A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
[Thread #308 for this comm, first seen 22nd May 2026, 19:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I'm counting down the days until they revoke all existing lifetime passes. With this change and the recent bitwarden price increases, we're definitely in the era of being squeezed for every dime from all sides.
Like many others, I bought the lifetime plex pass when it was relatively cheap but switched to jellyfin for personal use years ago. I keep plex running for family members but that'll stop as soon as the lifetime pass goes away.
The Bitwarden news is really disappointing. I thought they were me of the "good guys" but it seems that was only the first phase of enshittification. I quite like their services but I'm starting to make my migration plans. 1password seems pretty reputable and their prices are relatively stable.
I've learned to start looking at alternatives as soon as I get a whiff of venture capital near anything I rely on. I hope I'm wrong but this is probably just the start of the downfall of bitwarden.
I'm on vaultwarden for now and keeping an eye on aliasvault and passbolt.
Yeah, I use VaultWarden for my passwords, but Bitwarden for secret management. There are a lot options for secret management. If necessary I could just host OpenBao on my NAS.
No loyalty to any brand or service, ever. Take your dollars and your time and your effort to whoever deserves it most. That even includes open source software.
Loyalty to a brand or company never made sense to me. Its a relationship or a contract. As soon as they start breaking that contract screw em.
Same. And same.
Somebody created a 20GB archive of ~2,000 commercials from 2000-2015 to troll your Plex Jellyfin users with
https://archive.org/details/commercials-clean
Who else is going to mess with their families and friends with this?
Hah. Saving this for later
As someone who paid around £120 for Emby lifetime: What the fuck
Of course, Plex really don't seem to realise they are a laughing stock in this community.
Plex kind of beats Jellyfin in: music player support (but I believe in separate dedicated services rather than a jack-of-all-trades, so I'd recommend Navidrome instead), and easy remote access (but Plex Cloud dependent).
The only thing Plex has that Emby & Jellyfin don't, that I think is pretty neat, is the combining of multiple servers in one library UI. That's it. And even then you can use Moonfin or Kodi clients, or Jellyswarrm in the stack, and that feature is FOSS too.
The only thing Plex has that Emby & Jellyfin don't, that I think is pretty neat, is the combining of multiple servers in one library UI. That's it.
For myself I can access jellyfin from my tailnet, but Plex also makes secure sharing with friends and family over the internet simple.
You also get their OTA broadcast guide for free with plex pass. I doubt anyone else will ever offer that. The cheapest option I know of is HDHomerun’s for $35/year.
With those two things I suspect I’ll be sticking with Plex (if not exclusively) until they go out of business.
I think the price hike is from June or July 1
Oh yeah, ty
I also only paid 70€ for my Lifetime Plex, some 10 years ago. That was definitely worth it and continues to be, but this increase is pretty clearly a soft end for the lifetime licenses.
I don't get who this product is for in a universe where Jellyfin exists.
Jellyfin is not safe to expose to the web, plex is and can be done with one click. That’s worth at least a couple hundred in my mind, certainly not 700 but it’s important for friends with no technical ability
Plex Pass certainly has functionality and features that jellyfin doesn’t; just not $750 worth…
Because Jellyfin did not exist back then and does not have feature parity today? But I know you just wanted to show everyone how smart you are for using Jellyfin...
Not at all. At least three or four people have said that PLEX has better features, but no one so far has said what features make it worth using or what makes it better. I found that Jellyfin was one of the easiest things to set up once I started my home server. I don't have any background in tech or IT, I'm just a hobyist.
I went with Jellyfin when I was setting it up because it seemed easier and had a more active support community, but from looking at the two, they seemed basically interchangeable. I've never had a reason to look for something else, since Jellyfin works better than most of the corporate apps on my TV. It loads faster, has less lag, and is easier to navigate than Netflix, Disney, Prime, etc. My zero-tech family find it easy enough to use daily.
When I found out Plex charged, I thought that they were actually managing your remote storage or something. What is the market for people who want to pay to access their own files on their own hardware? I genuinely don't get it. If you want to share it, out of your home network there is always Tailscale or the like.
(Assuming you have a Plex pass):
Setup for Plex isn't just easier, its basically non existent. Run the exe, point to folder, done. HW encoding just works, transcoding just works, metadata gathering just works.
remote streaming. No need to setup an elaborate VPN scheme and install a client for it on every device you want to have remote access. It just works and even punches through CGNAT and the like
Clients. Plex has a client for every system under the sun. No need for sideloading or anything like that, they are everywhere
UI. Plex has a sane and good looking ui for the streaming client and the admin interface.
--
Jellyfin is not bad, but its just not a replacement for Plex. And the way the devs are acting, I doubt it ever will be
750 reasons not to get back with your (Pl)ex
750 ways to leave your lover
thats great but
could you please explain the 750 ways?
Just get a new rack Jack
Install the 'arr stack
Cancel your sub bub
Set your self free
In my opinion they should have just discontinued the lifetime sub instead of the ridiculous pricing and bad press.
Would definitely have been the more honest approach