During Plex Pro Week this year, I contributed a video talking about Plex’s Webhooks feature that allows for a relatively easy way to link your Plex install to automation tools like N8N, IFTTT and Zapier.
In that earlier piece, I showed how Plex can fire off data whenever something happens on your server—whether it’s a play, pause, rating, or media being added. That data can then be sent to automation tools like N8N, which I’ve used in the past. But running an N8N server can be complicated and the hosted version requires a subscription.
In my latest sponsored Plex video, I demo a free, no-code path that doesn’t require hosting anything yourself using Make.com.
Make.com offers a free tier with 1,000 “credits” per month. Each credit equals a task, so something like receiving a webhook and then adding a row to a spreadsheet would count as two. For casual use, the free plan can go a long way.
I set up a simple workflow that starts by having Plex send a webhook to Make, which in turns takes some of that data and posts it to a Google sheet as a means of creating a log of watched content. That event is triggered anytime a new piece of media is played based on the state of the “event” tag in the webhook.
I then set up a second branch for when playback stops. In that case, I had the system call ChatGPT to generate recommendations for what to watch next, and then send that recommendation via email. The input for ChatGPT came directly from the webhook data, which made the recommendation specific to what I had just finished watching. It worked smoothly, and it showed how easily AI can be folded into these workflows.
For those thinking about linking Plex to home automation, the free, non-complicated options are a bit more limited. Services like IFTTT require a paid tier for webhook support, while open-source projects like Home Assistant can handle webhooks for free but require a bit more setup and complexity. Home Assistant, in particular, could be a strong option for linking Plex events with things like lights or thermostats, though it isn’t as straightforward as make.com.
There’s also Plex’s new official API, which was announced during Pro Week. The documentation is out, and I expect third-party developers will soon release connectors for platforms like make.com and N8N. That should make integration even easier, reducing the need to rely solely on webhooks. My YouTube colleague Techno Tim has already been experimenting with it, using the API to drive a dashboard for monitoring Plex server performance.
What I tried here was aimed at giving a taste of what can be done quickly without coding. Setting up webhooks with Plex and pairing them with make.com is accessible and flexible, especially for logging and basic automations. From there, it’s easy to imagine extending the idea into more complex routines, whether that means generating watch lists, building dashboards, or nudging your smart home into action when the credits roll.