All FAQs

How Plex Manager enforces streaming limits?

Plex Manager provides plan streaming limits enforcement functionality. Each plan can be configured to allow only certain number of simultaneous devices/streams and Plex Manager will then enforce those limits. The process works as follows:

• Every 5 minutes, Plex Manager collects streaming activity on all your Plex servers
• If server settings have logging of streaming activity enabled, the activity will be logged to the database so it can be reviewed later
• Streaming activity data indicates which user is doing the streaming, from which device, which IP address and from which server
• Plex Manager then checks currently active plan for the user doing the streaming and how many simultaneous devices/streams their plan allows. Plex Manager does not check whether multiple devices are coming from different IP addresses (i.e. it does not enforce IP lock)
• If the user is exceeding their plan limits, all their streams will be stopped and a message will be shown on user's screen indicating that they have too many devices in use
• A notification will be sent to the user also indicating that they have too many devices in use. To modify the content of this notification, see notification templates in settings

This process requires your Plex account to have a Plex Pass as stopping of the stream feature requires it. If your Plex account does not have it, all the above actions will be performed except of stopping of the stream and showing the message on user's device.

How Plex Manager enforces download limits?

Plex Manager provides soft mobile download limits enforcement functionality. Each plan can be configured to allow mobile downloads and each user can be given an allotment of how many downloads they can perform in a week (this can be specified on User edit page). Each download must be completed in 2 hours or less or it will count as a new download and count against the quota. Keep in mind that this is a soft enforcement meaning that Plex Manager cannot stop a download once it is started since Plex does not allow for this functionality. Once Plex provides this capability, Plex Manager will take advantage of it. Instead, Plex Manager just send notifications to users and logs warnings.

The process works as follows:

• Every 5 minutes, Plex Manager collects download activity on all your Plex servers
• If server settings have logging of download activity enabled, the activity will be logged to the database so it can be reviewed later
• Download activity data indicates which user is doing the downloading, which title and from which server
• Plex Manager then checks download allocation for the user and their remaining quota for the week
• If the user is exceeding their download quota limits, a notification will be sent to the userindicating that they have exceeded their download quota. To modify the content of this notification, see notification templates in settings

Mobile download feature requires you and your user to both have Plex Pass enabled.

How Plex Manager enforces transcoding rules?

Plex Manager provides plan level and server level transcoding limits enforcement functionality. Please note that only transcoding of video is enforced (audio is allowed to be transcoded). Each plan can be configured to allow or disallow transcoding and each server can also be configured to allow or disallow 4K video transcoding. The process works as follows:

• Every 5 minutes, Plex Manager collects streaming activity on all your Plex servers
• Streaming activity data indicates which user is doing the streaming, from which device, which IP address, from which server, at what resolution and whether a user is transcoding
• If a user is transcoding, Plex Manager then checks currently active plan for the user doing the transcoding and whether their plan allows it. If their plan does not allow transcoding, their session is stopped and message on user's device is displayed and a warning for that user is logged. A notification will be sent to the user also indicating that they are transcoding video when their plan does not allow it. To modify the content of this notification, see notification templates in settings
• If a user is transcoding 4K video, Plex Manager then checks the server from which the user is streaming and whether that server allows 4K transcoding. If it does not, their session is stopped and message on user's device is displayed and a warning for that user is logged. A notification will be sent to the user also indicating that they are transcoding 4K video. To modify the content of this notification, see notification templates in settings

This process requires your Plex account to have a Plex Pass as stopping of the stream feature requires it. If your Plex account does not have it, all the above actions will be performed except of stopping of the stream and showing the message on user's device.

How to ensure downloads are completed without restarts?

Plex has recently replaced what used to be called Sync with Downloads feature. This new feature works differently and tries to download media without conversion which is faster and has less strain on hardware resources (no transcoding). However, this new feature it is a lot more sensitive and tends to restart the download. This is likely caused by the Plex app going to the background and being terminated by the device's OS. Plex mentions on this page https://support.plex.tv/articles/downloads-sync-faq/ 

Will the app continue to download media if the device goes to sleep or the screen saver activates?

No. File transfers cannot work if the app is moved to the background such as when the screen turns off or the device goes to sleep. The app must be running in the foreground. If the app is on the “Items” tab of the “Downloads” library, the app will actively keep the device awake and continue to download media to your device.

As you can see, users have to keep the Plex app open, on the Items tab of the Downloads library for the download to continue. Otherwise, it will keep getting restarted every time the Plex app is opened.

