I use Plex every day. Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should stop.
The software, which lets you turn your personal collection of TV shows and movies into a Netflix-style streaming service, is extremely convenient. But Plex is offered by a company that, as of late, seems more focused on adding features than improving the cluttered user interface. Recently, it added a social platform and user reviews, two features I quickly disabled. I want to watch stuff—not talk about it with strangers (I have friends for that). The company keeps making design choices that push its ad-supported streaming choices over the personal media collection and DVR functionality I use the service to enjoy.
This might make sense from a business perspective. But it doesn’t make sense for my personal use of Plex, which is watching live TV and the TV shows I’ve recorded and stored on my own computer. I pay an annual subscription fee of $ 70 for this. I could avoid the annual subscription by buying a lifetime pass, but Plex just raised the price from $250 to $750. That’s more than a decade of annual passes, assuming Plex lasts the next decade.
All of which is to say there are reasons to be frustrated with Plex. And that’s enough to look into Jellyfin, a free and open source application that offers many of the features that make Plex so compelling. Is Jellyfin a good alternative? It depends.
Solid Basics, Rocky Remote Access
If the main thing you want is to watch your digital collection of TV shows and movies in your home, I have good news for you: Jellyfin works great. You can download the server, point it toward your media, and access that media on other devices on your network, all in a couple of minutes.
The scanning works well. In my case, a few things were labeled incorrectly, but I dealt with similar issues setting up Plex and know I can fix it without too much bother—it’s a matter of naming the files correctly.
You can access your server on the local network by typing the local IP into your address bar, which is handy. And there are Jellyfin clients for every major desktop, mobile, and smart TV platform you can think of. Put simply, you can get local media streaming working very quickly. If that’s your main use and you’re tired of Plex, I can confidently say Jellyfin is ready for you without fuss.
But sometimes you’re not home. Surprising, I know. One of the nice things about Plex is relatively simple remote access, which allows you to watch your media outside of your home network. With most modern routers, you won’t need to do much—the networking is taken care of. This is possible because Plex, the company, operates infrastructure that points other devices toward your home server.
Jellyfin has no such infrastructure. If you want to access your Jellyfin server when you’re away from home, you need to set up the networking infrastructure yourself. This could mean paying for a domain name and redirecting it to your server; it could mean setting up a VPN, or it could mean messing around with port forwarding. There are instructions, but they’re very clearly intended for power users.
Basically, you’re going to have to tinker. Now, the kind of person who runs their own Plex server can probably navigate all of this. But if you share access to your Plex server with others, Jellyfin will be harder for them to set up and use.