Selfhosted

remote streaming rarely works for me so I won't be losing anything.

I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.

Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.

Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.

That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.

Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.

Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.

If you are currently a Plex user i highly suggest at least putting together an exit strategy. I am in the process of it but it's rough. In fact, i think Plex might be the last thing i replace with a FOSS solution.

If you want to keep using plex and remote it’s important to you, they usually have pretty good deals on pass from time to time. I don’t regret my lifetime pass - I still feel like it’s a pretty solid app and service all things considered- but if I didn’t have the pass already I would be a bit pissed as well ngl.