Plex announced a number of updates today, and the biggest is a price increase of its Plex Pass. It's going from $4.99 to $6.99 a month.
The monthly increase is going in effect starting April 29. The subscription levels are also seeing increases with the annual plan rising from $39 to $69. The lifetime plan is leaping from $119.99 to $249.99.
These changes will affect new and existing subscribers but if you already paid for a lifetime subscription nothing will change.
"In order for us to keep up with rising costs and remain committed to ensuring both Plex Pass and our support for personal media continue to thrive—it’s time," Plex said in its announcement post.
That price increase is affecting more than just the cost of the subscriptions.
Remote Play locked behind paywall
Plex is also pulling a key feature behind the paywall now — remote playback.
For a long time if you wanted to share your Plex with family or friends, you could enable remote playback for free.
Now, if you don't have a Plex Pass then your friends or family will need to subscribe to a new Remote Watch Pass that costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 a year.
"The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience,” Plex says.
They are offering a free bonus that might salve some of the price increase wound. Plex is soon going to make it free to stream on a local network from its mobile app without buying Plex Pass or pay the one-time activation fee that removed the one-minute playback limitation on Android and iOS.
That is supposed to launch when the rebuilt mobile app goes live later this year.
Looking more like a streaming service
The removal of remote play from the free option is disappointing. I run a NAS server with Plex as my media player, and while remote play hasn't been used much for my purposes, it's been nice to have when I needed it.
In the last couple of years Plex has been trying to become more akin to standard streaming services. It has added public profiles and social features like Discover Together. This after the service added free movies and shows plus a live TV and DVR option a la Tubi or Freeform.
Despite these moves, which has cluttered up the home screen when using Plex, it remains a fairly solid media player. Yup, even in the free version which I currently use.
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