Using Plex for small business

Hello,

I’m curious if anyone has any insight or advice regarding setting up multiple small businesses what will have Plex clients loaded on Samsung TVs. I’ll be loading 100 3-4minute education/instruction videos for customers and I plan on having 6-20 tvs per location. I’m considering using a Dell server to run the PMS but I’m curious on how each TV client could be set up? Eventually, I’d like to think I could have 100 small businesses across the US so I’m trying to think about scale when building this out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks everyone.

-DJ

Just make sure you can play the videos without transcoding.

You can only setup 15 managed users but if they can all see all content you really only need one.

Thank you for your reply, very helpful! There shouldn’t be a need to transcode the content since it’s already in the proper format. Each tv would be in an individual space that would be customer facing which would allow them access to the entire library in Plex. Sorry for asking a dumb question but are you saying that I could set up each tv with a Plex client app with the same Managed User account? Again, very sorry if this is a dumb question.

Yeah you can have 15 managed users so you could have like client A, B and C who access certain content and client D, E and F who access other content and they cant see each others content.

Sounds like you just need 1 managed user since they would all see all content…

Just so you are aware as a managed user you need to link the TV up front and after that it will remain connected.

You can set a passcode for managed users if you want or care so others cant just turn on the TV and play your content if that is a concern.

I have about 20 TVs linked myself all of them Samsung by the way.

Also transocoding might be required if these devices are remote and bandwidth is limited but if you encode your video you can reduce this need as well.

Just a note of caution. Plex is not meant for commercial use. If you are charging your customers for this service I would suggest you contact Plex’s legal department from the contacts page on the website to make sure what you are doing is ok and not in violation of Plex’s terms of service.

@nokdim said:
You can only setup 15 managed users but if they can all see all content you really only need one.

@lewis2620 said:
Sorry for asking a dumb question but are you saying that I could set up each tv with a Plex client app with the same Managed User account? Again, very sorry if this is a dumb question.

I would not recommend this method. Managed uses may not be the best(safest) way. I would create one additional PLEX.TV user account and have the server owner(that’s you) share the contents of the videos.
This way you DO NOT need to sign in the admin account initially to access the managed users’ account AND but not least, no one will be able to delete your libraries by accident or intentional.

I will follow up with the legal department to see if I’m crossing any legal boundaries- so hopefully this is an acceptable use for personal content sharing.

Ok, so if I understand correct, I’ll have an admin account since I’m the server owner --> Set up 1 user account that I will share this content with --> sign the shared user account into each Samsung Tv Plex app and from there my clients can access the training/educational videos from each of the 6-12 TV bays. My questions are; Would I need to resign these TVs back into that shared account profile ex.) tv was reset or disconnected from wifi/lan? Also, if I open another business in the next month with another 12 televisions can I still use the same profile?

Thanks in advance and I REALLY appreciate everyone’s feedback and advice.

Thank you,
DJ

@lewis2620 said:

  • I will follow up with the legal department to see if I’m crossing any legal boundaries- so hopefully this is an acceptable use for personal content sharing.

I would like to know what they said.

  • Ok, so if I understand correct, I’ll have an admin account since I’m the server owner → Set up 1 user account that I will share this content with → sign the shared user account into each Samsung Tv Plex app and from there my clients can access the training/educational videos from each of the 6-12 TV bays.

You are correct.

  • My questions are; Would I need to resign these TVs back into that shared account profile ex.) tv was reset
    Most likely on a reset, yes you will have to sign back in.
  • or disconnected from wifi/lan?
    No, you should be fine. The TV app should still have the login credentials.
  • Also, if I open another business in the next month with another 12 televisions can I still use the same profile?
    I see no reason why you can’t apart from the mentioned legal stuff above.
    Theoretically speaking, there is no limit on how many times any one user can connect or simultaneous connections any one user can stream. If your server could take it you could have that one user connected and streaming hundreds of times… You’ll be fine.

Curious what your approach will be.

Are you planning on setting up a server at each business location or running one central server that all these different businesses would access via the internet?

That will make a difference in how you can set this up (legal part aside).

@cayars said:
Curious what your approach will be.

Are you planning on setting up a server at each business location or running one central server that all these different businesses would access via the internet?

That will make a difference in how you can set this up (legal part aside).

Great use case for a Plex Cloud server if only direct playing :slight_smile:

Interesting idea.

Aside from the already mentioned legal questions, here is how I would set it up.

Create your admin user/owner account, this is the account with the plex pass associated with it. Do not use it on your remote users/tvs, use it only for administrating your plex server and users/friends.

For each individual ‘customer/business’, YOU create a new standalone plex user account (if necessary, you may need to create unique email addresses), then your admin account can invite that plex user to your server and you can SHARE whichever specific libraries/content that is applicable for that user.

Using that generic customer account, login to each of the remote plex clients (for that particular business).

Doing this will keep your admin account completely separate from your users, and will let you manage the customers differently according to yours or their needs. Also, it allows you to easily UNSHARE if for whatever reason they are no longer a customer of yours.

You can provide this customer their own plex account credentials in case the plex clients login expires or gets reset or a new client needs added.

Or you could keep the account logins to yourself if you wanted to micromanage them.

If you have your own domain, I would setup an email alias customername-plex@yourdomain.com and point it the most appropriate real email. This way you can manage the plex accounts on behalf of your customers, or point the alias to a customers appropriate business email.

edit-
one possible drawback to this approach, at some point there is probably a maximum number of ‘friends’ you can invite to access your server, and thus would either require a 2nd plex admin account (and plex pass). Or by going through plex legal you could potentially get some kind of expanded/custom licensing.

Either way, I still think this is best approach.

if you put all of your clients on a single shared user, then you have no way to limit their individual access, nor any way to remove their access (without changing the shared user account credentials and forcing every client to re-log in).

Well I guess you could invalidate the clients on the plex web account manager (this would cause the client to have to re-auth, and if the customer knows how to log back in, won’t stop them, but still… individual business plex accounts gives the most flexibility.

another (extremely different and more complex) way, would be to put behind a static domain name (of yours) and enable insecure traffic.

This would essentially open your server to public access (outside of plex user authentication), so you would either need to accept that or use some kind of firewall or vpn access to restrict access outside of plex itself.