This isn’t a post arguing against the Lifetime price increase. Heck a new hard drive is almost that much these days.
My concern is about the price increase and how it prices out users how only need the Plex Home feature so they can share multiple accounts (parent & kids) on their TV.
I already purchased a second Lifetime Plex Pass for my sibling’s family at the $150 price point and have been encouraging other families to do the same. At the old $150 price, it was a tough sell. $250 was a no go unless on sale. At $750 it will never happen. It’s cheaper to buy another streaming device(s) and run one free Plex account per device and use the HDMI switch on the TV. Thus, Plex doesn’t get a dime.
To me there needs to be a Lifetime option for non-server users interesting in Plex Home for user switching. At least then Plex could make some money off these specific users.
It doesn’t exist as far as I know, I was just saying that if it did, that would be your solution.
I think you are right, a lower-level lifetime pass would get more people paying something that don’t now, especially with the limit on the number of Home users.
I like the idea that @Dalmus presented: Add Plex Home (regular users) to Remote Watch Pass and creating a Lifetime account for it. However, it would seem that pricing would need to be $250-$300 based on the new pricing for Lifetime Plex Pass (about 10 years of subs). Still, that is better than $750.
I could probably talk families into $250-300…if there was an upgrade path to a full Plex Pass later.
I think a lot of people are missing a key fact. Plex’s Lifetime Subscriptions do not allow them to continue operating the infrastructure… for a lifetime. My read on this is that they don’t have enough monthly subscribers to keep things up and running long term. You have a liability on your books to service those lifetime subscribers for a “lifetime” so lets say, 40 years. It was a bad idea. They should have never done it… that’s why they made the price so high, to discourage it… or to ensure that cash infusion will cover the lifetime costs.
They shouldn’t add any other lifetime passes. I kinda feel bad I grabbed at lifetime pass at $120. I had purposefully been paying the $5/m since Jun of 2017 until last year. I jumped on the lifetime bandwagon, and should have just kept paying.
Exactly this. Unfortunately, this is the “polite” way to get rid of lifetime, they would prefer you getting Plex Pass monthly if you need Plex Pass features. That said, its $250, just have the few “family members” pony up for their part of the account.
The problem with this theory is that there is very little of Plex Pass that costs Plex more money than a similary active user under no pass at all. Remote watch uses the same online authentication structure that at-home non-Pass users are required to use to connect to their server.
If I HAD to think about it, the only costs incurred are not “automatic” costs, and require opting in for:
Credit Detection: Plex keeps a massive database of check-sums of files and the credit detection. If you opt in, your files will be checked against this database, and credit markers will be downloaded automatically, instead of having your server generate them. I turned this off.
DVR/TV guide data: You must have a DVR in order for the guide data to be relevant. This was the primary reason I bought the pass.
Find Trailers: Find trailers and extras automatically (Plex Pass required). If you do not select this in Library settings, then these trailers will not be pulled. I doubt Plex hosts their own, probably has an API access to TMDB or something…
But a single release was a one-time purchase, and would run forever if kept on a system with the same configuration. So isn’t that essentially a “lifetime” too? I was going to mention that you wouldn’t have to worry about Adobe removing features later on from their software, but that’s not true as they did have an online element to the Creative Suite products. So those features would stop working.
But those aren’t important features for me. I have Photoshop CS5 still running on my Windows 10 machine right now.
Adobe didn’t add new features without buying the latest release for another $600. Plex does add new features and bug fixes. Your CS5 does not receive those.
Not saying $750 isn’t a lot, but it’s been interesting to think about my other software purchases.
I’m talking about the CS Live section of the program, which was an online element. I have the menu in my copy of Photoshop but it doesn’t do anything now as the service is long gone (apparently since 2012).
