutions for free.
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.
Tailscale and IP whitelisting are both viable options
It doesn’t cost $750.
…to stream your own media, hosted on your own server 😅
Neither does Plex.
No you are right, it is 800 euro.
No, plex has many price points, including a free one.
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
Why are you having to prove you’re the owner of it exactly? What you’re describing is “user error”.
The whole claim token thing and no it was a know issue
Was? So it’s not now?
Again, if you installed Plex in a setup that it is known to have issues with, that’s a user error.
No lol, that’s just a pourly designed system.
Also Plex worked with IX systems to get Plex on Truenas
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.
Why would you not do that anyway?
Because if I’m watching locally I dont need them, and if I’m watching remotely Plex already offers secure remote viewing 'out of the box`. They give every user an SSL certificate and a public accessible URL at app.plex.tv. They also handle secure user authentication. The new price is stupid, but Jellyfin is not a 1:1 replacement.
Never used Plex. Jellyfin has always met my needs, so I never bothered to try it.
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.
We’ve seen other companies pull this move by saying “lifetime” only applies to X version.
Except when I bought my lifetime it meant lifetime for the SERVICE, not the app…
Did it. I don’t remember it saying that. And I bought it around the same time as you since I paid the same price.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean Plex will do it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not afraid of the inevitable, man. We are having a conversation and I’m sharing my thoughts.
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
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
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
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
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
it is pathetic indeed, but I think much fewer projects admit it than how many should
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.
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
but for the sake of being a successful project to the masses? It’s basically a dead end Road
I think that’s why we should still have requirements against software we run (although as some funnily say, we are free to get a refund), but not pretend that the software is more secure than it is known to be. sad that we need a VPN for security, but it is what it is.
I don’t know how could we get our devs to be more attentive to security.
I know that whales exist, but seriously… Who is into self hosting but also into dropping $750 on a service that can end on a whim?
Jellyfin has lots and lots of tutorials, fyi. it’s not as intimidating as it seems once you get going with it.
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.
I already have a lifetime Plex pass so this isn’t an issue for me. 6 months from now when Plex decides my lifetime pass has a new expiry, then I’ll be motivated.
this exactly. I got a lifetime pass in the before times (pre-pandemic) back when they were $100 bucks ish, but I know it’s only a matter of time before they come for us grandfathered-in fools.
Why not run both? That’s what I do, then if Plex is an issue for someone I can make them a Jellyfin account
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.
The company’s blog post also described a number of improvements they plan to make
After you pay: “oops, we won’t”
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.
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.
Fucks sake, when did that happen?
https://support.plex.tv/articles/watch-together/
February of 2025, looks like.
Thanks
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.
So basically, they just want to phase our the lifetime plan, but they know removing it outright would cause outrage so they “just” increase the price to massively lower interest and then say: “Well nobody wanted it so we removed the product”.
I swear to god plex and the profiteering sons of bitches behind it can go fuck themselves.
It’s good “fuck off” pricing.
The make more off of FAAS then lifetime sub’s. More of their users are FAAS users them stream your own.
I “defend” plex against silly complaints, but jesus christ that is one giant leap for no gain. That’s stupid, no one will pay that - though I tend to think that’s the whole point.
Jellyfin
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.
Realistically the only advantage of Plex is being able to watch it over the internet without a VPN. Which means it makes it easier to get friends and family access to your server or to access it yourself from random smart tvs outside your house.
If you only watch at home or have a fire stick that you take with you to watch abroad or your friends/family members have one and can setup a VPN on it it’s not needed.
For me, the killer app for Plex is Plexamp, the music client. It’s superb, and AFAIK Jellyfin doesn’t really have an equivalent (there are 3P options, but they’re lacking).
Are you accessing your media from outside of your network?
I have heard that you need to set up a VPN for Jellyfin to securely use your media library remotely. Plex handles all of that for me so that I don’t need to deal with it.
I have a jellyfin server set up that you access like this:
https://my.servername/jellyfin
Username and password is all you need aside from that. Apps for most platforms or access in a web browser.
You do know that there are security issues with that, right? For example, if someone can guess your media files they can watch them https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
Some of those aren’t great, but I don’t consider any of them critical in terms of risk. I understand that others may feel differently.
Agree, I don’t consider most of them a risk, but I do like to bring this to the attention of people who are exposing Jellyfin to the web so they can make an informed decision.
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I do not, and don’t plan to. Probably wouldn’t be that hard to set up though as someone familiar with nginx.
I guess Plex uses their own VPN under the hood then to make it more convenient?
Yep, and it generally has fewer sharp corners. Like last time I checked, in order to set up quick sync, you have to manually check each codec you want to offload to hardware. And if you select one that isn’t supported by your hardware, you find out when you try to play that. So it means carefully cross-referencing with the Wikipedia page for your quick sync version. Plex just has an enable hardware transcoding check box and it figures it out for you.
There’s also some features like smart playlists that I remember needing to set up plugins for whereas Plex supports it out of the box.