What runs and is synchronized on a recurring basis?

Plex Manager has several background processes that run on a schedule that do maintenance tasks and data synchronization with external system such as Plex, PayPal, Stripe, Discord, etc. The processes that run are as follows:

• Every 5 minutes
  • Streaming activity logging and enforcement
  • Download activity logging and enforcement
• Every hour
  • User synchronization with Plex (import of new users, updates to existing users)
  • Payments synchronization (import of new recurring or peer-to-peer payments you have received through PayPal or Stripe)
  • Removal of users whose subscriptions expires
  • Updates to sharing (if users changed plans, libraries included in plans changed, etc.)
• Daily
  • Calculation of number of active users
  • Discord synchronization (adding/removing roles, kicking users, etc.)
  • Ombi synchronization (updating of Discord notification data to Ombi users)
  • Overseerr synchronization (adding/removal of Overseerr local users, updating of Discord notification data to Overseerr users)
  • Petio synchronization (adding/removal of Petio users)
  • Payment reminders sending
  • Plex token validation (ensures Plex tokens in the system are valid so the system can operate and use them)
  • Library statistics refresh

How does Plex Manager know that a user is active or expired?

Plex Manager determines whether a user is active or expired based on the user type and whether they have a payment that is still active. If a user is permanent, it is by default active and they never expire. If a user is non-permanent, then they must have a payment where the current date/time must be between the start and end dates of the payment. If a user is expired, they will be removed from the Plex server during the next synchronization run (runs every hour).

How to invite a user manually via Plex Manager?

It is recommended that manual user invites come through Plex Manager vs. through the Plex web app (app.plex.tv). The reason for this is that Plex Manager knows how your libraries are configured and which ones need to be shared based on the selected plan and will automatically create the payment for the user so they are immediately active. It will also create a Plex invite and send a notification to the user (see notifications templates to modify the notification content).

To invite a user, please follow these steps:

• Navigate to Users panel in main menu
• Click on the menu button in the table header to reveal the action menu and click on Invite menu item
• Invite User dialog will pop up
• Fill out the form fields keeping the following in mind
  • PayPal email - if the user is a PayPal user, this is how they will be matched for future payments through PayPal
  • Transaction ID - if this was a manual payment this can be anything as long as it is unique. I prefer a format of date-payment_type-suffix. For example, for Venmo, I use 2022-08-10-Venmo-1 for the transaction ID which makes is easier to correlate payments later. For PayPal, enter the transaction ID and for Stripe, enter the payment intent ID (i.e. starts with "pi_")
  • Sequence number - This can be set to 1 unless one payment was used to pay for multiple users in which case you can split the same payment to multiple users using multiple sequence numbers
  • Subscription ID - if the user is on an existing recurring subscription that was created prior to using Plex Manager, enter that ID here. For PayPal, that is usually an ID that starts with "I-" or for Stripe, it is an ID that starts with "sub_"
• Click Invite and Plex Manager will invite the user to the specified Plex server

How to change user’s Plex email or username?

Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, your users will want to change their Plex email or switch which account they use with your Plex shares. To accomplish this, it is best to create a new account with the new email/username and merge the data. To accomplish this, follow these steps:

• Create a new user login by going to the Site Logins panel and adding a new login using the new email address. You can send the password to the user or they can use the password reset feature
• Invite a user manually using the new email address. See How to invite a user manually?
• Navigate to Users panel and search for the new user using the new email address and open User Details for the user. Note the ID of the new user
• Delete the default payment created by Plex Manager
• Go back to Users panel, find the old user account and use the Merge action (in the action menu - bolt icon). You will be asked for the destination user's ID. Enter the ID you noted in the step above
• This will copy all the data from the old user to the new user and delete the old user
• You can also delete the site login for the old user although this is not necessary

How to enable two factor (2FA) authentication?

For added security, Plex Manager offers the ability to enable two factor authentication for administrator accounts only. Two factor authentication works by adding an additional verification step after logging in.

Two factor authentication is only available for administrator accounts.

• Open Site Logins panel and search for the administrator account on which you want to enable 2FA
• Ensure that the site login email address is the email address you own and not an address that ends in plexmanager.com. You can create a new Site Login by clicking the table header menu button and then clicking "Add" to add another site login. Once added, click on the action menu menu button (bolt icon) to set it as administrator. Refresh the data to get the latest changes
• Now that the site login is an administrator, search for the administrator account on which you want to enable 2FA
• Once the administrator site login is located, click on the action menu button (bolt icon) to open the menu and click on "Enable Two Factor Authentication"
• Logout
• Attempt to login with the administrator email again and you will be prompted to enter a code sent to the email address you are using to login
• Enter the code to finish the login process

How does Plex Manager match payments during transaction sync?

