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As a Jellyfin user that has lurked in past "Plex did bad thing X" threads and someone suggested jellyfin.
The usual reasons are
At least that's what I remember at the top of my hat.
I used to be on plex for similar reasons.
Remote login is still a hassle of course. I work around it with a VPN but that causes issues sometimes.
Plex Amp went great for a while for me until it suddenly didn't. The app got incredibly laggy on my phone when I was playing playlists of a 1000 songs or more. I switched to navidrome + Symfonium as an alternative and set up remote access with a cloudflare tunnel.
Lifetime pass purchased years ago and Plex manages sign-ins and connections for my less computer-savvy friends.
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.
99% of my usage is on an Apple TV and the Jellyfin Apple TV client is just really bad. Last time I tried it didn't even display "watched" markers and the UI looked terrible. None of the third party clients seemed decent either. The Plex client is much better (although I could do without the "suggested" sections).
The tvOS app is actively under active development, although it's been a couple years since they've published a proper release. Devs routinely post updates here
I already own a lifetime Plex pass, so I have no reason to stop using it. They are high thinking that anyone will pay $750 for lifetime. I paid under $100 but frankly I would have paid more, I use it every day. I’m glad that the devs there were able to get paid and provide for their families while making Plex. Plex works incredibly well for me and my family, I will use it for as long as I am able to.
I struggle to understand why JF users seem to want Plex users to convert so badly. I used JF for a while but things are great on Plex. If I thought JF was better I would switch and my metadata is well prepared for the day I need to.
I struggle to understand why JF users seem to want Plex users to convert so badly. I used JF for a while but things are great on Plex.
See no further as wenn Windows does something bad and Linux users come in like locusts.
Yeah, pretty much this. I have very little reason to switch, as the price increase doesn’t affect me at all.
Plus, there are enough known Jellyfin exploits that I’m not comfortable having it on the internet. The vulnerabilities are exploitable even with a reverse proxy. And I enjoy being able to share my libraries with friends and family. I have a few friends who run Plex servers of their own, and having their shared libraries show up in a single unified home page is nice. That wouldn’t be possible if I had to get all of them set up with a local VPN connection first.
Luckily, the two happily run side-by-side. So there’s literally no good reason to ditch Plex if you already have the lifetime pass.
Lifetime Pass holder here. Used to run Jellyfin alongside Plex. Had crashing issues and had to shut Jellyfin down for quite a bit. Came back after a while and started Jellyfin from scratch. None of my users ever chose Jellyfin over Plex.
I'm willing to deal with this personally simply because Plex creates just as much, if not more of a headache for me as an administrator and the bloat is ridiculous, but not a single one of my users has switched, and I don't blame them. They don't have to deal with the administrative difficulties, so there's no benefit to them except being able to download files to their system instead of just in the app, which none of them care about. If nobody is going to use it, my focus ends up being on Plex anyway. I have been pushing Jellyfin for a year and a half. None of my friends or family want to use it unless Plex borks something, and even then they want Plex back.
Jellyfin just isn't on par with Plex, no matter how much I wish it was. It's death by a thousand cuts on both the user and administrative ends. It would be one thing if I were a free user or actively paying for Plex, but as a Lifetime Pass holder, I just can't justify it yet.
I would recommend Symfonium for muaic listening.
It has an insane feature set (and it can support both Plex and Jellyfin libraries
One of my killer features of it are rolling cache. And you can decide how big and how it behaves to cache songs
I use Jellyfin to listen music at best on desktop at work through the browser
Nothing in the self hosted space is taken seriously on windows. There’s a reason for that. Jellyfin on Linux is fine. I’m a fucking smooth brain and if I can do it, a crack enhanced autistic monkey can do it.
Plexamp is better. I will give you that. There’s nothing outright bad about jellyfins take on music. Apps like Discrete make it quite nice, but plexamp just satisfies that out-of-box itch.
For music enthusiasts plexamp is also basically unbeatable. I welcome the day open source catches up.
As an observer in these comments, this is a great answer. Thanks for typing it out.
It does seem like some "cuts" could be ironed out reasonably quickly, like the file naming issue or UI lag.
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.
