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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no I have not tried it.
the jellyfin community is toxic af from my personal interactions. they're always far more concerned with trying to one-up Plex users or just attempting to be always "right".
not every member is this way, but the loudest among the community certainly makes me think the opposite.
I don't plan on using jellyfin until it's my last option.
Jellyfin people who constantly ask “have you tried Jellyfin?” have never used Plex and don’t know what they are missing out on.
I have Emby lifetime. I have Plex lifetime. I try Jellyfin every year.
Plex wins always. Emby is second. Would not recommend Jellyfin.
What am I missing out on? I don't mean this in a mean way, I think you are correct that I don't know and am legitimately curious.
If the other two cost money, and I'm happy on Jellyfin, maybe ignorance is bliss.
Yeah, I'd like to know too (but won't be using proprietary stuff just to find out).
Just passing by from all, not much of a self-hoster myself, but I do have Plex running in my home. I just never really do much with it these days...it runs, I log into it and access my media. I'm not sharing with other people. I'm not using the other streaming services it tried to show me, etc. It works for now and I'm not invested enough to put in the work to switch to something else.
I will say/ask this though, I have a ton of music (video is secondary for me). I use plexamp on my phone all the time as my primary source of music. Does jellyfin do well with music + mobile pretty well out of the box?
Sucks to add users to, users can't reset their own password, and apparently security is so bad that exposing it to the internet is basically just giving hackers the front door key.
I got Plex working on my network and found that it didn't have a nice UI, it didn't match shows to their IMDb titles consistently, it showed duplicates, and I wasn't able to access things remotely as easily as Plex.
I already tried to setup jellyfin for a couple days before I bought the $120 Plex pass. I could not get it to work at all and it was frustrating reading all the vulnerabilities with the internet.
Plex took me 5 minutes to setup and all my friends can access my media no problem.
For ease of use, Plex wins Everytime.
setup
set up. "Setup" is a noun that lost its hyphen.
everytime
every time. Otherwise it's not a word at all.
Jellyfin doesn't really do anything better than Plex. If someone already does have a Plex pass, then the best you can say about Jellyfin is that you're glad things are missing (Like Discover/Plex Channels/etc). Also, the level of support for Jellyfin just isn't there. Plex doesn't always have great support, but answers to technical problems in Jellyfin are frequently just "Don't do that". As others have mentioned too, the experience of sharing your library with isn't really even comparable. Your chances of sharing your Jellyfin library with your grandma are near zero unless you just do it for her.
The process of setting up Jellyfin as a backup solution actually led me to experimenting with Emby. Unless something crazy happens to my current Plex implementation I'm still not going to proactively switch, but Emby legitimately does (rarely) have some features where it has a leg up on both of them.
My chances of sharing a Plex library with grandma are also zero. I would still have to set it up for her. That's a non argument.
I have both technically running. The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library, or reconfigure the files (absolutely not happening) which I just dgaf enough to do when vanishingly few people would be able to use it, so its only partially set up. It also can’t be accessed by anyone because I'm not dumb enough, nor smart enough, to open it up to the internet (I don’t know how to do it safely and I'm thus entirely not interested in trying).
Plex, by contrast, is already configured (and if I have to scrap the library and start over, as I've done several times, its pretty easy to reconfigure), the metadata linking is correct and automatic most of the time, everyone already has access to it, and it just works for them, and thus for me. I'm not giving it up just because a bunch of hyper-nerds on the internet say it’s bad for, frankly, nonsense reasons that don't apply or matter to me or honestly most people who use it. I’ll wait until it -actually- is bad for my use, or until jellyfin serves the use I have for it, which it absolutely does not do presently, and may never. (And no, a vpn or whatever setup is not a solution, it’s just one more thing to maintain and fuck with constantly to keep it working for people who don’t even know what a vpn is. Hard pass.)
I wouldn't pay for plex now, nor in the last several years, and I strongly discourage my users from doing so, but spent money is spent, so might as well keep using what I paid for until it doesn't work for me anymore. I mean really, why not? I genuinely haven't seen any valid reasons to get rid of it, and lots of reasons to keep it.
I can't make my family members use Wireguard, they are stubborn, what can I say?
Secondly it's the guides I saw for some specifics things I wanted, almost everything was with Plex in mind.
Thirdly I just liked how quick it was to set up and intuitive to use compared to Jellyfin.
Fourthly the Users are really easy to manage and create from Plex without me having to manage everyone.
Finally many smart TVs come with a specific subset of apps and Plex usually makes the cut while Jellyfin does not, again, family members, I can't control what TVs they buy.
I don't even know how to setup wireguard because I don't have the time to tinker and learn.
I got a lifetime pass for cheap ages ago and while the company isn't doing so well, Plex itself isn't getting any worse. Its just not getting better.
As long as that continues, then I'm fine with staying. I only really use it for Plexamp anyway.
oh I forgot about Plexamp. Its been my main music app since it also does Android auto.
It just works so well and nothing else comes close so far.
If it was just for me inside my house then I never would have left XBMC now called Kodi and a file share. I still run it with a special set top box to play 4K disc rips with full Dolby Vision / Atmos support.
Plex is dirt simple to get a reasonably secure setup for remote streaming with virtually no effort. User management and password resets are mostly managed by Plex and not me. I just have to setup what libraries I want to share with them.
I have a lifetime pass that I got for like $70-80. As long as it’s not broken, I see no reason to switch. Sure they keep adding garbage that I have to turn off but for the most part I can turn it off.
I'm in the throes of attempting a migration from Plex (lifetime pass, here) to Jellyfin, and my main issue is echoed elsewhere: It's a headache to set up secure external access. My users would either need a new account through some auth gate I'd have to set up & manage, or I'd have to wire everyone up through wireguard or something they'd have to remember a password for and blah blah blah.
Plex is the only thing my home server is sharing. I don't have anything directly exposed to the external internet. In any case I can think of, doing this "right" means extra steps (on top of new steps) for my current users, plus new security concerns & added user management for myself.
I run both, I got the lifetime license for under $100 and it is much easier to have my various family members install the Plex app and then login than to get them on my VPN to access Jellyfin.
Grandma ain't installing Tailscale
Plex clients arent great, but they are better on many TVs compared to jellyfin. Also the wife is used to it, so I don't really want to retrain
I got a lifetime pass a long time ago and have no reason to switch. I'll consider it when it's worth considering.
I have a lifetime pass and multiple TVs used by multiple people obver 10k km away from me that are not tech literate.
I've actually switched, so I'm not really who you are asking, but the last hurdle was I really don't like how it filters the movie list when you pick a letter instead of jumping to that place in the list. Anyone know how to make it work like Plex?
That's a per client behavior. Wholphin for Android, for example, does it the Plex way.
Ive been using Plex for a few years. No pass. Desktop all the media is on, tv with a Chromecast. Android and iOS phones, both with Plex apps where I cast to the tv from.
The old app worked fine.
The new Plex app has issues with this. Some titles just won't cast, you press play and it goes back to menu. I have to go to the desktop and cast from the Plex server page to the same tv and it works.
It's frustrating.
Life time subscriber since a very long time. So no need, but I would have switched if there was a decent Xbox or LG TV app.
Plex works for me, Jellyfin doesn’t because of missing apps 🤷♂️