I’m very disappointed after watching this video Plex Job Losses - Should You Be Worried? THE END OF LIFETIME PLEX PASS? - YouTube
So Plex team will be reduced. People are saying, that the company needs to earn more and get a new subscribtion model to survive.
Let’s say it’s true. What about Plex Pass with lifetime license? It’s permanent and won’t be degraded? Adobe had a lifetime license and they discontinued it.
Perhaps Plex can do what 1Password has done. Lifetime license users can continue to use the server software as is. A subscription entitles you to updates. Players continue to be a free offering.
If Plex was to fold, there are other options. Nothing is forever, especially when it is basically FREE.
What disappointed you ?
The video had no fact behind it other than the widely publicised 20% staff reduction.
Don’t get your knickers in a bind over something that may never eventuate. Even if it does come close to the doom and gloom posted in that video, life moves on.
It’s on the internet. So it must be the truth.
Everyone who is making videos has so much better sources of information than everyone else.
The company I worked for just prior to retirement cut staffing levels a few years before Covid by 35% (global reasons).
Post Covid they are going gangbusters with a reinvigorated team (and a heap of
new hires).
I will say though that no one should expect a free lunch. For ongoing development and support, money has to come from somewhere and ‘lifetime’ PlexPass offers aren’t helpful at all.
While I think lifetime licenses are a very bad business model, Plex has another problem, their quality is far from acceptable. So if they move to a monthly/yearly license model, people will be less tolerant about all the problems. You won’t pay for Netflix if it is not working at all or if Netflix’ sound is out of sync.
They have as well the problem of no support at all. Well, you have here these forums, but as you can see, 99% of the threads get no real answer. And the core of the answers come mostly from the community and not from Plex. Would you continue paying for Netflix if it is not working and there is no one to call?
People tolerate these problems because they are users that do not pay at all, or like many of us, lifetime license users that paid many years ago and we think even with all the problems we made our money worth long time ago. I think they are in a very complicated situation, it looks like a lose-lose situation from whatever point of view.
To make thinks ever more difficult, Emby and Jellyfin are finally catching up, they reached usability (and in many core areas they are superior), they still have to work in the UX but I am sure it will come. And the most important thing, they listen to their user base. I think either Plex never understood its base or they never embraced it and tried to move out of the world of the core users. I think it is the latter.
I am a big Plex fan, I am grateful for the many many hours of enjoyment I and my family got from it. And I will hate to see Plex failing, but I see a dark future coming up.
I can’t think of any questions I’ve asked over the past ten years that have not had solutions provided.
More than happy with the offering personally.
I’ve even said so on these forums.
The vast offering across platforms is astounding,
The offering is far ahead of anything comparable,
Plex for us has been working for more than ten years. I wish I could say the same for other software we use.
Edit - oh and I’ve been running JF for some time now (as I’ve mentioned before on this forum).
Whilst it is OK, it has a long long way to go to come close to Plex,
I would think you either do not have an AppleTV and you do not watch 4K material. Having sound sync problems on the AppleTV which is a very popular client for already almost FOUR years is far from acceptable.
The Photo gallery is useless. It takes forever to load every picture. It is faster to browse from Google Photos.
Sync functionality never really worked and it was replaced with Downloads that work half of the time. This is a paid feature.
Camera Upload, never really worked properly and it was finally removed. This was a paid feature.
Hardware transcoding gets broken every second or third update.
There are some situations in which you play a file that is not available and you get an eternal spinning wheel instead of an error message in the Apple TV.
Subtitle support has been always mediocre. Unneeded video transcoding just because of bad subtitle support. There is no “subtitle transcoding” support for text based subtitles not supported by the client, i.e. converting on the fly ASS to SRT is trivial to implement, losing the extra ASS features shouldn’t be a problem, losing format is better than transcoding in weak servers and a parameter could be created to let the user choose.
And those are the ones from the top of my head. On the positive side, the stability of the software itself has been always great. I’ve been running Plex for 10 or 11 years and it has been mostly rock solid. The only time I had stability problems was when Plex introduced features that created huge amounts of CPU load and it was done in an uncontrolled way.
I am just trying to be fair, I am actually a Plex fan and not a nagger.
True words indeed.
You’re right. But I just like to know about other thoughts on this situation. Many of you have Plex Pass over 10 years. I’m using Plex as a daily for about few months (I’ve also used Jellyfin and Emby) but the lifetime subscription I bought last month so…I somehow scared 
Rather alarmist.
Nothing has been announced about PlexPass.
Just pondering by some online clickbait.
There is no ‘situation’.
Edit - there is a refund process if you want to move on to something else. Personally, I’d be happy to buy another PlexPass…
If you want to be fair, the cost of the “lifetime” license should be the cost of maybe two years or license. I really doubt Plex will go bankrupt next week, they just fired some people and they are again rethinking their strategy, nothing dramatic. I am almost positive you will make “worth” what you paid.
Personal experience does not at all equate the experience of others.
That being said, Plex has been losing sight of their customers’ wants/needs for awhile now honestly. Their main base is mostly server systems and local libraries, but streaming and live TV were on their mind for the last couple of years. They’ve ignored many feature suggestions in order to implement these things that most people weren’t asking for, and from what I can see, most people weren’t using.
