this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Why? That investment is paying off as it’s now significantly higher priced and has more features behind it.
Jellyfin is not as good as Plex. The client is worse, the streaming options are worse, and the remote streaming and sharing is insecure and costs extra to do even remotely, pun intended, securely.
That's a fair point to bring up. You're right that it is an investment that has paid for itself in terms of a streaming service. Much better than hooking a laptop up to a TV and playing files directly, forgetting which episode you are on, or where you stopped watching a movie when you want to resume.
My thought with Jellyfin is that I don't generally watch outside my home network. I have sent invites to friends to watch my library, but none do. So most of the features I don't use at all. I could have saved myself the money, learned how Jellyfin works, and probably set it up exactly how I currently use Plex by now.
I find the clients ok, not great, but I haven't explored that space much, there are many more options than Plex. Plex seems to be making theirs worse. It actually seems like Plex tries to make my content in their client harder to find.
The real issue is jellyfin is not as good at finding metadata. I've overcome this with tinymediamanager, but it still isn't as good.
For secure remote streaming, I've got mine behind caddy with https (caddy does the let's encrypt dance it's really pleasant, even works with my free DNS provider), which seems about as secure as Plex was. Are there other security aspects I'm missing that Plex provides?