Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Plex Tripling Lifetime Plex Pass Price to $750 in July
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Can I pay via a subscription? How much is that per month? I get a division by zero error on my Android calculator while using Plex.
visualseed
macrumors 65816
Apple_Robert
Contributor
I use Infuse with Plex. The only reason I keep Plex is so I can remote stream via Tailscale when I want, which isn’t a lot. I don’t believe Jellyfin is as easy to remote into like with Tailscale.
Like boomers buying a two story 4,000 sqr ft house for $19,000 in 1979 LOL
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Just disable everything server side and you'll never have to look again. There's nothing 'snuck' in there when it's all disabled. Should take you as Plex Server admin about 30 seconds.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
TheDauterive
macrumors regular
I bought Plex for $4.99 on October 25, 2014, and I'm pretty sure it did absolutely everything I wanted it to right out of the box, namely, streaming media from my Mac mini to all of my other devices. I'm curious how many updates that have been made to the software since (especially recent updates) were made for the sake of the users rather than monetization.
They put remote streaming, which used to be free, behind a paywall, so there's that. They've also added movie rentals as well as bloating plex with the same d-list streaming library found on most other free services. But besides those three capitulations to user demand, I can't think of anything they've done that has substantially improved my use of the product since day 1.
This is actually where I wish I could load programs onto my phone the same way I do on my Mac. If there's something janky that I don't like in the latest update to VLC, I download an older version and install it instead. I would love to roll back the clock on Plex to a point prior to Elan, Scott and Cayce yielded the product to venture capital vultures. As far as I can tell, the took some money in 2014, but didn't take anything else until 2021, seven years later which is where the focus of the company really shifted to extracting as much cash from users as possible.
They put remote streaming, which used to be free, behind a paywall, so there's that. They've also added movie rentals as well as bloating plex with the same d-list streaming library found on most other free services. But besides those three capitulations to user demand, I can't think of anything they've done that has substantially improved my use of the product since day 1.
This is actually where I wish I could load programs onto my phone the same way I do on my Mac. If there's something janky that I don't like in the latest update to VLC, I download an older version and install it instead. I would love to roll back the clock on Plex to a point prior to Elan, Scott and Cayce yielded the product to venture capital vultures. As far as I can tell, the took some money in 2014, but didn't take anything else until 2021, seven years later which is where the focus of the company really shifted to extracting as much cash from users as possible.
DAMN....!!!!!!!! 🤯🤯🤯
I'm SO glad I got mine for $150 years ago! Truly a steal!! TBH: even then I remember thinking it felt underpriced.
First; whoever the heck started the whole 'everything on the internet should be free", should have very bad things happen to them.
"Everything free, all the time, forever" is......not a sustainable business model, to put it mildly.
Obviously; NO; that does NOT mean I support drastic price increases, nor the "everything is a subscription" either; but there's a big middle ground.
People should expect to pay - and expect to receive - good money for good work / products.
The media industry is a classic example of this.
They fought streaming / digital absolutely tooth & nail. What did they finally end up doing?
"Ownership" of digital media, basically doesn't exist these days. Pretty much any & all DRM ensure that you never truly OWN the media you buy, and by that I mean; can I sync it to a dozen of MY devices, can I pass it down to my kids?
If the company I purchased the media from exits the business for any reason (Microsoft + ebooks); do I get to keep my media?
The answer to pretty much all of these questions, as far as I know, is a big, fat, resounding NO. (Many in the industry would probably also add a snarky "how dare you!")
SO; I've made my decision & I don't pay for digital crap. I buy physical media.
Anyway, rant over.....
I do think plex is making a big mistake by TRIPLING prices literally overnight, but who knows.... I'd really hope they did a lot of research before deciding to do this.
Plex is really awesome, I do really love & use the heck out of it.
That kind of a price increase is very drastic, but..... ah, who knows.....
I'm SO glad I got mine for $150 years ago! Truly a steal!! TBH: even then I remember thinking it felt underpriced.