Of course ther are other things where jellyfin comes out ahead, like surround to stereo down mixing - I could never get the center channel (dialog) to be at a good volume when down mixed to stereo on my TV, but it just works and produces the correct volume in jellyfin.
But ultimately I think what causes all my users to prefer Plex is that the official app is polished and consistent across all platforms. The official jellyfin one looks like a programmer put it together with bootstrap components, and my favorite alternatives (like findroid) are in active development (I do donate on a reoccurring basis though in hopes that it reaches a level of polish matching Plex)
I don’t think transcoding is that difficult if you’ve already set up your own server. Like, that’s only a thing the admin would have to figure out and it’s a quick lookup.
I do agree with the client UI issue tho, and would like to add that the lack of a per-user watchlist is a pretty baffling decision given that it’s been widely requested for years and years and it would make it enormously more comfortable.
Wait, Jellyfin doesn’t have per user watch lists? Forget making it externally available to other people, this is something I need within my own household. I haven’t installed Jellyfin yet, but I had not anticipated this feature being absent. How do you work around it?
Roku app has a watchlist, but mostly I don’t bother to get around it or put it in a collection which is clunky as shit
It’s not, and I didn’t say it was hard. Just that it’s a sharp corner that jellyfin should fix if they want to make it as one click as Plex is. It’s another part of the setup where you have to pay attention and get every check box right or it’ll not work as intended. I found it annoying to have to look it up and I’ve been in software for 15 years. I don’t doubt that any newb would find it frustrating. I remember seeing that it was planned to have hardware transcoding codec support auto detected but IDK if that has happened yet.
It’s especially annoying because jellyfin doesn’t just copy the support matrix into their docs, and the one on Wikipedia is by processor generation codename, so you have to look up your processor and get the codename, then reference the Wikipedia table and go down each codec and not make a mistake. Even though it’s “not hard” I still go back to that section because I second guess that I checked everything right thinking that I’ve caused some issues with a mistake. It’s additional cognitive load that isn’t worth defending if you want jellyfin to be good.
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.
Huge disagree on the last part. Jellyfin has a bunch of Android, Roku, Google tv and PC clients. I struggle to think of a device me or my friends use that has a Plex client but not a Jellyfin one.
I’ve got a bunch of friends accessing my jellyfin server. It has clients for most devices now.
I didn’t say it’s not possible, I said it’s not secure and/or easy.
It’s definitely easy, and the secure part is debatable.
Doing it insecurely is easy.
The secure part isn’t debatable. Even the devs will tell you it’s not secure.
Secure isn’t a binary. Depending on your threat model, using Plex is impossible to use securely!
I was Osama bin Laden and I can confirm that this is true.
HDR, hardware transcoding, remote access.
My Jellyfin has all of these things.
Mine too. And I appreciates that.
are they insane?
From a purely profit-oriented perspective, no. They’re setting up a pretext to eliminate the lifetime license plan due to a lack of interest. No sane person would pay that kind of lump sum for the service (and the insane ones will bring in triple the revenue), so they’ll claim that there is no market for it. After that, they’re free to crank up the periodic subscription prices.
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by profiteering opportunism.
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by profiteering opportunism.
Does this already have a name? If not, can we call it “Riccitiello’s Law”?
it’s called capitalism
it’s their own product, who are they pretending to fool?
Stakeholders. Journalists. The market. The ignorant public. They’re constructing a narrative to shield themselves and minimize the hit to their reputation when they stop offering lifetime license plans. The announcement won’t look nearly as damning if it contains a reference to the falling number of new lifetime customers, even if it omits the context of why that number has been falling.
So they are “shielding” themselves from a reputation drop by making an incredibly naked attempt and pushing the price to the roof so nobody wants it?
I mean, come on… if they had increased it $20 by $20 until nobody wants it, I would buy your hypothesis, but this is like pooping on my Director’s desk while he is in the office to get fired
How is this less blatant than just announcing they are cancelling life time subscriptions? or even better, just removing the option without any announcement?
They wanna gentle into it somewhat because they know there are many server managing people on the line already, doubting going jellyfin but scared of the hassle of transferring users, incompatibility (or too difficult for user) with some users devices.
They wanna move fast because money line needs to go up, boss said.
So currently, tripling lifetime prices seems to be the middle way for them. After a while monthly and yearly prices will rise too (but slower than tripling).
Not really. Their plan for a while now is to convert all to subscriptions and this is just their latest salvo. Next up is getting rid of it completely due to “no demand” and then kicking existing lifetime accounts to some static version that won’t be supported.
then why not just do that? who are they pretending to fool?
Good point! Everyone that sees the news on this is either going to already be using Plex or not internalize it because it isn’t relevant to them.
It seems like they’re jumping through an awful lot of hoops to bamboozle some tiny number of potential customers that happen to be in the market for self-hosted media streaming right then at the time of the announcement of the end of the lifetime subscription.
Yes.
