this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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Isn’t it hilarious that the best solution to do remote streaming using the free software that people use because they don’t want to pay for a Plex subscription or one-off cost is to pay for at least one subscription, maybe more?
It’s almost like the reason Plex charge money is because it’s not free to do.
What Plex does is closer to having an embedded tailscale client, you can access Jellyfin remotely with tailscale for free, but OP specifically asked for no VPN.
That being said, I'm not opposed to Plex charging for that service, even a tailscale like server costs something to maintain. My gripe with Plex is that it purposefully shoots itself in the foot to force you into their paid service, i.e. it actively tries to isolate itself so you can't access it remotely, which means that it can't run inside a docker container unless you give it network host access, otherwise it only considers other docker containers locals and doesn't let you watch your own content from another machine in the same network.
There’s zero need to run Plex in a docker container.
There's zero need to run anything in docker, it just makes things easier and portable.
Plex server doesn’t need to be “portable”, and running it in docker definitely doesn’t make it easier.
There absolutely are programs that make sense to run in docker, but Plex server isn’t one of them.
Strongly disagree, I've switched my media server several times in the past decade for a multitude of reasons, having things in docker has allowed me to do this seamlessly.
Also you're ignoring all of the other benefits of running in docker, from isolation to automation.
Plex is the only self-hosted service that is purposefully trying to block you from being ran in docker. All other things are just much easier to run in docker, that's part of the appeal, reproducible builds eliminate the "it works on my machine" errors.
Why do you think it doesn't make sense? Does Jellyfin make sense to you to run in docker? Why are they different?
Also, Plex only supports Ubuntu and CentOS, none of which I run on my server, so the only OFFICIAL way to run Plex is Docker.