Take editions for example. A staple in the industry and something extremely common all around, yet it took Plex over a decade to introduce them as… a simple tag… Yeah, that was the most half-assed implementation possible, but that’s what they went with. And despite overwhelming customer complaints about their implementation and great suggestions for improving them (or just actually doing them right in the first place), they don’t seem to care at all based on the feedback.
And editions are only available for movies. What’s more common than movie editions? Music editions! Limited, Special, Remastered, Anniversary releases, releases from other countries, etc. It’s all over the industry, yet no support there. Guess we’ll wait another decade for that, if even that.
Just take a look at the most popular feature suggestions to see how much they don’t care about the suggestions from their paying customers. I understand a company can’t possibly implement all feature suggestions, but those that have a ton of votes should maybe be pursued.
This company lost sight of their main customer base awhile ago, and unfortunately everyone has suffered because of that. I got the PlexPass last year simply for transcoding and it was discounted at the time. I still don’t think it’s been really worth it. They just don’t seem to care about their users anymore. And I honestly think that’s just going to get worse with these layoffs.
But that’s just my 2 cents. I wish them the best, but only if they still strive to give their customers the best.
Correct and unlike a couple posting on here I don’t assume it does (although I know quite a few regular Plex users that feel the same as I do).
As for caring about customers, Plex, personally, rate in my top 5 companies I deal with. In fact, they have improved in that area in the 10-12 years I have used their products.
When other companies have moved away from a HTPC experience, Plex have kept it going (albeit with a hiccup a few years back). They responded to a small core of customers and provided Plex HTPC.
YMMV.
Sadly this is the case for far too many tech folk globally, to anyone at Plex impacted hope that your future is bright and far better than you can imagine.
I have had some concerns recently around basic product lifecycle, focused on the lack of native Mac app that is stable (fixed last week), app stability on iOS (constant crashing, reported by name people for months) and the overall download feature.
Let’s hope that the layoffs are limited and specific to short term business conditions, also that instead of adding new features at this time, perhaps a little love for the core features that should just work at this point.
I don’t know why all the doom and gloom. Companies are laying off everywhere. Ford just laid off a lot of people. Twitter also, and the list goes on. No one is saying those companies are going to go under!
There’s plenty of us here who had doom and gloom with many of the issues that plagued Plex’s competency but if it means firing a few people from their roster in order to appease what may be necessary, then so be it. As others have said, this is “The Sky Is Falling” when it already fell years ago what we’re hoping for now at bare minimum is stability. When you see the CEO of CNN get fired and kicked in the balls after just two months, nothing in life is guaranteed anymore.
This is part of the overall business cycle. As a lifetime plex pass holder, I do think this model cannot be sustained for a long time period without a price increase. However, I think people would not buy the lifetime pass since Plex has a history of not fixing fundamental issues that is part of the Plex Pass sales pitch.
cough DOWNLOADS cough
Goes without saying its a terrible time for the staff being let go and the ones remaining. This will be a difficult road ahead for the staff, their families and the company.
IMO, plex needs to change and go back to basics. They need to scale back and stop trying to carve out a small piece of the free add-supported business. This should not be the core business, go back to be the no 1 personal media server and excel at that. Movies, TV, Music and Photos. Keep it simple.
Fix your bugs, become lean and ditch some of the huge list of server platforms you support. Its a drain and I’m sure your not making big money off them. Windows, Linux, MAC, Docker and 1-2 NAS versions, phase out everything else.
Also… stop wasting money changing things which don’t need changing. Plex logo and switching from unplayed indicators to played indicators. Just two simple example of stuff which 99.9% of the community who love plex don’t care about but cost you $ when it comes to planning, development, testing, doc updates etc… WASTE OF MONEY.
Final note. I’d HAPPILY pay a additional yearly subscription on top of the pass I already have if I can run a dedicated personal media only service. No online crap whatsoever including everything linked to discover. I’ll not pay 1 additional cent if this does not happen. Personal media management is what took me plex, nothing else.
This entire sentiment was exactly what we TOLD THEM to do. Did Plex Inc. listen to its very own userbase? NO.
As even I said before, Plex USED TO have small round tables with its users years ago and at the very least gave us all the impression that they were attempting to build bridges with many of us who shared our experiences and what we had hoped for in the future. Plex Inc. went on a mission very similar to what we see with Google and their forever graveyard of apps and services. WHEN WILL THESE COMPANIES LEARN.
Its perfectly okay to have tested the waters of Plex VR but as they have realized, they need to have a substantial userbase and stability of the VR industry to do so and stop jumping on so many ambitions bandwagons to seem “innovating”.
With the announcement of Apple Vision Pro and its launch in 2024, we will all find out soon enough if THATS the platform to be on and I really hope that Plex Inc. can take advantage of that innovation of hardware for what could be the PREMIUM personal media and content device out there. Plex Inc. - Apple just built the Apple Vision Pro… and I expect you guys to finally deliver the best personal at home media experience you can provide. RAISE the prices and discontinue the Lifetime Plex Pass. You should be able to figure this out. You’re problem solvers.
All they needed to do was stay the course in making sure Plex Server remained and sustained to be the most powerful and ambitious media server in the world… and it may not be too late to reset their compass.
A few wise women once said to me “Don’t go chasin’ waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to
I know that you’re gonna have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you’re moving too fast” - TLC
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