You know why most cloud based services charge money? For stuff like this, because it’s not free to implement and maintain.

Easy and fault-proof password sharing and syncing needs software and hardware to do. You either set it up and maintain it yourself, or pay for a product that does it - like Bitwarden.

Maybe pay for one then?

Many of us already pay for it because it’s an amazing service that we appreciate and are happy to pay for.

Not everyone is a cheapskate who thinks they deserve other people’s hard work to not be rewarded.

Anyone that doesn’t understand that companies exist to make profit needs to be studied at this point. You have to wonder how they even function in the world.

People don’t go work 9-5 for the fun of it and for free, do they? No, a company and/or customers pay them. Without that payment step there’s no job and there’s no product/service.

If you don’t think the company deserves your money, find another free service and use that until they start charging. Rinse and repeat - or just be an adult and pay for services and work that you like and use.

No one is being “sold out” lol. Anyone using the free tier has had a great run with an amazing service without posting a cent. Can’t complain about that.

I already pay for Bitwarden as it’s a great service that brings a lot of value. I’m happy to pay for it, and have zero anger at a company wanting to make money from their product.

Others might disagree, but companies can’t exist without making money. It’s insane that there are somehow still people that don’t understand how business works.

My work just started giving out 6 sponsored family licenses per employee which is awesome, so I’ll actually get to stop paying for it for a while.

There’s no “rug pulling” for free users. Expecting a service run by a for-profit company to keep everything free forever is naive and just plain dumb.

This is arguably bad, depending on who you ask, but they most certainly did flat out lie about, which is the core issue.

What did they lie about exactly?

Literally just MacOS with docker and tailscale. Haven’t needed anything else.

but it does take a little setup of infrastructure.

Understatement of the century lol.

Even if you do all of what @rumba@lemmy.zip wrote below, getting your friends and family access is another big hurdle because most likely their devices they use won’t have JellyFin support.

Try get your grandparents to stream your jellyfin server on their TV. Try explaining tailscale or a vpn to them.

Remote streaming securely and easily is what you’re missing.

JellyFin does not do the same thing. JellyFin doesn’t securely allow users anywhere in the world on any network to stream your media.

It certainly doesn’t cost what they’re charging.

That’s how services and products work. If they sold their product at cost, they’d go bankrupt. They’re actually charging peanuts for the service they provide.

Remote play you can’t unless you want to open your network up to the internet, which is a terrible idea, and even then most TVs and devices don’t have a JellyFin app.

but those $300 60" TVs cost manufacturers more than that in parts and shipping.

They don’t.

Look at an major TV manufactures books and the TV part is a loss, the income they get from the TV is selling you to advertisers.

I’d love to see your source for this. I won’t hold my breathe because it’s simply not true.

Tailscale isn’t on 99.99% of TVs and devices that people want to stream videos to, and asking people to connect to your VPN whenever they want to stream video is a no-go. Anyone suggesting it is has never actually done tech support for regular people.

made my interface hard to navigate

How? What is hard to navigate in Plex?

try constantly to shove their own content down my (and my users) throats.

I assume you don’t know you can customize your home screen and menus? You can only have your own content showing if you want.

You can’t say their service hasn’t gotten worse though :)

I absolutely can. It has only improved since I’ve been using it, which is from the very start.

I bought a lifetime license on day 1 iirc. I wanted to support the software that was so good and better than everything else at the time. I have had zero features yanked.

I want to stream remotely, share my library, and watch on any device I come across, so I’ll use Plex.

You clearly don’t understand why Plex requires an account then. Hint: it’s for the features that make it the most popular and best self hosted media server software on the market.

They do not sell TVs at a loss lol.