Why the Corporate Creep of Plex Makes Jellyfin the Better Choice
The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin
After years of relying on Plex for my home media, I've watched it shift from a user-first tool to a corporate platform prioritizing ads and centralized control. The introduction of Remote Watch Passes, aggressive crackdowns on hosting, and mandatory cloud authentication undermine true ownership. In contrast, Jellyfin offers a fully local, open-source alternative with no tracking or forced subscriptions, making it the superior choice for those who value system freedom.
When you log in to your Plex server, you don't authenticate locally against your host database; instead, your app redirects to Plex.tv to log in via their central servers, creating a single point of failure that breaks the fundamental promise of owning your server.
- dostick
The corporate creep was already felt when years ago they released the PlexAmp audio player.
Good player but to display lyrics you have to open the menu and select “Show Lyrics”, two clicks every time. Every time, for every track. When the next track is playing lyrics display is automatically turned off. It is not remembered either, you go back to previous track and have to click click them menu gain.
This is because they have to pay a licence and rather save $100 per month by inconveniencing their user base. you see, it’s extra work to click the menu every time so you won’t be viewing lyrics. Profit!
And no, if your file already has lyrics that doesn’t matter, you still have to open to view it every time, for each track.
- smilespray
Jellyfin 12 should be able to use a Plex media library using Plex naming conventions, no renaming required.
This will reduce the switching workload, and you can run both services at the same time whilst trying out Jellyfin.
- evulhotdog
Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts.
The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, just excited for a new player in the space.
Something to keep an eye on!
- pjjpo
I think anyone grandfathered in to a lifetime license is getting a pretty good deal on this. Mine was $119 in 2017. The only other lifetime license I have bought is Adguard, also excellent. Software that gets unlimited updates for a low price is _very rare_ right? If there are other good examples, happy to hear them!
I get that things are changing with Plex, naturally given it was a steal. But somehow it feels in bad faith when the author got that great deal but puts out this hit piece.
- xnx
As someone who was late to the game, I never even considered Plex and have been totally satisfied with Jellyfin. Is there anything better about Plex?
- wiether
Weird article.
Not only does it acknowledges that Plex is still far better than Jellyfin with its whole ecosystem, but it also depict pretty nicely the entitlement of the users overall.
On one side, they paid $75 more than five years ago for a piece of software for which they still receive weekly updates.
On the other, they talk about how leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free.
Up till now, Plex kept their promise regarding the Lifetime pass: we still receive updates, we still have all the features.
So, unless they change that, they haven't broken their promise.
It seems only fair from them to try to run a sustainable business, which you can do without renewed income.
They have to find money.
They raise subscription price: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners.
They add ad-supported features: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. I don't see a single add wherever I access my Plex library, I have hidden their "free" library. I still have 100% of the features I had when I bought the Lifetime pass. Except that I have now access to more features.
Sure, nobody forced them to say "Lifetime", but I don't see how I could be mad if they decided to release a completely new version that is out of the Lifetime scope.
I would still have access to the old one, but if I was interested in the new one, I would have to move to one of their new plans, that looks more sustainable in the long run.
Plex is still the easiest one to us […]
- deejaaymac
For those curious to see Jellyfin in action
https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable/web/#/home
Username is demo, PW is blank
Also, I've been running jellyfin for many years, I've had no issues
- beAbU
I've been a paying Emby user for close to ten years, ever since plex tried to launch a VR player or some shit, while there were still critical bugs in the player for web and other devices.
Emby just works, it's players are great, and issues actually get fixed. I know it's a closed source fork of XBMC, I know that's controversial, but the product itself is just so good.