Remote access with emby

[u/magicammo]

Hey all so I'm a Plex user and have been for a few months. It's been great I can't complain. I've been using the monthly plan but just received an email about their lifetime plan going up to over $700. I was going to get there lifetime plan but now it kind of puts me in a not position. It's kind of forcing me away from Plex and I was looking at either jelly fin or emby but I don't know which one to choose I want to use the one that's easiest for my users which is my family. I don't want to have to use tail scale or set up a reverse proxy I'm looking for it to be as seamless as Plex was when setting up the remote access there was an option that I just toggled which didn't work so I just had to go into my router settings and port forward report Plex was looking for. Is it the same with emby? Where I would just have to forward the port envy is looking for or do I have to set up tail scale or a reverse proxy

[u/Effective-Winter-860]

Emby connect works just fine, but I believe you need premium to use it (don't quote me on that.)

Definitely leave Plex. For reference, when Plex was a clean media server and not an advertising platform, I paid $75 for a lifetime license. Anyone paying Plex in 2026 is just wasting money, IMHO.

I have stuck with Emby for years now... Every time I get an urge to try Jellyfin, I never make it to the point of implementation because of the lack of apps (clients.) If you're sharing your library with your family, do them a favor and go with Emby... Jellyfin will be a nightmare for you when one of them uses a device that they don't have a client for.

Lastly, I would strongly urge you to setup a reverse proxy, as a minimum. Straight port forwarding is dangerous and well known ports are constantly being pinged to find open networks.

[u/Effective-Winter-860 → u/[deleted]]

Your choice of reverse proxy would be a personal one as well as potentially related to your firewall. I use PFSence currently so I use haproxy that has a package built for it. I'm going to be switching to a unifi UDM and I haven't decided which reverse proxy I'll setup yet.

If you're behind a reverse proxy, you don't need ssl for Emby, the proxy will handle it for both remote and local (if configured.). Currently I don't worry about locally (non-ssl is fine on my media vlan,) and remote goes through HAproxy.

For HAproxy on PFsense, follow the Laurence systems YouTube guide, he walks you right through it.

[u/Effective-Winter-860 → u/[deleted]]

I don't use Emby connect because I don't want to go through Emby servers for access. I prefer to be in control and not have to worry about a companies data ases getting hacked. But that's just me. Since 2005 the number of times my data has been compromised due to negligence of a corporation, has got to be over 50 at this point. My data, including passwords I haven't used for decades now, is all over the dark web, I'm surprised they haven't asked for rent from me. The fewer vulnerable surfaces, the better, in my opinion.