Plex Manager offers full integration with PayPal and Stripe checkout when users use the system to buy a subscription and checkout on the site. In that case Plex Manager will fully automate the process by charging the user, provisioning Plex access for them, sending emails and recording a payment in the system. Plex Manager also allow you to import/synchronize payments made to you via peer-to-peer method (i.e. someone sending you money through PayPal directly without checking out via Plex Manager), manual invoices etc. or other ways outside Plex Manager. The system will reach out to the payment gateway using the credentials provided in the settings and look for new payments every hour. It will then try to match the payment provided by the payment gateway to a user in the system. Matching is done using the following rules:

• If a payment is recurring payment that is part of a recurring subscription, look for a user that has other payments using the same subscription ID since they are unique. If a single match is found, assign the payment to that user. Otherwise proceed to the next step
• Look for a user in Plex Manager whose Plex email set on their profile (or PayPal email in case of PayPal - every user has a PayPal email address field in their profile you can set ) matches their email on the payment in the payment gateway. If match is found, assign the payment to that user. Otherwise proceed to the next step
• If none of the above find a match, create an entry for an unmatched payment that will show up on the Unmatched Payments panel and send a notification to the administrator. From here you have to manually create this payment on a user where it belongs. At that point, it is good to set the PayPal email or subscription ID correctly so the next payment can be matched automatically

Last point worth mentioning is that when a payment is matched to a user whose subscription has expired and they have been removed from your Plex server, Plex Manager will automatically provision access to that user since they made a payment. 

How to use a custom domain?

Using a custom domain with Plex Manager is possible but it incurs additional monthly cost. In addition, there are prerequisites that need to be met as well:

• You have to own the domain. Domain can be purchased through a variety of domain registrars such as Namecheap, Porkbun, GoDaddy, Google, AWS, etc.
• Domain nameservers have to be managed by Cloudflare because it greatly simplifies TLS management and provides a free certificate so you can use HTTPS with your site. You can setup a free account on Cloudflare which is sufficient. Once you login to Cloudflare with an account, you will b prompted to import your site and use Cloudflare nameservers. Importing your site will take some time
• TLS/SSL has to be set to FULL (not strict)
• 
• Once all these steps are complete, please contact us and we will provide you with instructions on how to finish the setup

How to migrate users from one Plex server to another?

Plex Manager offers the ability to migrate Plex users from one Plex servers to another in a single click. This can be useful is you are migrating Plex servers or providers. This option is available on the Servers panel by clicking the action menu button next to the server from which you wish to migrate the users (source server). Then you will be prompted to select the target server where your users will be moved to. Once you click OK, Plex Manager will initiate the migration process in the background and send you an email notification (System Message notification template must be enabled) when it is finished with results. 

User migration has a few things that you need to keep in mind:

• Both source and target servers must support the same plans. This means that they must offer the same library groups/types assigned to plans. For example, if one server has libraries assigned to "Premium 4K" type that are used on plans but the other does not, that is not compatible
• If your plans offer mobile downloads, Plex accounts tied to both servers must have Plex Pass and configured like that in the "Plex Accounts" panel (Has Plex Pass switch must be set correctly)
• Each user on the source server must have an active subscription/payment where current date/time is between payment's start and end date/time.
• If both source and target server are on the same Plex account, invites will be accepted automatically and users can begin to use the new server immediately. Otherwise, users will get brand new invites they need to accept
• It may take a couple of minutes for the job to actually start running. Please be patient.
• Process runs in the background slowly migrating one user every few seconds to avoid Plex API throttling and drawing attention from Plex

What is the flow for a new customer in Plex Manager?

Plex Manager offers full end to end automation for users from registration, through paying and getting Plex share access. The process is as follows:

