All the folks saying "just buy the lifetime pass" gonna be in for a big disappointment in about 5 years
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Yep. Enshitification behavior doesn't cease once you're technically a paying customer. If they hadn't made a habit of enshitification. Clawing features away to put behind a paywall I'd give them some support. But I prefer foss anyhow. And for myself, I'm not missing anything.
And those lifetime subscriptions are also a trap. They know that you have the money and are willing to pay and that you're using their service. Do you really think that some business suit will be satisfied by your onetime payment back in 2022?
If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining and support good things.
Thing is, Plex turns out to be less and less of a good thing with each passing day. Bloat, spying, removal of features, price hikes etc.
If you want to pay for software that is good, there’s always Emby.
Already paid for Plex and it works. Im not in favor of every change they've made, but it's still damn solid and takes money to run.
The point being these whiners aren't going to run off and support FOSS/alternatives... Just leech.
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PLEX is not FOSS, plex is a proprietary fork of XBMC.
My point is that in 5 years a lot of these plex users will wish they made the switch to jellyfin sooner.
Or Plex currently does everything they need it to, and $120 for 5+ years of keeping that going without any interruption of service is very reasonable. In the meantime, jellyfin will only get better and there might even be other options available by then.
Stop trying to make the issue black and white, one-size-fits-all. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for people to use both Plex and Jellyfin.
Or sunk cost fallacy, but whatever helps you justify paying $120 for software i guess. I dont think its a black and White one size fits all thing, i just have seen this patter before with other software, and it was already happening with plex before the price increase.
It's not sunk cost, dude. We agreed that $120 will get them 5 years of service that meets their needs. Even if they switch to jellyfin after 5 years, they still got their money's worth.
It's only sunk cost if they are worse off than if they had switched earlier. I guess if you're arguing that they would still have $120 if they switch today, I would argue they should still pay that $120 toward jellyfin's development. And that's assuming they have time to switch to jellyfin AND it fits 100% of their usecases, either of which could be untrue.
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I don't get the people down voting you... It's not like services are free. I've been paying for Plex since 2019, and I just recently got a lifetime pass. It's only fare to pay for it to use it ...
Yes, do donate to FOSS projects. At least that money will go to people who do the actual work and not to pad corporate profits.
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I got the lifetime pass 5 years ago. I've switched to JF because of the disappointment so far about a year ago.
JF is exactly what I wanted and needed plex to be, and everything added since is a worsened product. The lifetime pass was an attempt at getting the peace of mind of "then you just have it". If anything, only FOSS can give that.
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I think this is the tool you are looking for: https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched
I haven't used it myself but I plan on it eventually when I do make the switch.
I recently made the switch, worked pretty well :)
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I think you're looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!
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Just buy the lifetime Plex Pass before the price hike and you're golden.
"just give the bully more money and he'll stop bullying"
Bully lol. Such hyperbole.
It's quite similar scenario. This service is getting shittier to use, so you recommend paying more
It's not getting shittier, they're just asking for you to pay because you haven't been paying. If anything, the service is improving. I paid once and never have to pay again and I'm saving a ton by not needing to pay for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount, AppleTV etc. etc.
Well, the addition of Plex Movies and Live Channels is certainly shittier.
What’s the reason for $120 to stream my local files to a friend or family member? What exactly does Plex do in this process that would warrant a cost?
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It is getting shittier. I paid for Plex for years and I bailed not because of the cost, (I pay Emby now), but because of the bloat they keep shoving into it, spying on our content, and removing features entirely.
Bad advice to be paying them after they chose to go this route IMHO
Agreed. It encourages that behavior.
Yeah, at this point they just think we are stupid as, as if they were taking a huge toll with the bandwidth by capping the remote playback option... They are not hosting the files ffs.
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BuT I wAnT mY fRrrreEeeeEEeeee
These whiny people should stay with Plex if only to save FOSS devs the headache of dealing with them. They aren't going to support them either.
(Thanks for helping clarify)
That would probably work, until Plex decides to introduce another subscription tier on top of the lifetime license, and/or demand more money from its paying users. I could totally see them doing that
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If someone wants my Lifetime Plex account they can have it.
I’ll take it if you haven’t already given it away. This Plex change is not great for me, since I’m using remote access. I’ve got a Jellyfin server too, but I’m finding it less convenient for me, mostly for various nitpick reasons
oh no, this is the first im hearing about this.
If you have Plex pass you dont have to worry about it. Others can still remote play from your server free. Actually more so because the mobile app is free for them too now.
But if you don't already have lifetime and are paying monthly or annually then that price is also almost doubling
Just buy the lifetime Plex pass before the price goes up then.
spend money to pirate now before you have to spend even more money to pirate later
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pLeX iS aWeSoMe!
This is like complaining that you have to spend money on HDDs or a VPN.
Not really. Or at all. Both of those are multi-purpose devices which you can use for other things. A plex license is singularly for Plex. It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media, something you can already accomplish for free.
Of all the examples you could have chosen you essentially picked the worst two.
It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media
Sure it does, which is why we're not all using VLC to stream our media.
Furthermore, they do provide a simple way to share our media with friends and family via their authentication servers along with their relay servers if direct access to your server goes down for whatever reason which have associated costs. I have a lot of my own gripes about Plex, but this particular change is probably at the bottom of the list, and I think acting like this software has zero value is disparaging not only Plex but Jellyfin and the army of volunteers over there working hard to make their product better for you and everyone else at no cost. You're essentially saying all their work is worthless since their product accomplishes all the same things as Plex.
It’s not the same at all.
Plex practically doubled their prices to access features that users previously had for free.
Can’t remember the last time a HDD manufacturer put previously free features behind a paywall or when a Mullvad doubled its prices.
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Really I think we are going to see an increase in jellyfin uptake given the changes which is great for that project
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Not the answer to your question but thanks for the reminder to cancel
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