Plex prices are expensive just to access your own media. Tailscale can do it for free.
Tailscale isn’t exactly free. It requires a lot more knowledge, configuration, maintenance, etc, than Plex alone.
Sure, many self-hosters have the ability to figure it out and the proper networking and/or server hardware to implement it. But many Plex users aren’t really self-hosters in that sense. Hosting a local media server that deals with all of the networking stuff for you is much easier than maintaining a tailscale or similar setup on top of the media server stuff. I mean for me, if I hadn’t gotten a lifetime Plex Pass early on for cheap, I probably would have put more effort into my Jellyfin setup. But Plex mostly just works and I have other bigger priorities. I hate the functionality they’ve removed that makes things more difficult than it should be, or I wouldn’t be switching, but it’s not all that bad. So if I didn’t have the expertise and hardware already, I could see it being worth the money to stick with it.
Tailscale is as simplified as it gets and it doesn’t require any knowledge, configuration or maintenance. The fact that you can use it for free makes me wary, but you can’t deny how simple it is to use. Just log in with your account in all of the devices you want to access jellyfin on and voila. It’s as if they were in the same lan.
I think their idea behind it is to convince relatively tech savvy people how great it works (it does) so they talk about it in their relatively tech savvy professional role at small and medium companies.
And at some point they will either start charging money for the small time user, or it will turn to shit, or both. You just know it will happen, the question is when not if. It isn’t free, it’s corporate.
Honestly it is kind of wild that they have a cap on how many devices you can use at all. They store so little it’s wild. The thing that makes it really worth being a service is the relay network they handle and the fact that you can support the team building awesome features into the client. That being said headscale is a thing and if you wanna demystify it then you should take a look at that project. The tailscale docs have tons of info about how they operate under the hood too.
My problem in the first place is that due to my ISP 's limitations, I can’t run wireguard. If I could run it, I would do that instead of using headscale.
Yeah so I’ve set up remote access to two different homes, one where the router was facing the internet directly, and that was easy, setting up a reverse proxy is not for the average user, but neither is other stuff involved in this sort of system.
Then at another place, where the router was behind cgnat and therefore could not perform its own nat, I set up a wireguard connection to a VPS that itself hosted the reverse proxy… Homemade tailscale, sorta. That was a bit complicated, I don’t think most people have the patience for that.
Tailscale isn’t exactly free. It requires a lot more knowledge, configuration, maintenance, etc, than Plex alone.
Sure, many self-hosters have the ability to figure it out and the proper networking and/or server hardware to implement it. But many Plex users aren’t really self-hosters in that sense. Hosting a local media server that deals with all of the networking stuff for you is much easier than maintaining a tailscale or similar setup on top of the media server stuff. I mean for me, if I hadn’t gotten a lifetime Plex Pass early on for cheap, I probably would have put more effort into my Jellyfin setup. But Plex mostly just works and I have other bigger priorities. I hate the functionality they’ve removed that makes things more difficult than it should be, or I wouldn’t be switching, but it’s not all that bad. So if I didn’t have the expertise and hardware already, I could see it being worth the money to stick with it.
Tailscale is as simplified as it gets and it doesn’t require any knowledge, configuration or maintenance. The fact that you can use it for free makes me wary, but you can’t deny how simple it is to use. Just log in with your account in all of the devices you want to access jellyfin on and voila. It’s as if they were in the same lan.
I think their idea behind it is to convince relatively tech savvy people how great it works (it does) so they talk about it in their relatively tech savvy professional role at small and medium companies.
And at some point they will either start charging money for the small time user, or it will turn to shit, or both. You just know it will happen, the question is when not if. It isn’t free, it’s corporate.
Honestly it is kind of wild that they have a cap on how many devices you can use at all. They store so little it’s wild. The thing that makes it really worth being a service is the relay network they handle and the fact that you can support the team building awesome features into the client. That being said headscale is a thing and if you wanna demystify it then you should take a look at that project. The tailscale docs have tons of info about how they operate under the hood too.
My problem in the first place is that due to my ISP 's limitations, I can’t run wireguard. If I could run it, I would do that instead of using headscale.
I skipped tailscale, so feel free to ignore me, but Netbird has been excellent and has no limitations I’m aware of.
Yeah so I’ve set up remote access to two different homes, one where the router was facing the internet directly, and that was easy, setting up a reverse proxy is not for the average user, but neither is other stuff involved in this sort of system.
Then at another place, where the router was behind cgnat and therefore could not perform its own nat, I set up a wireguard connection to a VPS that itself hosted the reverse proxy… Homemade tailscale, sorta. That was a bit complicated, I don’t think most people have the patience for that.