• User registers
  • User registers on Plex Manager using their Plex email
  • Plex Manager send user a confirmation email asking to confirm their account
  • User confirms account and can now log in
• User logs in
  • User can look at available plans, pricing and other information
• User subscribes
  • User clicks on the subscribe button. If both pay as you go and recurring payments are enabled, user will be given an option to choose
  • User will be presented with a screen to select their plan and pay using one of the enabled payment methods
  • Depending on the payments method, user will be redirected to PayPal, Stripe or Plisio to authorize the payment
  • Payment processor redirects back to Plex Manager
• Payment is confirmed
  • Plex Manager confirms the payment was successful
• Plex share access is provisioned
  • Plex Manager finds a server that has space available (less than 100 or max number of users configured on the server) based on the plan user selected, geographic location selected etc. If multiple servers match the criteria, Plex Manager will select the server with lowest number of users so server load is balanced
  • Plex Manager communicates with your Plex server to provision Plex share access for the user based on the plan selected and libraries and options included in the plan
  • Email is sent to the user with information on how to accept the Plex share invitation
• If enabled, Plex Manager creates Overseer and Petio account for the user
• If enabled, Plex Manager gives user appropriate Discord roles
• Plex Manager stores information about the user and payment that was just made
• Plex Manager creates a new user in the system and creates a payment for that user to track when their subscription expires

I am seeing notes mentioning credits on the payment edit screen. What is that?

Plex Manager allows users to change plans midstream and handle everything automatically by applying credits for unused subscription time to the newly selected plan. Note that this accounting is only done in Plex Manager. Payment processors such as PayPal or Stripe are not affected by this. For example, if a user was on a $30 monthly plan and with 5 days left on it, they decide to change to a $15 plan and elect to start that new plan now. In this case Plex Manager will do the following:

•  End their current payment (and therefore plan) by setting the End Date to now
• Calculate the remaining amount of money that is unused (in this it is basically $1 per day so amount is $5)
• Deduct the amount ($5 in this case) from the previous that was end dated in step 1 and add notes around what credit was applied and how much
• Credit the amount ($5) onto the payment that starts now (new payment will therefore show $20 instead of $15) and also adjust the duration on the newly selected plan and extend it to account for the amount of the credit. In this case, $5 will extend the time by an additional 10 days
• Update sharing for this user to match the new plan (add/remove libraries,add/remove ability to download, etc.)
• Plex manager will immediately start enforcing rules for this user according  to the newly selected plan (number of concurrent devices, downloads, etc.)

I am seeing an error during payment sync that says that a recurring payment from PayPal is missing subscription ID details. What is that?

Plex Manager synchronizes payments from all payment gateways on a recurring basis. PayPal is notoriously slow to make payment data available through its API. Even though transaction details may appear of the PayPal's website, they may not be available through the API for an average of 6 hours (but can be up to 24 hours). This error will appears in such cases until PayPal's API catches up. Errors are usually resolved within a few hours. If the error persists for more than 24 hours, please contact us.

How does Plex Manager select a Plex server to add a user?

Plex Manager uses the following rules to select a server for a subscriber:

• If a user is a subscriber already and shares a Plex server, verify that the server they are sharing accommodates the plan they picked. If it does, use that server. If not, proceed to the next step
• If a user has an inviteto the Plex server that is not accepted, verify that the server they have an invite for accommodates the plan they picked. If it does, do nothing - user needs to accept the invite they already have that server.If not, proceed to the next step
• Find all Plex servers that are enabled and have capacity remaining
• If plan is trial, use a server that is enabled, hascapacity remaining, accepts trials and accommodates the trial plan and use that server giving preference to selected location. If multiple servers match the criteria, select the server with the lowest number of users
• If plan is not trial, use a server that is enabled, hascapacity remaining, accommodates the planand use that server giving preference to selected location. If multiple servers match the criteria, select the server with the lowest number of users
• If none, throw an error and notify admin

What is: Failed to create a subscription for user xxxx. PayPal subscription ID: xxxxx does not have any transactions

You may get a message from Plex Manager indicating that a subscription failed to be created with above message. This issue comes down to PayPal timing and their general slowness of making data available in their API.  Plex Manager will wait for up to 2 minutes to find a transaction that has paid for a subscription that was just created and if it doesn't find it, Plex Manager will fail with above message. For new users this will result in no Plex invite being sent and for existing users, it will fail to register the payment for that user. Both situations will need manual remediation.

How to dedicate a specific server to trials only?

You can dedicate a server to trial plans only. Please follow these steps.

• Ensure trials are enabled in Settings
• Ensure that the server you wish to use for trials is synced and shows up under Servers panel. Also, ensure that the server is enabled and that "Allow new subscriptions" and "Allow trial subscriptions" are also enabled
• Create a new library type/group called "Trial"
• Assign only libraries from the trial server to this group on the Libraries panel
• Edit the trial plan and assign only "Trial" library type/group to the plan

Once users request a free trial, they will be added to the server dedicated for trials. If they later decide to subscribe, they will be removed from the trial server and added to one of your non-trial servers.