First; whoever the heck started the whole 'everything on the internet should be free", should have very bad things happen to them.
"Everything free, all the time, forever" is......not a sustainable business model, to put it mildly.
Obviously; NO; that does NOT mean I support drastic price increases, nor the "everything is a subscription" either; but there's a big middle ground.
People should expect to pay - and expect to receive - good money for good work / products.
The media industry is a classic example of this.
They fought streaming / digital absolutely tooth & nail. What did they finally end up doing?
"Ownership" of digital media, basically doesn't exist these days. Pretty much any & all DRM ensure that you never truly OWN the media you buy, and by that I mean; can I sync it to a dozen of MY devices, can I pass it down to my kids?
If the company I purchased the media from exits the business for any reason (Microsoft + ebooks); do I get to keep my media?
The answer to pretty much all of these questions, as far as I know, is a big, fat, resounding NO. (Many in the industry would probably also add a snarky "how dare you!")
SO; I've made my decision & I don't pay for digital crap. I buy physical media.
Anyway, rant over.....
I do think plex is making a big mistake by TRIPLING prices literally overnight, but who knows.... I'd really hope they did a lot of research before deciding to do this.
Plex is really awesome, I do really love & use the heck out of it.
That kind of a price increase is very drastic, but..... ah, who knows.....
Rafagon
macrumors 68000
Yeah! Rosetta Stone just did the same thing. They "improved" their app and now call it Rosetta Stone Sapphire, which is not included in the Rosetta Stone lifetime plan. They renamed their old app Rosetta Stone 2024.
If you're learning a language, stay away from Rosetta Stone!
More like... Rosetta's stoned if she thinks I'm going to pay her another cent!
It's not a mistake. They're betting most users will buy the subscription, and they're perfectly happy with that. As an ongoing business, subscriptions are where it's at - reliable, repeatable money coming in.
TheDauterive
macrumors regular
I've used Plex for 12 years and have never wanted any of their plex pass features. Which is probably why they started taking features away from free users and putting them between the plex pass paywall. Adiós direct remote streaming, gotta pay back the venture capital vultures somehow! 🙄
Their next step is to eliminate the sale of lifetime licenses (which, at $750 they’ve essentially done already - who in their right mind would buy Plex for that much???); and then ultimately cancelling the lifetime license that people have already purchased and forcing them to pay the subscription cost.
Apple_Robert
Contributor
I would pay good money if Infuse would allow for remote streaming via Tailscale. I would ditch Plex if that ever occurred.
duervo
macrumors 68020
They pretty much did just that by pricing it so highly. This effectively kills it without saying so and suffering the PR backlash. Still gonna be some backlash, it just won’t be as bad.
Meanwhile, they’ll get some whales to pay the $750 but this is essentially them saying “the sub is the best value” without killing perpetual license altogether.
fenderbass146
macrumors 68000
I disagree, I think just killing it would have prevented less backlash then this will. shrug.
It seems like Plex has really been struggling for years. How many people do they have working on the software? When I browse their online forums, I get the sense that there is only one guy…How long have they been working on their new Apple TV interface? 2 years? I see users begging them to renew the TestFlight betas. They went through a real rough patch with PMS over the last year. I installed Infuse Pro on my Apple TV while PMS was having its weird problems that Plex seemed to take forever to fix. I was shocked at how good the movies and shows looked with Infuse and how quickly they started. Something seems amiss at Plex…Hope they figure it out…soon!
cylack
macrumors 6502
Maybe they got private equity investors and just got greedy?
Infuse is just a frontend, it has no need to integrate with Tailscale.
Just create a Tailscale exit node that’s on the same network as your Plex backend and advertise your local subnet with it.
Connect to Tailscale, select your new exit node, open Infuse and watch media just like you would locally.
"Lifetime" typically means the lifetime of the app or service, not the company's nor yours.
Exactly. They could simply announce something like "Plex 2.0" or "Plex Ultra" and say it's a different app/service and that the current Plex Pass won't work for it. Other companies have definitely employed that tactic before.