I don’t know the ratio of Plex Pass to free users, but I assume there are more of the latter than the former. In addition there are a ton of people who just don’t want to pay for software or support. I would ask these individuals not to respond here. There are others who value their time and are willing to pay for support. Their comments would be appreciated. The problems I see:
A one-time fee is not sufficient to fund both development and support.
As a consequence support is a secondary to what I assume are deadlines to get out new features. What developer wants to take time from writing new code or debugging code to answer what may be rather stupid (in my case) questions from customers. When you are hired for these things, you aren’t really interested in support. [Making assumptions about how things work here …]
As a consequence users are forced to spend their time scrolling through forums trying find the right keywords to see if there are existing solutions. This means you have to have a reasonable technical knowledge.
If nothing is found, you write a new post about a problem and wait. Sometimes you will get an immediate response. Sometimes when there has been no response in a week you have to ask again for help. This is extremely frustrating, especially if your Plex server is totally down. Once you get help it is great, responders are knowledgeable.
So if Plex wants to be the media server for all, the knowledgeable and the grandmother next door, a paid support option, either by yearly subscription or per incident would be great.
It is just nerve wracking after posting a problem waiting for a response at some unknown time. I am very willing to pay for a support service which is responsive, Apples’ support probably being the level to aspire to. They are very willing to handhold someone through very basic issues. I would think that Plex might be able to get some $ if they offered a support option for those afraid of the complexities of setting up their own server.
I think in interview with Leon, CEO didn’t incline towards paid support and actually spoke about forum as means of support and appreciated long time and contributing members (Plex Ninja) who help others and are mediator between users and engineers.
Plex, as originally being PMS filter out newbies. I don’t think average Eve maintains it. Only dedicated support I think there is for Payment/Billing issue.
Coming to suggestion, I don’t encourage the idea of paid support (right now) when things like piles of Fixes and Features are still in queue speaks for itself. I also doubt all developers are contributing their time in support. In terms on frequency, I see selected employees helping in general. Is it a bad idea? certainly not. Though as of now is it needed seeing whole picture? maybe not.
We don’t know what the exact challenge is and only insider can sense those. Maybe management, lack of competent or number of engineers, fundings, or xyz. Or maybe mixture of all those but until those go in flow, paid support can wait imo.
Oh, it isn’t like he denied or discouraged it, just pointed out that the vast area of knowledge required by support person will be huge due to the nature of software. You can watch full interview here: Interview with Plex CEO Keith Valory at CES 2020 ! - YouTube
He’s the CEO. He 100% has control over this. A support dept isn’t going happen without him giving it the green light because it will become something that effects the company’s profits on an ongoing basis.
And yeah, software is complicated. That’s why you have to hire and train people for this type of work, and they still will need references to use on the job. Otherwise you end up with something I’ve seen here on the forums more than once, a Plex employee saying “that feature isn’t on platform x” and a user having to correct them. Not really the employee’s fault, they’re trying to be helpful, but the issue happens to be on a client they aren’t personally familiar with.
