Plex has been essentially “giving away” a service for the better part of what, 20 years?
And that service is the remote proxying of your server and its access. Basically, you didn’t need to open a port, expose your server to the public, Plex provided a proxy through which you could stream to your heart’s content, knowing that your server is both accessible and (more or less, more than if you managed it yourself in most cases) secure.
Now obviously, they are a company and thus need to make revenue to continue developing the server, clients, and maintaining the infrastructure. Mind you, Plex has 25 million active monthly users… Even if just 10% of that is active at any given moment, streaming at 10Mbps… that’s 25 MILLION megabits per sec. 25 thousand gigabits. 25 terabits. PER. SECOND. Being proxied through infra Plex has to pay for. Your average proxy/CDN dataserver unit can do usually around 100 gigabit, meaning Plex needs 250 of those. Just to serve 10% of the userbase.
And don’t forget that, unlike “traditional streaming platforms” where CDNs can greatly amplify bandwidth (due to repeating same content to thousands/millions of people), Plex can’t easily utilise this infrastructure approach, AND they have to constantly stream INTO the proxy as well as outwards (a CDN pulls in the source file once and then distributes it, Plex literally needs to pull the data stream on-demand, without storing it).
I don’t like these restrictions they’re putting in, “enshittifying” the service - e.g. if I have my server forwarded properly and don’t need to go through their proxy, I should be given a free pass (albeit I already have that since I bought lifetime Plex Pass), but I do get how it would be annoying for the average user to not realise why they’re asked to pay when their friend isn’t.
They are requiring Plex Pass for all remote sessions, even ones which don’t go through plex servers, where your client connects to your remote plex server directly. IMO, this should not require Plex Pass if the remote stream is not going through Plex’s server.
Also since the April 2025 update where they required the payment, the “new experience” apps have been terrible, and people have been side loading the old apps because they retain core functionality. Maybe there was a technical reason to release new apps to enforce the Plex Pass requirements, but it has been a terrible experience being told to pay money and then getting a worse experience, compared to what was free a year ago.
For me, the value add of Plex is their maintenance and support of the apps on various platforms and the authentication and connection management. I do have my server port forwarded, so there’s no reason for them to handle my media streams. Being able to tell a new user that all they need to do is download an app from a trusted app repository and create a free account so I can invite them to my libraries is a super simple experience for most skill levels and well worth the $60 or so I spent on a lifetime Plex pass over a decade ago.
I get that there are use cases where it makes more sense to go with a completely free solution like JellyFin, but many critics of Plex act like ALL they are doing is serving user-supplied media on a web server, and that’s a gross misrepresentation of their offering.
I don’t love the IPTV stuff that they do, but it’s not that difficult to tweak the current app so that only my libraries are shown. Compared to an experience like my smart TV which is shoving ads down my throat and adding steps to get to the apps I want, it’s an experience I can live with if it keeps Plex in the black.
Even if just 10% of that is active at any given moment, streaming at 10Mbps… that’s 25 MILLION megabits per sec.
Streaming traffic doesn’t usually go through Plex’s server, though. That only happens with “indirect streams”, which usually means something is wrong with your connection and they are capped at like 2 mbps.
Streaming traffic has to go through the Plex proxies if your server isn’t exposed to the internet (meaning proper port forwarding, no CG-NAT and no other ISP fuckery that would prevent such functionality).
Of the 25 million users of Plex, how many do you think have the setup (either the ability or availability) that supports direct playback remotely?
Ideally yes, only basic things like authentication and server mapping should go through the main Plex servers but sadly this isn’t the case. And Plex has provided that service for years, for free. Them asking money for a service that isn’t free to run, is fair game.
Given the prevalence of one click install NASes (and by that I mean that Plex is a one click install, or even the whole *arr stack), I wouldn’t be sure.
Also that doesn’t account for people who are limited by available ISPs - some of us only have the choice of a single ISP, who might not be offering static IP, and CG-NAT makes port forwarding impossible. IPv6 would fix that but given we’re not much better off than we were ten years ago… I don’t have high hopes.
Yeah, been a lifetime Plex pass holder for a long time, it was fun but it still doesn’t support OAuth and now they are forcing ads before local TV streams now. I realize the latter is probably more on the Roku side of the house as my shield hasn’t started doing that yet.
Really live TV is the last thing holding me onto Plex, well that and I really do love Plexamp and the sonic analysis bit Plex can do. Plex’s days are sadly numbered for this selfhoster.
I for example just put together a neat pocketID+Crowdsec+Caddy stack, and via OAuth I can easily manage everything. Every service that integrates with OAuth makes it super simple to create new users automatically with limited scopes, all directly fed by PocketID, allowing me to expose my services to the open web without fear of being hacked (crodsec being the fallback if shit would hit the fan, blocking all the community-sourced known threat actors and suspicious behaviour like port probing, login stuffing, etc.).
Okay, let’s clarify something.
Plex has been essentially “giving away” a service for the better part of what, 20 years?
