I definitely agree with you that some of the restrictions feel very arbitrary (basically everything that doesn’t use sonic analysis should be in the free tier imo). Especially with how bad of an experience music playback is without plexamp. Even as a lifetime plexpass users, I feel they shouldn’t have offered it if it would lead to the situation we have today where they need to get “creative” with monetization since their core users only paid a one-time fee.

To clarify my earlier post, you can definitely allow them to keep their independent account even if they’re in your Plex home. You just need to select “invite Plex user” instead of “create managed account”. It’s not a perfect solution as it gives all those users access to each other’s accounts if no pin is set afterwards. That being said, I personally don’t find that a huge limitation as I wouldn’t share my server with anyone that I wouldn’t trust to respect that. I added a pin only so no one accidentally logs in on my profile as it would give them admin access, all the devices I use regularly I also enable “automatically sign in” so I really only ever need to input my pin when I log into a new device.