It was yours. Glad it got deleted. I’ve been spreading their ■■■■ move around on other forums, such as Arstechnica (not linking to your PI)
They owe you a huge apology.
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Not sure I understand. Plex thinks my “remote access” is disabled but I can still access it remotely (via a mobile network) over Tailscale. So at least with the current version of plex media server it thinks I’m local.
It’s a netflix style subscription yet they dont actually host any files, pay licensing, do not have to pay for bandwidth… if they need to charge more than they get from cureent pass holders then they are too big… cut staff, and stop adding features people do not want. There are several alternatives catching up offering the basics we care about.
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Based on my understanding of the changes, if neither you nor your friend with the server have a Plex Pass but you want to watch content on your friends server, only you would need to have the Remote Watch Pass.
Your friend having a Remote Watch Pass wouldn’t help you at all. If the server you want to watch doesn’t have a Plex Pass, then anyone who wants to watch that server would need to have a Remote Watch Pass in order for it to work. The server owner having a Remote Watch Pass wouldn’t help any of the people he’s shared access to his server with.
So how do you expect them to continue to do development work on the application? They have staff to pay. Or upgrade their servers which do need replacement occasionally due to breakdowns, or due to hardware not being able to keep up with the software requirements for hardware-dependent security features?
Netflix, Disney, Amazon, etc etc charges fees for a reason. The cost of the remote watch pass is still far less than any other streaming service that provides content, and that watch pass is good for any Plex server.
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I feel like more than an apology is owed at this point.
There needs to be a thorough investigation into @dane22’s conduct here - I’m just tagging @BigWheel as the only other employee I’ve seen interact in this thread to raise awareness to what’s going on. I don’t deserve to be doxxed because of an opinion I’m sharing
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If you have a lifetime Plex Pass, nothing changes. You will continue to benefit from its features, get ongoing upgrades and support, and enjoy remote access for you and your users at no extra cost. Plus, your users won’t need to pay for the mobile app to stream more than 1 minute (win-win).
If you are a monthly or yearly Plex Pass subscriber then yes the cost is going up, but it’s the first time in over 10 years, and generally less than inflation over that period.
If you aren’t a subscriber and use remote access for free, then it’s a marginal cost for a remote access subscription which avoids the need for setting up your own DDNS and certificate infrastructure to support secure remote access for alternatives such as Jellyfin or Emby. It’s not a charge to let you access your own media, it’s recovering the cost of the infrastructure necessary to support you doing it so you don’t need to. The only criticism I have, is that it’s a little ambiguous whether the server admin account having a remote watch pass will allow remote access for all users to the server or just for server account only.
If you only access Plex locally, then there is no change. You can still access all your own media using a great product for free at home. In addition, the mobile app will be free.
In my opinion, good on Plex for cutting the freeloaders and dead weight. Those that aren’t paying and will leave for Jellyfin or Emby were never going to pay anyway, and would continue to be a drag on resources to support. To those of you I say farewell, and wish you all the best. As a paid user I’m glad that this will leave more resources to continue to improve the Plex experience.
People need to understand and appreciate what the differences are between freemium and open source projects. Plex is a commercial entity which have staff and resources that they need to maintain in order to offer a product and service, as well as make a return on investment. The resonable expectation of this approach for users is there will be quick bug fixes, regular feature upgrades, and features which make life easier for users. This is compared to opensource projects which often are slow to fix bugs, develop and evolve, have less polished interfaces, rely on a few key volunteers for development that can devestate a project when they leave, and often require more user interaction to setup, operate and maintain.
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I havent wanted anything but maintenance going on 6 years now. They chose to add tons of unneeded features .
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My biggest let down is there is no way to contact customer service with questions. I finally just gave up. As a lifetime plex pass holder, I feel there should be a way to ask basic questions directly. Perhaps with the new revenue they are expecting, they can pay someone to interact directly with their customers who’ve paid for their service.
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I’ve got a lifetime Plex Pass so this doesn’t impact me or my users (all 5 of them) at all.
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Came here to see posts after the Reddit thread
Sees posts about a potential doxxing
Very concerning if true.
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I came here after seeing the report on The Verge about claimed doxxing. Good to see that the doxx content is now deleted, but as a result of that and from reading this thread, I have some thoughts:
- I suggest adding a sentence saying remote users won’t be affected to the current FAQ for people with a Lifetime Plex Pass, since many of us bought that option specifically so away-from-home family members would not need to pay anything to access our Plex servers (i.e. the “I” in “how am I affected” includes impacts on our remote users, since we basically purchased a Plex Pass so others would benefit).
- I suggest doing a visual diagram to show pricing impacts on the users in different scenarios (current Lifetime holders, free tier users, remote and on-premise users, etc). The amount of real and potential confusion on this announcement is high, especially as it is now being picked up by tech media. Next, the mainstream media will get their news from those sites, plus also enjoy reporting on flame wars, reaction threads, doxxing reports, etc, so a visual they can include in their reports could help ensure the new situation is reported clearly, as well as helping your own users understand the situation (especially since many users will not have English as their native language).
- I hope that the reported doxxing is fully investigated, and the results published publicly. Not only is it illegal in many countries, but your current users have been given assurances of privacy and have reasonable expectations of such. The suspicion that employees spend their time digging into users’ personal details could be enough to single-handedly sink the Plex brand, so you need to act quickly, publicly and transparently to mitigate the damage on this.
I and my family have received good value from my Lifetime Plex Pass, and I will always be grateful for that. As a result, I wasn’t concerned about the price increase, since I think an increase is probably overdue.
