It is currently $250 until July 1, 2026.

It was $100 when I bought it back in 2022.

Triple in price is crazy, especially that high of a price to stream your own content!

At that price, I would be worried that they aren't doing too well financially. I would be worried that I paid that much only for the company to go under or limit its use a couple of years later.

Even though I bought my lifetime membership years ago, I think it’s time to explore other options. I don’t like this.

Would we all call it an upgrade?

I got mine for $250. Plex worked great. Then they added streaming tie-ins and promotional services I didn’t ask for, making them opt-out instead of opt-in.

They changed how my apps worked.

They made my users sign up for Plex accounts instead of letting me manage them locally.

They then tried making it appear like users had to pay to use my library, even though I had paid for a lifetime pass.

Then they actually did make it require a Plex Pass to stream remote content.

It’s my fucking content, Plex, and this nonsense is why I stood up Jellyfin as an escape hatch.

Good fucking riddance.

They obviously want to shift people to a monthly plan, but still give that lifetime. If I were to buy today vs when I originally, it would still be cost effective.

There are alternatives, so users that don't want to shell up the 150$ now can jump over to. It's closed source software and the users have the opportunity to shift (or build a competing software that meets more of their core needs).

With how it's been stagnating recently, even the current prices are a hard sell for me, especially given how "lifetime" with tech companies tends to mean "~five years". I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.

This is a feature I use multiple times per week with friends who live states away. I can’t believe they just dropped it.

I'm not reconfiguring my LAN because Plex can't identify remote traffic accurately.

i just use kodi for my content. Data is on my router's hard drive, and before that it was some USB spinning rust attached to the ISP's router, and it just works (Well, TV series needs to be stored with the required folder structure / names to be recognized, but that's it)

That's my usecase, so i never got the PLEX appeal (if i'm outside i just stream from the usual sources)

I use Jellyfin now but still think it’s an overall downgrade compared to the plex experience. Plex just works without any setup in my experience where I have always had hiccups with Jellyfin.

It ran on a desktop pc that we would just boot when we wanted to watch something. It met our needs. Considered a lifetime pass back in the day just to support the project, although the constant churn of "look at me!" stuff made me quickly realize that their goals were not mine.

A few months ago I finally got around to building a NAS, and discovered that plex won't even run now without a pass. Moved to Jellyfin and never looked back. Getting hardware accel configured took a day or so, but we now use it 10x as much as the old plex server.

Are you kidding me? This is ludicrous.

> As mentioned in the messaging above, this adjustment ensures that the price of a Lifetime Plex Pass continues to more accurately reflect its true value. Over the years, as our software and product has evolved, the breadth of features and benefits included with your Plex Pass has expanded. This increase ensures we can continue to invest resources into building and maintaining the Plex personal media software, while continuing to offer a Lifetime option.

I don't know how much engineering time is spent maintaining this app, but I haven't wanted (or used) any features added since ~2014 when I found this be a great app for locally streaming my massive Blu-Ray and DVD library. Streaming television, music, whatever else they've added is completely ignored.

Edit: local => locally

- Direct streaming 4K blu-ray atmos rips to home theater: just connected a PC via long HDMI fiber optic cable

- Library organization: tinyMediaManager is awesome for this.

- Watching ad hoc on iPad/iPhone: built a simple Next.js app that lists my movies and and a python script that encodes movies as MP4 and creates HLS playlists. No more real time transcoding.

- Downloading movies to my iPad for long flights: vibe coded an iOS app Claude handled all the AV code to download the same HLS streams.

Not sure I understand all of the complaining? I got Plex because it let me host all of my music and had apps that worked without much fuss.

This is still true. Are the problems more related to using it for video?