From my admin panel (showing the user child protection):
Idk where the age metadata for movies ia pulled from but I guess it's either TMDB/TVDB or some other metadata source I added.
Seems to work though (I have not added it)
The age rating can be written over and locked so a refresh can not reset it.
As for subtitles (don't quote me though):
SRT on the AndroidTV app is basically instant (just direct play)
PGS can (afaik) usually also played directly
VobSub needs to be burned in/transcoded
ASS/SSA is in a phase to be implemented so it doesnt result in transcoding.
But usually encoders/remuxers include SRT or PGS subs anyway.
My only complaint is the native iPad-app which needs a minute to stream SRT subs for whatever reason (using the web-ui). The mobile Android app, the AndroidTV and regular web ui basically work instantly so idk /shrug
TL; DR: UX, UI, and memory.
Memory usage is a significant concern. It immediately made my NAS completely crash when attempting to scan the (not even very large) library. Plex, right now, as of writing, when idle, uses 30MB, compared to the 3.1GB reported by Jellyfin when I last tried it, which was the last reading before my NAS died a tragic death of RAM starvation.
The apps are bad. A browser isn’t a good solution - see HDR, 10bit, 5.1, Atmos, and bit-perfect support. Remote access is complex, particularly for those behind CG-NAT, and encryption for remote access is even more convoluted; Plex does it in one checkbox. Some of that is architectural, some financial, but the end result is a worse experience for me.
The UI design is such that any server slowdown affects responsiveness severely, even for simple actions, which unfortunately speaks volumes about how much of a priority the actual user experience is - that’s not something I’m compatible with as a person in general.
Third-party apps are not good either for my platforms, I deemed them to be unusable unstable and amusingly poorly designed - that’s including the Swift and Flutter versions, the latter of which’s design and UX I found incredibly obtuse. Stretching a phone app for desktop use feels a bit like stretching your ballsack into a wind sail - maybe just get a sail mate.
I genuinely wanted to like Jellyfin, I hate proprietary software, let alone paid software, LET ALONE paid piracy software. But JF still has so many areas like these that are just incredibly frustrating to deal with. Plex’s dogshit decisions are not impacting me much (Lifetime), I have established custom setups around the desktop Plex clients to make them usable, so I see no immediate reason to switch until Jellyfin addresses its memory usage and considers using a non-skid language for an application that’s essentially a file server, set of ffmpeg scripts and a metadata database.
I actually distrust the plex approach to granting remote access. WireGuard or Yggdrasil into a jellyfin instance seems more practical and manageable for me, and for my friends it’s fine, but I will concede it’s not great for people trying to commercialize their pirated content. That added step of connecting with VPN is super not great.
I bought a Plex lifetime pass in 2014 when it was $75. I’ll keep using it until they make it stop working.
I bought the plex pass at the same price. I've been using jellyfin for just over a year now. Had to set up tailscale for remote access, but it's worth it to use an open source tool.
4 people host libraries that my tech illiterate boomer parents access.
One login, many servers, singular interface.
That is very specifically the situation I'm in. Jellyfish, emby, you wanna whip up a persona... that's a pretty damn clear-cut one for ya
No because you can’t easily and securely share your library and remote play.
I have a lifetime pass so there’s no need to switch to a worse product.
Well now I can sell my account for 500
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.
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.
Plex doesn't charge to just stream locally so I haven't bothered switching or looking into switching yet.
Lifetime subscriber when it was like $75 bux
Setup and runs on my NAS (unRAID) Uses a small GPU to transcode as needed Shared only with non technical family members
Has worked as is for YEARS.
So, the question is, am I looking for something to replace a working free (prepaid) solution I have? That answer is nope.
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.
The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library
Does Plex somehow do a better job of figuring out special features metadata? Because other than that, you follow the naming schemes, and Jellyfin has had a 100% hit rate for me.
Ease of use for my users across multiple platforms with minimal tech knowledge on their end. I'm sharing my library with ranges from 12yo to 70. I need it to "just work" and it does that perfectly.
Couldn't upvote this harder. Tried Jellyfin for 5 mins and was super confused why I couldn't find sharing options. After googling and reading about reverse proxies and buying domains and shit I said fuck it and uninstalled
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.