What has concerned me though, is your employees’ reactions to your user-base’s reactions in this thread. Rudeness, sulkiness, unhelpfulness, unwillingness to support people through a large-scale change, and - worst of all - an alleged doxxing, all speak of an organisation that doesn’t know how to manage change impacts, or respect users and their feelings and privacy. And this aspect is what is more likely to force me to recommend other solutions to my customers and colleagues. I hope you’re able to address my - and, I’m sure, others’ - concerns about this, with some speed.
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I’m a lifetime Plex Pass holder, and I have to say this is one of the worst decisions I’ve seen from the Plex team. This is the dialed-back version of my thoughts, believe it or not:
To the team: You think this is a necessary evil, but it’s just evil. I frankly have no idea whether your users will pay more, whether you will “come out ahead” financially on this - and frankly, I doubt it, with Jellyfin and Emby easily accessible to self-hosters - but you are losing so much good will, and putting yourself in such a deplorable position, it will never be worth it. You are now charging people a never-ending subscription to use software they host, to stream media on hardware they own, to themselves.
A one-time purchase, fine, sure. And you retain the lifetime Plex Pass option, I hear you argue. But by more than doubling the price, you’re either (a) putting it financially out of reach for many people, or (b) creating a totally artificial pressure to join a subscription that will never end. This is a known psychological hack - people will take the long-term costlier option based on illusory up-front pricing based on price anchoring.
Why is this evil? Am I being hyperbolic you ask? I don’t think so. You’re asking to be a permanent, life-long toll for people to use their own media. You’re turning yourselves from creators of useful software to a forever middle-man, a toll collector. It’s wrong, it’s gross, and it’s emblematic of software trends in 2025 that I had thought Plex was better than.
What can you do better?
- You say you want to fund future development? If that’s the case, make available the current software and capabilities at the current payment options forever, only charge for future additions.
- You say you don’t want to unfairly forever extract payment from users? Have monthly Plex Pass payments account for a cumulative total and once a user pays the equivalent of a lifetime Plex Pass, stop charging them and give them the lifetime Plex Pass.
The best choice is to roll back and start over, though. I seriously hope you reconsider what you are doing.
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Dramatic much? Just leave if you don’t like it. Or buy into the plex pass, you have until April 29 at the current rate. Enjoy the alternatives if you choose to leave.
They’re a business, they need to make money to keep providing this service.
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Yes.
Noone is being charged to simply stream their own media. You can continue to do that as much as you like for nothing within your own network.
However (whether you agree with the way Plex does it or not) there is an infrastructure cost involved with streaming remotely. It’s neither evil or gross for Plex, as a commercial entity, to look at options for funding that.
On top of that, there are viable options for people who want to stream media remotely without cost. Whether that’s using Emby or Jellyfin, or setting up a VPN, is up to them, but that is also likely to have some form of cost element to it (even if it’s just time). So you get to pick what’s important to you. Ease of use with a small cost ($2 a month/$20 a year is not exactly financial ruin territory) or invest time and money in a ‘free’ option.
People need to get a grip and realise/accept Plex is not their friend. It owes them nothing and they owe it nothing. Plex is entitled to make decisions about how to run its business. If users don’t like those decisions they’re free to choose to use a competitor instead.
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I think this is a pretty crappy move… Plex have now become yet another example of a company taking away current free features and putting them behind a paywall.
Increase prices?.. OK with that, although more than doubling the lifetime pass price is just plain greedy!
But if this article highlighted by @dkab is anything to go by, Plex are likely already doing more than OK for themselve…
By all means increase your prices, but taking existing features and putting them behind a paywall???.. Kinda disgusting if you ask me 
This doesn’t directly affect me and mine [or at least not yet anyway], as I have a lifetime pass, but I gotta tell ya… It’s certainly another nail in the coffin!
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The cost of maintaining an accounts database and matchmaking clients?
This is my hardware, my media, my bandwidth.
It was already a huge reach to paywall many of the features they have, but people accepted they have to make money and these were values adds.
This is removing a core platform feature, full stop.
If you are even remotely serious about infrastructure costs, then they could just lock relaying behind a paywall, and only support direct connections with proper NAT traversal for free users.
Again: Plex transmits kilobytes of data from their servers, at best, when a user is using direct play.
Utterly abysmal development choice. With the new app pushing streaming services hard and effectively adding “promoted content” I can’t really skip, along the discontonuation of watch together, I’m done. I’ll be switching to another media server platform and shifting my extended family and friends over as well.
Very unfortunate that enshittification had to come for Plex as well, and in such a spectacular fashion.
You are not going to charge me for my own bandwidth. That’s absolutely bonkers.
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Don’t simp for a venture capital backed corporation. It’s unbecoming.
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Sure, it’s dramatic. I get that I’m pissed off. Frankly, that’s a feature, not a bug. I would like to the Plex team to see that.
Also, re: “buy into the plex pass” - literally the first six words of my post are “I am a lifetime Plex Pass holder.” I have the Plex Pass. This doesn’t harm me personally. It is offensive to me personally. This isn’t because I don’t want to pay. It’s an important distinction.
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Well, one of us is misunderstanding both the Plex team’s post, and how Plex works. If it’s me, feel free to explain.
Yes, most people (not me, I’m a lifetime Plex Pass holder) will be charged to simply stream their own media. You elide that in your very next sentence by saying the charges don’t happen “within your own network.” Streaming remotely is a basic feature, it’s not a premium feature. The current core functionality is being locked behind a subscription wall.
Second, if I am hosting a Plex server on a docker container, and hosting my media, and paying for my bandwidth up and down the pipe, then to maintain current core functionality Plex has zero infrastructure costs.
Finally, I disagree, a commercial entity may do things that are coldly, unempathetically rational and still be gross. In fact, many times it’s because of it.
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