Selfhosted

Problem is access outside your home for family and friends.

There are serious security gaps that make it a non starter to expose to the internet.

I've been using Jellyfin ever since they forked out of Emby, and honestly, it's the biggest complaint that I have. It is incredibly difficult to make it available to friends and family who are on various devices, networks, so on and so forth.

Whereas Plex "just works."

I say the following as a current Jellyfin user who stopped using Plex for privacy reasons: Plex making it easy to share your library outside of your LAN is an absolutely gigantic point in its favour. I don't understand why so many Jellyfin people seem unable or unwilling to understand or acknowledge this.

Ease of use for my users across multiple platforms with minimal tech knowledge on their end. I'm sharing my library with ranges from 12yo to 70. I need it to "just work" and it does that perfectly.

I tried Jellyfin once about a year ago and it was... OK I guess? Certainly nowhere near as polished as the rabid fan base would have me believe, and there was something in my library that it flat out refused to play.

If I didn't already have a lifetime Plex Pass, and it was just me hosting my own media for a user count of one, then sure, I'd use it. But none of those things are true. I need something that "just works" and Plex fits that bill.

Like most people here, I bought a lifetime pass when it was $75 and it's paid for itself over and over again in the time since. I honestly think I've had more than $750 worth of value from my purchase. Sure they've made some odd decisions recently, but until they start actively taking away functionality or rescind existing lifetime subs then I will continue to use it.

Meanwhile, not to belittle you personally, but the fact that every thread that mentions Plex in any way, good or bad, is guaranteed to be dominated by people circle-jerking over their beloved Jellyfin has put me completely off the project, to the point that I've had to add the word to my blocklist. Obviously that's not working too well or I wouldn't have seen this post!

Lifetime subscriber when it was like $75 bux

Setup and runs on my NAS (unRAID) Uses a small GPU to transcode as needed Shared only with non technical family members

Has worked as is for YEARS.

So, the question is, am I looking for something to replace a working free (prepaid) solution I have? That answer is nope.

Have lifetime already. No reason to jump. Generally it just works.

No need to have another project while Plex still works fine.

This is all a fascinating thread because everyone says Plex "just works"

I started using jellyfin about 6 months ago. I don't really know anything about plex use. However, jellyfin worked out of the box for me. Set up with a docker container and have never had any problems with it.

Its never failed to load media, or loaded duplicates or any of the other random things others have mentioned here.

For the most part it feels like people in the thread have just used Plex for a long time and had their first impression of jellyfin years ago and probably haven't checked it out since.

Which, fair play to them, life gets busy and setting up and migrating a media library is something that takes at least a couple hours which could be spent doing anything else.

If people are new, I'm sure they won't even bother with Plex and their ridiculously high fees. I cannot see Plex maintaining their userbase at this rate.

With them unable to maintain their userbase, I give it a year before they cancel lifetime passes and 2 years or so before it's completely enshitified and unusable.

I already paid when it was cheap. I'll stay and get my full dollars worth and then some. I paid for it, I'll use it. When it is unusable I'll bail. Anything else is stupid.

I paid for it ages ago on a deal, and it currently suits my needs. It runs as a docker container and it just works. It’s easy enough for my elderly mom to use remotely and I’ve ripped my entire movie collection for her to watch. I also like the live tv that’s included with the pass.

I would switch in a heartbeat if it wasn’t doing what I need, but so far I have no complaints, it works well for my family’s needs.

Jellyfin is awesome for local use, Plex is better at sharing libraries with friends and family and jellyfin is total ass for music

I run jellyfin

Jellyfin is great and I run both. However, sharing access with family is a PITA compared to Plex. I paid for Plex Pass lifetime at the $75 and have no reason to fully move. Keeping Jellyfin around in case Plex tries to rug pull lifetime passes, though.

Lifetime pass, it still works well so why would I switch?

Lifetime Pass holder here. Used to run Jellyfin alongside Plex. Had crashing issues and had to shut Jellyfin down for quite a bit. Came back after a while and started Jellyfin from scratch. None of my users ever chose Jellyfin over Plex.

