I wonder if plex pass lifetime membership worth the money since plex cloud is now Available?
A PlexPass subscription is still required to use Plex Cloud
The change is that Plex Cloud is now out of Invite-Only Beta.
From the Plex Blog:
Plex Cloud: Now Available to all Plex Pass Subscribers!
REF: https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-cloud-now-available-to-all-plex-pass-subscribers/
Edit: unless your question was, should I switch my currently subscription, (monthly or yearly) to lifetime now that Plex Cloud is out of invite only beta
If you have a very small media library then plex cloud may work. But if you have a large library then it is not cost effective as you will need to pay dropbox or google for storage space. Not to mention the time it would take to upload TB’s of data to the cloud.
Honestly, I’ve tried Plex Cloud and to be fair, for small libraries, it’s OK. But, trying to get media up to the cloud with any sort of reliability (at least on Linux headless servers, like seedboxes and such) is a pain. Google, OneDrive and Dropbox all seem to throttle uploads (which is expected). So, if you have something that you really want to watch, you have to wait for it to copy to your cloud provider. Kind of a pain, imho.
Plus, as @shaggs31 said, you still have the cost of the cloud storage provider.
Plex Pass lifetime membership IS worth the money. But it has nothing to do with Plex Cloud.
I have tried Plex Cloud and if that is your sole reason or even a primary one for using Plex then it is not even worth the money for free usage. It costs too much for the storage and it is unreliable and it is still lacking too many features that regular Plex has, like index files for one.
Also there is the fact that by my calculation even the least expensive provider costs more, after two - three years, than buying real storage does.
But having said all that Plex Pass is well worth the price. It is worth it because it supports Plex and, even with the mistakes and missteps that Plex has made in the last year or two they are still, by far, the best media manager that I know of and that alone is deserving of support and the price of a Plex Pass is cheap compaired to other things of similar usefulness.
I do not and will not use Plex Cloud. In fact I really use almost nothing that is a perk of Plex Pass but I feel that the purchase of my Pass is one of the best investments of any form I have ever made. In fact my only life decision I can think of that was better, in my belief, was when, at the age of 16, I declined to wrestle a medium sized alligator at the Louisiana state fair.
Plex Cloud works great for me & it’s far more cost ee]effective than buying my own hardware. I specifically bought a Lifetime Plex Pass to use Plex Cloud. I already had a subscription to G Suite for Business which gives me unlimited storage on Google Drive so using Plex Cloud literally costs me nothing. G Suite for Business is only $10/month & not having to worry about server management & backups etc never mind no hardware costs makes it easily worth it. I don’t use Plex for anything other than downloaded TV shows & Blu-ray rips so have no need for Music or Photos or whatever & for that usage Plex Cloud is straightforward simple & reliable.
Google Drive at least does not throttle uploads. I have been experimenting with various solutions for getting new media into Google Drive & thus Plex Cloud & haven’t yet settled on the best but Offcloud at $10/month or $60 per year is very simple for the non technical. It looks like a shared slot on a seedbox at $10-$15/month might suit me best as after download I can copy to Google Drive at Gigabit Ethernet speeds. Uploading my current media library could take some months at the current rate but that’s a one off & has the advantage of giving me an off-site backup of all my media.
@CoreRooted said:
Honestly, I’ve tried Plex Cloud and to be fair, for small libraries, it’s OK. But, trying to get media up to the cloud with any sort of reliability (at least on Linux headless servers, like seedboxes and such) is a pain. Google, OneDrive and Dropbox all seem to throttle uploads (which is expected). So, if you have something that you really want to watch, you have to wait for it to copy to your cloud provider. Kind of a pain, imho.
Using rclone copying to/from/syncing Google Drive & Amazon Cloud Drive is simple fast & reliable. Neither ACD nor Google Drive throttle uploads & I doubt that the other Cloud storage providers do either. I can max out a 100Mbps network connection on a VPS when using cloche copying between two Google Droves or ACD & Google Drive. If your network is Gigabit Ethernet then you can copy to/from Google Drive & ACD at those speeds.
Plus, as @shaggs31 said, you still have the cost of the cloud storage provider.
G Suite for Business gives unlimited storage on Google Drive for $10/month even for a single user. Backup up the media files to Amazon Cloud Drive at $60/ year. That’s little more than the cost of a single 4TB disk drive per year so is easily cheaper than buying hardware
@nigelpb said:
G Suite for Business gives unlimited storage on Google Drive for $10/month even for a single user. Backup up the media files to Amazon Cloud Drive at $60/ year. That’s little more than the cost of a single 4TB disk drive per year so is easily cheaper than buying hardware
BUT that is outside their TOS and therefore it could go away at any time.
The only way Plex Cloud would be a good value would be if it offered all the features of regular Plex and the user’s library is pretty small and/or the user’s upload is quite high. It would take me at least eight months (assuming no major interruptions) to get the important parts of my library up to the cloud and over 1.5 years to get it all up.
