Lol, no, Plex

I recently retired my Plex server. It had been my go to for well over a decade. I had paid for Plex Pass on and off over the years, but as the prices went up and the quality went down, I looked around for alternatives.

Recently, after spending twenty precious post-putdown pre-bedtime minutes wrestling with Plex, trying to get it to play something, skipping dark-pattern UX designed to trick me into accidentally agreeing to share all my data, hitting screens telling me the colours wouldn’t be correct because I hadnt paid for Plex Pass to watch in HDR, Plex crashed so hard it brought down my whole server and it took me 40 minutes to bring it (and all the other services it hosts) back online.

Alternative, mostly open-source, services all come with tradeoffs, but when the big player intentionally makes their product worse, it lowers the bar and means we are willing to accept more compromises in exchange for the freedom from someone else’s business model.

I understand that the Plex team wants to grow, they want to hire more people, treat their employees, build a business.

But I’m not interested in that (and am not obliged to care), and rather than do the work to bring me along, they’re counting on the switching cost acting as a moat, to part me with my money so I can maintain functionality I’ve enjoyed for years, rather than offering me something worth paying for.

Bye!