Response to email containing news of price raise!

General Discussions
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To whom it may concern on the Plex dev and business teams,

In regard to the email I have recently received detailing reasons for an increase in my Plex subscription price, I felt like I needed to respond.

I have been happily using Plex for my self hosted home media purposes for years now. Its a great piece of software that does the job remarkably well with little fuss. So with this in mind, I am more than happy to support a reasonable subscription price increase. Doubling the subscription cost ($49.99AUD) and then some ($110AUD) is in no way REASONABLE!

Yes I am sure that someone, probably in the accounting department, worked out that had Plex had a subscription price increase every other year that the $110AUD figure makes sense. Or maybe the price is in comparison to annual prices of other streaming services.

FYI I don’t use Plex as an online streaming service, I only ever use it to enable devices on my home network access to my otherwise computer bound media library.

In any event, whether Plex chooses to lower it’s new “raised” subscription price or not, I will continue to use Plex. HOWEVER, I wish it to be known, that should the price raise again be it in 2026, or even later in 2028, I will not be so supportive. In fact, you won’t be able to stop me reaching for the unsubscribe button, as it will happen almost as fast as I read the notification email detailing your mistake.

For the record, when Disney Plus was also charging me $110AUD a year and attempted to raise my subscription price yet again, I said no, and unsubscribed. So you can be assured that I would be willing to walk away from Plex.

As I said above, and I will reiterate here, I continue to use Plex because it’s a great piece of software. And honestly I would fully support a tier of Plex that doesn’t include any of that “Streaming” content and is only for home media servers etc. I want to enable Plex to continue to be a great piece of software and if that means I have to pay a little more, I would be happy to do so.

If you however get greedy, because you think you deserve more, or because you think people aren’t going to notice, you will be sorely mistaken! Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

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You know lifetime pass exists? It’s the cheapest it’s ever going to be right now so I’d recommend that

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Yes I am very aware that that is an option. But why is it that everyone seems to think that that is the answer to this issue?

This is as much an issue of trust in Plex as a company as it is about cost. The choice, and yes it most certainly was a choice on their behalf, to increase Plex Pass pricing 130% in one massive price hike makes me reconsider if I can trust that they will be true to their word and continue to offer the Lifetime Plex Pass in coming days? Or if the next email that you receive won’t be saying that the Lifetime Plex Pass is going to be a discontinued product that will no longer be updated?

And honestly, even if I were to afford a Lifetime Plex Pass right now, I would effectively no longer be supporting a product that I do wish to financially compensate in order to ensure it’s long term survival.

If I cannot trust Plex to offer a good product at a fair price without pulling anti-consumer crap (such as this price hike), then I don’t trust that Plex will be true to its word if I were to fork out for a lifetime pass which, if I am proven correct is money wasted. And ultimately, I would be better off taking my money and time elsewhere!

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Their prices haven’t changed in over 10 years, yet the economy and cost of business has grown exponentially, I don’t really see the issue, they even give you a month to get it for the old price, they didn’t have to do that but they acted ethically imo. I bought it after using it for free for years to support them. A lifetime pass is what, the cost of 6 blurays or so? I’m sure you’re ethically sourcing all of your content so a lifetime pass is barely a drop in the bucket compared to what you’re spending on your library.

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The increase is More than double. Absolutely NOT ok in any way.
There is no way i will continue my sub at that price.
I was actually sure i bought life time when i first got PlexPass as i newer saw any notifications of paying yearly.. Oh well. It was “fun” while it lasted.
I dont care one micro% of all the recording livestream etc. crap in Plex. All i want is to use the Home Media Server to stream my media.

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The best way to look at this, check what price everything else in the world cost 10 years ago, if its more than doubled then Plex is below inflation.

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That’s not how inflation works. Inflation is a measure based on a fixed basket of goods. Some products get more expensive over time, others do not. A 65 inch TV a decade ago cost twice what it does not. A computer a million times more powerful than the one you bought in the early 1990s costs 1/25th the cost the computer you bought in the early 1990s. Some raw inputs cost more than they did, some cost less. In general the price of non-oil commodities have been on a downward slope for a long time. Most goods produced are cheaper than ever because of better infrastructure, economies of scale, and technological innovation. On the other hand, labour costs a lot more than it did, and so some categories of product where labour is the limited factor and where it is not possible to achieve significant productivity growth have experienced severe inflation – this is what economists call “the cost disease”.

A priori there is no reason to expect software to raise in price or lower in price. The marginal cost of providing a license for a unit of software is zero. Plex decides how many employees to hire, and how many of them to dedicate to the core software versus producing “hit original content” or buying billboards to advertise their free ad-supported streaming offering. It’s not a choice between “prices go up” or “no Plex”, it’s a choice between “prices go up” or “Plex needs to make decisions about its opex and capex”. And honestly, it’s not even that. Plex’s business model is especially unmoored from normal economic pressure because they took venture capital money, so the fundamental thing driving the company’s decision calculus is not a need to make a profit on a daily basis, but the willingness of the funders to sustain medium term risk versus take profit now.

In fact, mentally internalizing that all goods rise at the rate of inflation is a bad habit for a consumer. If everyone did, inflation would rise far faster, because elasticity of demand is one of the things that helps control prices. You can see this mechanically. Inflation (CPI) is across a basket of goods, some of which rise more than others. If you bump the price increase on the lowest inflation goods up, then overall inflation rises mechanically.

Anyway, the short version of this is that purchasing power parity changing over time is not the same thing as expecting any one good to rise at the same rate, and people are allowed to complain about prices if they think things are too expensive.

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