RLA1
May 26, 2025, 9:13pm
3
@tom80H
In March, Plex released a “new experience” that has destroyed a lot of trust with thousands (if not tens of thousands) of Plex customers. These forums (and many others), along with App Store ratings have made that obvious.
As part of this “new experience”, the personal media of paying Plex Pass customers has taken a back seat to many of Plex’s own priorities that don’t align with customer value, or with the entire reason the Plex Pass exists (according to Plex’s own statement above, which I agree with).
The question I asked is whether Plex’s leadership team realizes they’ve lost their way, forgetting the purpose people subscribed to the Plex Pass in the first place, which funding made the existence of the company even possible, I’d suspect.
Rather than spending time repeating everything that’s being said, I’ll link to many of the comments I’ve made in other threads, as well as some screenshots from recent App Store reviews (the same themes are found in them as well).
To me, the customer response seems pretty clear.
@elan
Plex has been one of the greatest platforms for media management with great apps on every platform and device. Over the last 15+ years, I’ve helped no fewer than 500 people implement it, nearly half of which are now PlexPass subscribers. Now I feel like a MASSIVE FOOL.
WHAT IS THIS?
The new experience is absolutely terrible. The old experience was clear, refined, and reliable.
This new one is broken, frustrating, limited, and arrogant. Who in their right mind thought this was a good id…
@McWanke
At some point, someone at Plex is going to realize that you really HAVE lost sight of what’s important to most customers, especially those who have paid to make your company even possible, and that you are flying blind.
Don’t ever call yourselves users, even if you think you are, and even if you look like it on the surface. That’s the first assumption and fallacy a product leader MUST get over in order to learn, and this is the foundation for delivering REAL value to customers, especi…
@SuperSecret
I agree with this, but I’m not sure the phrase “until the new experience catches up” applies. It’s fundamentally different in its priorities, clearly.
It doesn’t make sense to eliminate the old app until the new app BECOMES the old app, in every way that’s material and important to us, and then adds some meaningful value that we actually want (otherwise there’s no point in doing the work at all).
In other words, the shortcut for the Plex team that could preserve whatever goodwill…
CC: @elan
I totally agree. It’s amazing to me how many different threads of hundreds-to-thousands of users have been started to get this message across, not to mention all of the 1-star reviews in the Apple App Store. Just sort by “most recent” and the problem is glaringly obvious.
I love this and agree the analogy fits perfectly:
I’m getting close to the point of actively turning people away from plex in a very big way. People need to be warned if Plex isn’t going to correct this. I worry t…
Nope, not good enough - 75% is WAY too low of a bar. 100% or nothing, otherwise, what’s the point of it? It’s always a downgrade,
That’s like taking my car into a mechanic, and saying, “look, don’t give me my car back until 75% of its features still work. Yeah, that’s a non-starter.
This post I linked below is SPOT ON.
There’s another theme I keep noticing in this forum, especially from some of the posts @elan has made, essentially saying “everyone in the industry does it that way”… or in my words, “everyone sucks at this, and sucking is the industry standard, so we’re going to suck too.”
For example, he said this to something as important as handling all types of media in the main Plex app, defending their separation because “nobody does it like we have”.
Have you thoug…
Based on comments and suggestions from others about switching to alternatives, here’s a chat thread with research from ChatGPT comparing and contrasting Emby, Jellyfin, and Plex in case anyone’s interested:
Honestly, I think some parts of the assessment are more generous to Plex than it deserves at the moment considering everything that’s been going on, but it’s still a useful read to understand how they stack up. I suggest starting from the top.
Wow - the commentary from CEO Keith Valory in that video should be a wake-up call for the Plex leadership team.
The claims and convictions made don’t match up with anything I’m seeing right now. Is this just lip service?
How was that better?
I have LOTS of libraries across multiple servers. An infinitely-scrollable vertical list is the most natural way to display and select them. And I never want to see the discover content.
I also agree we should treat everyone with respect, and I disagree with the aggression. But I think we’re seeing the disrespectful comments as a reflection of the disrespect and disregard Plex’s team has demonstrated for their customers.
The volume/severity is only escalating because Plex simply isn’t listening. They’ve also given no indication that they care about user concerns (or our extremely valuable time that has been wasted).
Can you imagine if we added up the amount of hours wasted be…
@elan
I’d suggest looking into the process the Open-WebUI team uses to manage their GitHub feedback/suggestions/bugs. I’ve been impressed. Their team accomplishes a lot and is active in those threads. The process you use is even more important than the tool you choose (perhaps something to reflect on about your previous attempts?), but GitHub has proven to be a good tool for this.
Responses are generally made from the Open-WebUI team within 1-3 hours of reporting something, and the item is cla…
No, I haven’t. There was SO much bad about the app that I reverted it to 8.45 on all devices I own or can influence. Much happier now.
Frankly, it’s not worth my time and energy to further troubleshoot poor Plex team decisions any more than I already have. The new experience is entirely misguided.
Also, for the first time in a over a decade, I’ve set up competing servers (Jellyfin/Emby) to begin testing them and deciding whether to recommend them as alternatives to the hundreds of people and P…
The personal attacks and “treat them like animals” don’t have any place here. But let’s not miss the reason they’re happening.
The overall experience for paying customers that the Plex team as a whole has created in this rollout is not good.
When I say the Plex team, that primarily places the responsibility on the decision makers, which I’d call Plex’s leadership team. They are disconnected from what matters to customers (otherwise we wouldn’t have hundreds of 1-star ratings in the app stores …
100% Agree. Very well said!
I disagree. The rating is high because all of those old ratings still describe the tried-and-true old plex experience. There’s no other way to interpret that in reality.
Saying “because users didn’t change the ratings, it must be good” is poor logic. Perhaps that is what Plex’s leadership is doing, which would explain a lot.
If anything, the difference between the old and new is what needs to be examined. Go view the ratings, and sort by most recent. Compare those to the ratings in 2024. The …
Personally, I don’t think they should release the old version under a new App Store listing. That’s totally misleading by attaching the old ratings to the new app.
They should restore the old app under the CURRENT listing, then release the “new experience” under a new listing.
Then we’d see the honest difference. That is, assuming that decision-makers at Plex are interested in honest feedback and an accurate view of the real world.
Am I assuming/asking too much?
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