• The UI is slower (at least on Windows), clunkier, and uglier. Hopefully this gets fixed in the upcoming big update they have planned for the desktop client. Their Roku app is actually on par with Plex's though.
• The admin dashboard is confusing and in my opinion awful.
• Downloaded content is not viewable within the app on Android. This is the complaint I've heard the most from my user who made a significant effort to switch. Ironically, after the New Experience update this became less of an issue since Plex ruined downloads.
• Plexamp's UI, radios, and sonic similarity feature were, last I checked, unmatched by a long-shot. I use my music library heavily. If I make the switch fully away from Plex, I'll probably opt for something more specialized like Navidrome.
• Manually setting the edition of a movie is so much easier on Plex, and for someone who likes to have multiple editions, it's less confusing for the user to see each edition individually labelled in the library than selecting the movie and being expected to know which file name they should pick. Not every file is named to Jellyfin's standards because that would make them harder to add to my torrent client, and some don't have their editions in the file name at all and I just have them hand-labelled in Plex based on run time.
• I'm still trying to setup my DVR in Jellyfin and can't get it to work. Plex works fine, Jellyfin just won't. It's a moot point at the moment, but once I do get it to work, unless things have changed over the years, the channel guide is a whole other set of challenges.

I'm willing to deal with this personally simply because Plex creates just as much, if not more of a headache for me as an administrator and the bloat is ridiculous, but not a single one of my users has switched, and I don't blame them. They don't have to deal with the administrative difficulties, so there's no benefit to them except being able to download files to their system instead of just in the app, which none of them care about. If nobody is going to use it, my focus ends up being on Plex anyway. I have been pushing Jellyfin for a year and a half. None of my friends or family want to use it unless Plex borks something, and even then they want Plex back.

Jellyfin just isn't on par with Plex, no matter how much I wish it was. It's death by a thousand cuts on both the user and administrative ends. It would be one thing if I were a free user or actively paying for Plex, but as a Lifetime Pass holder, I just can't justify it yet.

I like Plex.

When I bought my Plex lifetime pass I saw it as an investment. So far, it's paid off handsomely.

I'm still getting great experiences, able to access it from anywhere in the world, on basically any device, seamlessly and simply.

I get it that the jellyfin community is really excited about their thing - I just am not.

I've run jellyfin, it was kind of cool I guess, but there was nothing compelling about it. So I uninstalled it. What is jellyfin's "must have" feature, anyway?

I wouldn't go out and build a new car when I'm perfectly happy with my 10-year old sedan. If you're expecting me to go through that just because the new ones cost more than I spent years ago, you're insane. I wouldn't go and re paint my house just because the old company now charges new customers more for their paint.

I paid for it, it works well. There's no reason (except all the FUD I keep seeing on lemmy,) to even think about dismantling and recreating it with something new.

Keep building your dream tool Jellyfin people - Godspeed, but your community should target acquiring net-new users instead of trying to scare and poach happy users away from what they already have.

WhatI've noticed is that people who prioritize privacy and just want to watch their downloads on their tv usually use jellyfin and people who prioritize ux slickness and want to run an IPTV service for their friends and family usually use plex.

I’m afraid of exposing HTTPS to the open internet.

Like most people here I bought a lifetime pass years ago and Plex just works (it passes the Wife Acceptance Test).

However, I am planning on spinning up Jellyfin and giving it a go and seeing what it's like. I'm a bit nervous reading and things like multiple versions of the same movie displaying separately but I also think I saw a plugin that fixes that.

The client apps on Apple TV are just not good. I have tried swiftfin which is slow and I find it not very visually appealing. There there is infuse which does look better, but is missing features and requires a subscription for full functionality. If there is a app I'm missing I would be happy to try it.

I keep Jellyfin up to date and check in or it from time to time. Even have watchstate so my watched history stays updated. Hoping one day there will be a good Apple TV app and I could fully switch.

I use Plex to save money on plumbers because I cannot solder. Plex gives me the ability to exact repairs myself.