You can still pay Plex $249.99, but not for a lifetime pass

Shortly after increasing the lifetime version of the Plex Plan to $749.99, Plex has now introduced a new five-year option. One charging $249.99 for streaming media from your Mac to your iPhone.

On July 1, Plex significantly increased the cost of its Lifetime Plex Plan from $249.99 to a staggering $749.99. While consumers will have missed the boat to get the old pricing, they can still spend $249.99 on something that’s not quite as everlasting.

Subscribers can sign up for a new five-year Plex Pass. The new option, offered alongside the monthly $6.99 and annual $69.99 subscriptions, gives users a lengthy period of usage without paying a regular subscription.

The price, $249.99, will be familiar to users, since it’s the same as the Lifetime Plex Plan pre-price rise.

Good, but not quite great

It does still work out to be a decent deal for Plex users as they’d pay the equivalent of three and a half years of the annual plan for five years of usage. Or just under three years worth of the monthly plan price.

This is a bit of a cost saving for consumers. But it’s not as good as the old Lifetime offer, which did the same thing but without an end date.

The new plan certainly does help soften the blow of the Lifetime price rise to $749.99. But there are still some elements to remember.

The key one is what happens after the five-year period ends. Users will then have to either sign up for a new five-year or equivalent plan, or consider switching to a monthly one instead.

However, they won’t get any grandfathered pricing. Due to the inevitability of price increases over time, you can count on the subscriptions going up in price within those five years.

Consider your streaming choices

In justifying the price rise, Plex admitted that it had previously considered removing the Lifetime Plex Pass altogether. While recurring subscriptions sustain long-term development, the lifetime pass does not, and becomes less useful to Plex as time goes on.

The new pricing of that plan “reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we’re committed to building and maintaining for years to come.”

The severely high price of the Lifetime pass certainly does make buying one of the lower-tier options more attractive to users. Especially the new five-year option.

However, this also serves as an opportunity for users to consider whether to stick with Plex at all.

Other options exist, such as Jellyfin, which is free to use. It offers the same core streaming functionality as Plex, but it requires a little more work to get it up and running.