And that service is the remote proxying of your server and its access. Basically, you didn’t need to open a port, expose your server to the public, Plex provided a proxy through which you could stream to your heart’s content, knowing that your server is both accessible and (more or less, more than if you managed it yourself in most cases) secure.
Now obviously, they are a company and thus need to make revenue to continue developing the server, clients, and maintaining the infrastructure. Mind you, Plex has 25 million active monthly users… Even if just 10% of that is active at any given moment, streaming at 10Mbps… that’s 25 MILLION megabits per sec. 25 thousand gigabits. 25 terabits. PER. SECOND. Being proxied through infra Plex has to pay for. Your average proxy/CDN dataserver unit can do usually around 100 gigabit, meaning Plex needs 250 of those. Just to serve 10% of the userbase.
And don’t forget that, unlike “traditional streaming platforms” where CDNs can greatly amplify bandwidth (due to repeating same content to thousands/millions of people), Plex can’t easily utilise this infrastructure approach, AND they have to constantly stream INTO the proxy as well as outwards (a CDN pulls in the source file once and then distributes it, Plex literally needs to pull the data stream on-demand, without storing it).
I don’t like these restrictions they’re putting in, “enshittifying” the service - e.g. if I have my server forwarded properly and don’t need to go through their proxy, I should be given a free pass (albeit I already have that since I bought lifetime Plex Pass), but I do get how it would be annoying for the average user to not realise why they’re asked to pay when their friend isn’t.
They are requiring Plex Pass for all remote sessions, even ones which don’t go through plex servers, where your client connects to your remote plex server directly. IMO, this should not require Plex Pass if the remote stream is not going through Plex’s server.
Also since the April 2025 update where they required the payment, the “new experience” apps have been terrible, and people have been side loading the old apps because they retain core functionality. Maybe there was a technical reason to release new apps to enforce the Plex Pass requirements, but it has been a terrible experience being told to pay money and then getting a worse experience, compared to what was free a year ago.
For me, the value add of Plex is their maintenance and support of the apps on various platforms and the authentication and connection management. I do have my server port forwarded, so there’s no reason for them to handle my media streams. Being able to tell a new user that all they need to do is download an app from a trusted app repository and create a free account so I can invite them to my libraries is a super simple experience for most skill levels and well worth the $60 or so I spent on a lifetime Plex pass over a decade ago.
I get that there are use cases where it makes more sense to go with a completely free solution like JellyFin, but many critics of Plex act like ALL they are doing is serving user-supplied media on a web server, and that’s a gross misrepresentation of their offering.
I don’t love the IPTV stuff that they do, but it’s not that difficult to tweak the current app so that only my libraries are shown. Compared to an experience like my smart TV which is shoving ads down my throat and adding steps to get to the apps I want, it’s an experience I can live with if it keeps Plex in the black.
Streaming traffic doesn’t usually go through Plex’s server, though. That only happens with “indirect streams”, which usually means something is wrong with your connection and they are capped at like 2 mbps.
Streaming traffic has to go through the Plex proxies if your server isn’t exposed to the internet (meaning proper port forwarding, no CG-NAT and no other ISP fuckery that would prevent such functionality).
Of the 25 million users of Plex, how many do you think have the setup (either the ability or availability) that supports direct playback remotely?
Ideally yes, only basic things like authentication and server mapping should go through the main Plex servers but sadly this isn’t the case. And Plex has provided that service for years, for free. Them asking money for a service that isn’t free to run, is fair game.
What isn’t fair is how they’ve been doing it.
I think of those that run their own server and use remote streaming at all, the vast majority. All it takes is to forward one port in the router.
Of the 8 plex servers I have access to, all have direct streaming. And mine as well, of course.
Given the prevalence of one click install NASes (and by that I mean that Plex is a one click install, or even the whole *arr stack), I wouldn’t be sure.
Also that doesn’t account for people who are limited by available ISPs - some of us only have the choice of a single ISP, who might not be offering static IP, and CG-NAT makes port forwarding impossible. IPv6 would fix that but given we’re not much better off than we were ten years ago… I don’t have high hopes.
Yeah, been a lifetime Plex pass holder for a long time, it was fun but it still doesn’t support OAuth and now they are forcing ads before local TV streams now. I realize the latter is probably more on the Roku side of the house as my shield hasn’t started doing that yet.
Really live TV is the last thing holding me onto Plex, well that and I really do love Plexamp and the sonic analysis bit Plex can do. Plex’s days are sadly numbered for this selfhoster.
What do you need OAuth for? Also I never really used the live TV thing, I pretty much exclusively stream from my or other people’s libraries.
As long as they don’t mess with the lifetime pass and start charging me or my friends for accessing my library, I really have no quarrels with Plex.
Centralised Auth stack for all your services.
I for example just put together a neat pocketID+Crowdsec+Caddy stack, and via OAuth I can easily manage everything. Every service that integrates with OAuth makes it super simple to create new users automatically with limited scopes, all directly fed by PocketID, allowing me to expose my services to the open web without fear of being hacked (crodsec being the fallback if shit would hit the fan, blocking all the community-sourced known threat actors and suspicious behaviour like port probing, login stuffing, etc.).