For a small library or for someone with fast upload speeds Plex Cloud “could” be a viable choice but for a very large number of folks it is little more than a novelty.
My upload is allegedly 100mb.
I have uploaded 3.3Tb in a week.
That has included a few crashes so I am guessing it has been uploading about 80% of that week.
So for me if it goes smoothly (ha!) I might get my library up there in a month (or 2)!
My 2 week trial is half over so I might throw $20 for 2 months and then decide!
ATM this might be just my backup server and a place to backup all my other data also.
@Elijah_Baley said:
@nigelpb said:
G Suite for Business gives unlimited storage on Google Drive for $10/month even for a single user. Backup up the media files to Amazon Cloud Drive at $60/ year. That’s little more than the cost of a single 4TB disk drive per year so is easily cheaper than buying hardwareBUT that is outside their TOS and therefore it could go away at any time.
BUT unlimited storage is available today for $10/month. I am in any case using G Suit for Business for my email & other stuff. I don’t have it specifically for Plex so it literally costs me nothing.Worst case is that you have to pay $50/month for five users which isn’t an outrageous amount & could be defrayed by finding other Plex users to share the cost.
The only way Plex Cloud would be a good value would be if it offered all the features of regular Plex and the user’s library is pretty small and/or the user’s upload is quite high. It would take me at least eight months (assuming no major interruptions) to get the important parts of my library up to the cloud and over 1.5 years to get it all up.
I’m watching TV Shows & Movies & don’t need any of the missing features. Even if it takes months to upload the full library this is a one off & using Plex Cloud doesn’t suddenly stop your existing Plex setup working in the interim.
For a small library or for someone with fast upload speeds Plex Cloud “could” be a viable choice but for a very large number of folks it is little more than a novelty.
I disagree. I think it’s a game changer. Did I mention it costs me nothing?
These are the costs I see of a plex media system. Home and Cloud
1/ Fast Internet connection.
2/ Hardware at home to support the media (d/l , convert, store for some length of time, etc)
3/ Hardware at home to watch the media.
4/ Cloud Storage cost
5/ Plex pass cost
6/ Domain name registration and hosting.
7/ Time
8/ Electricity
Come on Nige ! How is that costing nothing.
And a novice starting from scratch I would say the home system is easier, and cheaper.
@spikemixture said:
These are the costs I see of a plex media system. Home and Cloud
1/ Fast Internet connection.
I already have this so there is no extra cost to use Plex Cloud
2/ Hardware at home to support the media (d/l , convert, store for some length of time, etc)
I already have this no added cost to use Plex Cloud. As an alternative Offcloud for $60/year will rapidly download from torrents & Usenet & transfer completed files to Google Drive many times faster than I can download then upload to the Cloud
3/ Hardware at home to watch the media.
I already have this so there is no extra cost to use Plex Cloud
4/ Cloud Storage cost
I already have this so there is no extra cost to use Plex Cloud
5/ Plex pass cost
I already have this so there is no extra cost to use Plex Cloud
6/ Domain name registration and hosting.
I already have this so there is no extra cost to use Plex Cloud
7/ Time
Certainly no more time is involved than running a local PMS & quite possibly less time
8/ Electricity
No added cost to use Plex Cloud & actually a saving because you are not running servers/disks drives/NAS etc locally
Come on Nige ! How is that costing nothing.
See above.
And a novice starting from scratch I would say the home system is easier, and cheaper.
Plex Cloud is ridiculously easy to set up & even if you were starting up from scratch G Suite for Business is $120/ year Plex Pass is $39.99 Domain registration is $1-10 all of which is barely the cost of a single 4TB disk drive.
Nige , You are not seeing it!
Starting from scratch means - everything i.e hardware
I question many of your thoughts (ridicolously easy - maybe for someone with your technical knowledge) and costs but you are not going to concede - That is fine.
Lets adjourn this for 6 months and see what our views and costs are then.
I am putting this in my diary for 1st November .
The simplest & cheapest PMS setup is probably a Seagate Personal Cloud 3TB for $140 which is a little less than the cost of Plex Cloud for a year (G Suite for Business $120 Plex Pass $40). However you are risking losing all your library if you don’t have a backup so we should probably add another $100 for a USB 3.0 external disk drive so now the cheapest local PMS at $240 would pay for eighteen months of Plex Cloud. Further costs for local hardware depend on how fast the library will grow as when the disk is full it will be another $240 for another 3TB. Not so bad & equal in cost to Plex Cloud if it’s 3TB every eighteen months but if your library grows at a TB a month then costs will rapidly escalate.
Incidentally I bought a Lifetime Plex Pass as I think that if Plex Cloud is as successful as I think it will be then it will not be economically viable for Plex to continue to offer this. It didn’t matter much & aided their cash flow when incremental costs for new Plex Pass users was essentially zero but now with Plex Cloud there are real extra costs for each additional Plex Cloud user. I have no idea of the economics of using Microsoft Azure but even a $40 annual fee for Plex Pass starts to look cheap compared to the costs of rolling your own Plex Cloud by running a VPS.
