We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Plex is trivial to set up, most plex users I know actually don’t use the arrs. Anyone can do it with a short list of instructions in minutes that mostly consist of “download app, make account, point to your media.”
I just setup jellyfin and it totally is the same. Install. Point it to a media folder. Setup port forwarding.
You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access off your network (such as when traveling) or to let others in it gets way more complicated.
But let’s be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.