Selfhosted

It was unnecessarily complex to accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup.

Please elaborate how you needed to "accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup".

When I set my server up years ago all I did was log in on the web interface. Literally as simple as any other service.

Hm. I gave Jellyfin a try and the UX was a turnoff, so I ended up in Plex. The separate management of metadata does sound like a pain to me, too, but maybe there's a bit of sunk cost fallacy to that.

Either way it seems people are mostly fine with their choices and there is a viable free alternative, so... all good there.

Sounds like it's mostly with embedded subs inside the media files already. Thats where all my subs are so I'm going to test soon but haven't played anything on jellyfin needing subs in a while

What do you mean library losses. I've been using jellyfin twoish years now and have never had this happen.

You people do realize that you can use the Plex server without using the Plex apps right? I pretty much exclusively use Infuse to interface with my Plex server and have none of the issues I see mentioned here.

Plex is closed source and gradually being enshittified. You might not leave today, but you should have an exit plan.

If Plex is just working for you, stick with it. I switched to Jellyfin when I got sick of having to reset my Plex library. (Even now, thinking of the "Plex dance" makes me shudder.)

I just made the switch for a few reasons.

For background, I was a Lifetime Plex Pass user since it launched, created the POC exploit for token theft (a couple of months before they implemented SSL), and built a clustering/sync application (a few months before they released sync, patterns much?).

I did not think Jellyfin was up to task a few years ago. It is now. All the missing features like themed visuals and audio, chapters, thumbnails on seek, all exist now.

Why I switched:

• API: I have scripts that do different things with different media and they were super easy to recreate with the API. An example would be moving ytdlp videos from my Youtube Watch Later folder to a deletion folder if they've been watched.
• LDAP: I now have user control via my Samba AD.
• Privacy: I never wanted my media list stored with a third party to begin with.
• Plugins: I have a library I tag with filenames, like ==Tag--Tag==filename.ext. It took me a half day to make a Jellyfin plugin that converts these to Genres. It was a nightmare of DB hacking to do it in Plex. Not to mention there are waaaay more existing plugins that are supported. Jellyfin is where this happens now, not Plex.
• Fine grain control: Transcoding settings, bandwidth settings, etc are are open and transparent.