Selfhosted

I got a lifetime pass a long time ago and have no reason to switch. I'll consider it when it's worth considering.

As a Jellyfin user that has lurked in past "Plex did bad thing X" threads and someone suggested jellyfin.

The usual reasons are

• Remote login (through their relay)
• Which also plays into remote streaming
• Plex Amp (their music player) is supposedly the absolute best of anything
• Very easy to sign up (both the admin and family and friends

At least that's what I remember at the top of my hat.

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 doesn't have a client/app for my Samsung Frame TV

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 have both and run them side by side through Docker in UNRaid, but Jellyfin hardly ever gets used unless there is a problem with Plex and I don't feel like fixing it immediately. I've had the Plex lifetime pass for forever.

I have young kids and really like Plex's system for moderating content for their accounts. I've never explored this on Jellyfin though. As a person with crappy laptop speakers, subtitles are important to me. Plex does subtitles better than Jellyfin in my experience.

I thought about replying to some comments but decided to make a top level comment instead. There are some valid points a few people have brought up that aren't the easiest things to fix. Some are, actually pretty easy to fix. Some are issues where Jellyfin forces you to do things a certain way, like file naming convention, which I think is extremely smart to do anyway.

But the one reply I keep seeing is "until Plex stops working, I see no reason to switch". With that, I mean, I guess we all agree you are going to get fucked by Plex at some point. They've been slowly cranking up the heat in the pot. I love my media library and I just couldn't stand waiting for the rolling boil. I've been using Adobe products since 1999. I recognize an abusive relationship when I see it. If you're happy where you're at, I mean, by all means. I'm not going to yuck your yum. Many of the issues are exactly the kinds of things the Jellyfin community is happy to help fix with you. I do wish you all the best, but I've never gotten locked into a great deal that didn't hurt when I needed to get out of it before.

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.

Can it import my Plex settings, categorized titles, and watched lists for all my users? And whatever other things I’m not thinking of…

It’s on my radar, but I have a lot of data, custom images, etc. it would need to be 1:1

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 don’t have a lifetime pass; I pay the monthly subscription. I would prefer to use Jellyfin, but Plex works better and the Jellyfin app on Apple TV is abysmal. That’s pretty much it. If Jellyfin worked better, I’d switch, but I’m not suffering through it for some principle against paying for software.

I use Emby instead of Plex or Jellyfin; mostly because it has an Xbox client, and I've already got a lifetime licence. One of my most active users only watches via Xbox.

Really don't like Plexs centralised user system or the overall direction they've been headed for years, so I moved away from that long ago (8+ years ago at least). Jellyfin wasn't up to par at the time (though they've made leaps and bounds of progress in that time), and Emby has always supported more types of devices\clients. Their device limit (the client count limit with premeir) has never come into play for me, but I know there are larger user bases out there where that is a problem.

Embys development is extremely slow though, taking YEARS to implement simple features or even address major concerns. Plus their support sucks without the community stepping in and providing it on behalf of the staff. Luke (the main dev) is better at copy+pasting candid responses than he is at actually interacting with human beings.

I use both, I have had my plex running since the lifetime pass could be had for 40 bucks on sale.

I still use plex because it Just Works™️ for my family members. But, the day when they suddenly unprompted blasted all family (and me) with emails about what everyone else watched this week, I decided I would never use it again myself. I also told my family that the next time that stupid ass plex database gets corrupted, I'm not restoring it and they'll have to join me on jellyfin.

I started using Jellyfin for myself, and I absolutely love it. And settings up my own preferences for transcoding, and things like that giving me full control is fantastic. But jellyfin has issues for multi users imo, sure I can manually make accounts for people and all that. But just the idea of having to input a url for the server in an app is already way past the convenience threshold for a lot.

Also most of the exposed jellyfin endpoints are entirely unprotected, and there's no native MFA.

TL;DR... Lowest common denominator stops people setting up tailscale or the like, along with sunken cost fallacy.

The UI didn't support remotes on console and use tiles. Really amateur shit. No need to set up a reverse proxy. I have a lifetime, zero need to switch.

I had a real problem with the media scanner - turns out it was just very slow. :(

I use JF for movies/shows. I feel where JF falls short is music, and sadly for now, without a paid solution which I don’t feel like playing since I bought lifetime pass a decade ago plexamp just does it better. Will it always be like this? God, hope not. The writing is on the wall and the quicker we are off Plex the better.

if you install it and do not add plugins or mods or download them manually or with another tool, there is no way to pull subtitles.

You also need to sideload the app because it's not available in app stores.

That's the blockers for me... though the plugin for subtitles that now exists I have yet to try, and it may make it doable.

I definitely have noticed that it is important to install metadata plugins like imdb, as well as fanart, in order to feel closer to Plex. Users like seeing Rotten Tomato and IMBD scores, in addition to cast info and such.

Tried Jellyfin. It puked when it saw my library.

I bought plex lifetime years ago when it was like 125.

I still hate the new plex app ui on roku. It's clunky and sucks. The alternative is to break my library in sections and hope something else will maybe work.

I use both still, Jellyfins UI can be a bit janky sometimes and it does not sync viewing progress of the same episode or movie across UHD and HD content, which Plex does.

Overall I think Jellyfin is better though.