Lifetime subscriber when it was like $75 bux

Setup and runs on my NAS (unRAID) Uses a small GPU to transcode as needed Shared only with non technical family members

Has worked as is for YEARS.

So, the question is, am I looking for something to replace a working free (prepaid) solution I have? That answer is nope.

Ease of use for my users across multiple platforms with minimal tech knowledge on their end. I'm sharing my library with ranges from 12yo to 70. I need it to "just work" and it does that perfectly.

The client apps on Apple TV are just not good. I have tried swiftfin which is slow and I find it not very visually appealing. There there is infuse which does look better, but is missing features and requires a subscription for full functionality. If there is a app I'm missing I would be happy to try it.

I keep Jellyfin up to date and check in or it from time to time. Even have watchstate so my watched history stays updated. Hoping one day there will be a good Apple TV app and I could fully switch.

Lifetime Pass holder here. Used to run Jellyfin alongside Plex. Had crashing issues and had to shut Jellyfin down for quite a bit. Came back after a while and started Jellyfin from scratch. None of my users ever chose Jellyfin over Plex.

• The UI is slower (at least on Windows), clunkier, and uglier. Hopefully this gets fixed in the upcoming big update they have planned for the desktop client. Their Roku app is actually on par with Plex's though.
• The admin dashboard is confusing and in my opinion awful.
• Downloaded content is not viewable within the app on Android. This is the complaint I've heard the most from my user who made a significant effort to switch. Ironically, after the New Experience update this became less of an issue since Plex ruined downloads.
• Plexamp's UI, radios, and sonic similarity feature were, last I checked, unmatched by a long-shot. I use my music library heavily. If I make the switch fully away from Plex, I'll probably opt for something more specialized like Navidrome.
• Manually setting the edition of a movie is so much easier on Plex, and for someone who likes to have multiple editions, it's less confusing for the user to see each edition individually labelled in the library than selecting the movie and being expected to know which file name they should pick. Not every file is named to Jellyfin's standards because that would make them harder to add to my torrent client, and some don't have their editions in the file name at all and I just have them hand-labelled in Plex based on run time.
• I'm still trying to setup my DVR in Jellyfin and can't get it to work. Plex works fine, Jellyfin just won't. It's a moot point at the moment, but once I do get it to work, unless things have changed over the years, the channel guide is a whole other set of challenges.

I'm willing to deal with this personally simply because Plex creates just as much, if not more of a headache for me as an administrator and the bloat is ridiculous, but not a single one of my users has switched, and I don't blame them. They don't have to deal with the administrative difficulties, so there's no benefit to them except being able to download files to their system instead of just in the app, which none of them care about. If nobody is going to use it, my focus ends up being on Plex anyway. I have been pushing Jellyfin for a year and a half. None of my friends or family want to use it unless Plex borks something, and even then they want Plex back.

Jellyfin just isn't on par with Plex, no matter how much I wish it was. It's death by a thousand cuts on both the user and administrative ends. It would be one thing if I were a free user or actively paying for Plex, but as a Lifetime Pass holder, I just can't justify it yet.

I’m not switching at this time because I already bought a lifetime pass about 7 years ago. If ANY of my functionality gets changed by Plex then I’ll be switching

WhatI've noticed is that people who prioritize privacy and just want to watch their downloads on their tv usually use jellyfin and people who prioritize ux slickness and want to run an IPTV service for their friends and family usually use plex.

I got started with jellyfin and never used Plex but there's a bunch of rough edges:

• No apps on several smart tv/streaming stick stores, Vizio has an app for plex but not jellyfin so I would need to buy a new streaming device. Yes smart tvs spy on you but the alternatives people recommend either spy on you just as much or are expensive (Nvidia shield) and most of them still require side loading so it's a major obstacle for sharing with anyone else.
• Casting from the mobile app won't play at full resolution, you can get around this by using VLC as your player and casting from that but that causes it to frequently lose watch progress. Also stopping casting or playing the next episode doesn't work properly with VLC and you need to rapidly mash "back" to get into the jellyfin app again and queue up a new episode.
• The current release of Jellyfin desktop won't play audio for iptv streams, this is fixed in the dev branch but I have yet to find a build without other critical bugs so I'll likely need to wait for the next release which currently has no target date.
• The browser version has spotty controller support that stops working constantly. When it does work it lacks any way to access context menus to mark shows as watched etc. If you're using a flatpak browser to run it on steam deck or whatever, you'll have codec and passthrough issues (Chrome is the only flatpak with decent codec support).
• Others have mentioned the security issues which you can bypass by putting authentik or something in front of it but then you can only share with people using browser.

I tried Jellyfin probably 2 years ago and it was fine but Plex is just "plug n play" in regard to my family setting it up themselves with little help from me.

Plexamp is the only way I stream music too so that's a big reason why I won't move yet.

Have lifetime already. No reason to jump. Generally it just works.

No need to have another project while Plex still works fine.

I'm not using Plex, but I feel like I can answer my complaints about using jellyfin.

My biggest complaint is the lack of clients. It is such a pain in the butt to install jellyFin on all of my products.

My second complaint is the security design. They've had open issues about unauthenticated endpoints for three or four years now. And whenever the issue gets so old that it starts to look bad, they refactor the issue into a newer issue abd bury it in the sand.

For a while this was done under the guise of maintaining legacy client support, but just recently it looks like they're starting to focus on more security, and I've noticed some of those security holes are being closed finally, but it's a major concern for me that they've been open for as long as they have.

Jellyfin is great and I run both. However, sharing access with family is a PITA compared to Plex. I paid for Plex Pass lifetime at the $75 and have no reason to fully move. Keeping Jellyfin around in case Plex tries to rug pull lifetime passes, though.