As someone looking to get into self hosting and was researching plex. What’s been the experience like using jellyfish with non techy people? This is mainly something I want to set up for my parents
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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As a techie I hate this answer but it's hard to beat a Roku with Plex from an ease of use standpoint. My 70+ year old parents have no problem navigating it.
jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It's so damn good and easy
This might be a dumb question, but could I access my Jellyfin through an external VPN like Proton?
I have it set up in my raspberry to download Linux ISOs and run Jellyfin
If you mean that you are using Proton VPN on your Raspberry Pi to mask your downloading traffic, then no that same VPN will not help you access services like Jellyfin on your home network while you are remote.
Instead you'll want to use something like Tailscale (or Wireguard). You run it as a service on your home network and it then becomes your own VPN that you (or others) can use to connect to your home network when you are remote.
You could run Wireguard on the same RaspberryPi that you use for downloading but I would recommend against it assuming that you're running Proton VPN right on the host itself (and not inside a container).
Seems reasonable. I'm a lifetime Plex pass holder, so it won't affect me or the one person I let access my server lol
Yet.
Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.
Dammit, my friend just said he would give me access to his file server, all I have to do is install Plex. Presumably this announcement means that will become impossible without a subscription.
Mmmmmaybe.
A lot of what they paywall depends on if the server runner's account is a Plexpass holder. You might have to pay a one time fee for the app depending on what platform you choose.
Then again, there's different ways of sharing your server, they might be keen on only including Plexpass for the Plex Home users and then paywall the E-mail shared users.
Tell him to switch to jellyfin and that he should give you tailscale access
All it means is you can’t go through their servers. If you setup a different way to access your network (VPN) it’ll still work.
I think most people probably have a lifetime plex pass for their plex server, or they are using alternative servers.
Lifetime pass grants licenses to all clients, at least it used to unless this changes that.
My server has many users and nobody has paid anything aside from my original buy of $120 in 2019. So far that comes out to about $1.67/mo for unlimited users and unlimited updates.
I'm not saying I really like the updates though. I think they should have remained slim, but someone is trying to make more and more money by branching out into bullshit beyond private media serving. All that trash should be separate products that are divorced from the private media server / client product.
All this being said, check out Jellyfin, little reason to use plex over it for private media but it has some limitations if you need subtitles or cannot relocate file structures.
Another company fucked by executives.
Hellooooo jellyfin!
Only use open source software
Jellyfin + Tailscale, the perfect combination.
They do not have chromecast support. (Atleat the last time i checked) Thats a deal breaker for me, would live to use it.
IIRC it has it. Not if you're behind VPN or a tunnel. Only over HTTPS.
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Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.
It was difficult to setup
I'm not really sure here - I just did the setup and you literally paste one command into your terminal. There you'll find the Jellyfin IP and port, visit it in a browser and you'll get a simple wizard which guides you into setting up your libraries. Which also is not complicated, you just select a folder where your stuff is?
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I have a lifetime Plex account but have not used it in two years. I use Jellyfin. Obviously opinions vary.
At home, I have FireTV and Roku devices. I stream remotely to iPhones and tablets using Twingate.
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I already pay for plex pass but I'm going to start looking into jelly fin out of principle. I will not support the enshitification of a service I use and this is how it starts. Soon they will have tiered subscriptions and then the cheap one will be taken away and the cheapest paid one will be stuffed with ads then all tiers will be stuffed with ads then they will jack up prices again or charge more for sharing with family or block it all together to force your family to get their own sub and the circle of enshitification will be complete.
I run both on the same media sources. Works great. Some movies even seem to buffer quicker via Jellyfin than Plex
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Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.
But what infrastructure does this feature require? I'm direct connecting to my own personal server with perhaps credential handling and a handshake handled by Plex servers to connect. None of the media is passing through their servers - or it shouldn't be if it is.
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