A podcast is an effective strategy to get your concepts throughout and construct an viewers. Whether you wish to host one to assist enhance the model consciousness for your small business or for your self, a podcast is one of the most effective methods to share your experience with the world.
Irrespective of the rationale for beginning a podcast, making a podcast wants a good quantity of thought and planning. One of an important selections that can absolutely have a bearing on the success of your podcast is selecting a podcast hosting supplier.
But it’s necessary to know that podcast hosting is totally different from conventional web hosting. This is as a result of a podcast host places at your disposal all of the sources that you’d must retailer and ship a profitable and fascinating podcast.
What are the most effective podcast hosting companies?
A podcast hosting service performs two important features. Firstly, it supplies you a method to add your podcasts such that they’re all accessible in the identical central location. More importantly, the podcast hosting service automates the technology of RSS feeds, after which routinely submits these to podcast directories, equivalent to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and others as a way to attain a wider viewers.
What helps differentiate the totally different podcast hosting companies are the quantity of instruments, add-ons, and conveniences that they provide on high of these important features.
Choosing a dependable podcasting hosting platform is paramount to your podcasting expertise as the proper platform is not going to simply make it easier to handle the podcast information, but additionally make it easier to develop your viewers.
Cost is one other differentiating issue. While there are some free providers, a great podcast hosting service will cost you a subscription price for hosting the podcast. Virtually all the great providers supply month-to-month subscriptions and a reduction for long-term committers.
BuzzSprout has been round since 2019 however has shortly made its title as one of the simplest to make use of podcast hosting providers. It prides itself on simplicity and velocity and is very suited to new content material creators simply starting their podcasting journey.
BuzzSprout boasts of automated optimization instruments. Just add your podcast and the platform will kind out the remaining. The service additionally routinely submits your uploaded podcasts to the highest directories relying on the publishing schedule you’ve outlined.
The platform additionally gives the choice so as to add chapter markers, which is an excellent possibility for organizing your podcast, irrespective of the size of the episode. Chapter markers give listeners the choice to shortly leap between explicit segments of the episode relying on their curiosity.
One of essentially the most fascinating choices of BuzzSprout is the power so as to add pre- and post-roll segments. This means you could simply add up to date and related content material or adverts to the start and finish of not simply the brand new, but additionally beforehand revealed podcasts.
BuzzSprout additionally gives the paid “Magic Mastering” add-on, which is described as “an Instagram filter in your audio.” This device grants customers the power to shine and improve the audio of their episode for a extra skilled last product.
The service gives a free plan that enables for 2 hours of add a month, and three paid plans that supply elevated storage starting from three to 12 hours a month. The most costly of the paid plans prices $24/month.
Podbean is one of the most affordable podcast hosting providers, which regardless of the low value, nonetheless manages to assist all of the helpful options {that a} podcaster may want.
One of the primary highlights of the service is that it helps limitless podcast hosting plans, all of which bundle a vast bandwidth. This means you should use all their paid plans to add and retailer a vast quantity of exhibits of any size, and in addition not fear if the episodes catch the eye of the world.
Besides the standard podcasting options to add, listing, and stream your podcast, the platform additionally gives the power to host video podcasts.
Podbean’s monetization options embody the choice to listing your podcast in its promoting market, permitting you to get matched with potential advertisers. There’s additionally the choice to host paid exhibits, and even be a part of Podbean’s patron program to solicit donations from listeners.
The plans range in phrases of the monetization choices they provide together with another options. The most cost-effective plan prices $9/mo and will go well with most new podcasters. Then there’s the $29/mo plan which is geared toward video podcasters, adopted by the $99/mo plan which ought to attraction to customers who wish to host podcast networks with a number of channels and their very own customized branding.
You can take a look at the Podbean by means of its free plan, which gives storage for 5 hours of audio in addition to a beneficiant 100GB of month-to-month bandwidth.
The Libsyn platform is one of the oldest podcast hosting companies, having been round since 2004, lengthy earlier than podcasting broke into the mainstream.
Over the years Libsyn has raked up fairly a powerful neighborhood of podcasters, which makes the platform an exquisite possibility for many who are simply breaking into podcasting.
One of the most effective options of Libsyn is that it gives limitless bandwidth. This ensures you’ll not be caught out even when your podcast rises to the highest of the charts within the podcast directories.
Libsyn gives a simple to make use of dashboard, which provides you all the standard choices you’d anticipate from a podcast hosting service equivalent to importing, publishing, itemizing, and scheduling choices that you just’d anticipate from a podcast hosting service.
However, in contrast to some of the opposite companies, Libsyn solely gives the important podcasting options as half of its plans. You should buy all different options as separate add-ons. For occasion, if you could use its monetization options, you’ll must pay for these options on high of your Libsyn subscription. Even primary stats value further within the lowest Libsyn subscription plan.
Libsyn plans begin with the $5/mo plan, which gives 50MB of uploads per thirty days. Next up, is the $15/mo plan, which incorporates 250MB of uploads, adopted by the 400MB plan for $20/month and 800MB for $40/month.
Captivate pitches itself for these seeking to develop and monetize their podcasts. It’s intuitive interface, which permits fast entry to the generally used features with out cluttering the display, ought to attraction to new and skilled podcaster alike.
One of the most effective issues about Captivate is that it lets you host a vast quantity of exhibits. There aren’t any limits on uploads and the cupboard space as nicely. Instead, Captivate limits accounts by the quantity of downloads.
The platform additionally gives complete analytics that will help you monitor the attain of your exhibits. In truth, one of the most effective identified options of Captivate is the ‘One-click sponsor pitch’ creation device that collates the analytics knowledge right into a properly formatted PDF media package. This contains all the important thing metrics and analytics about your podcast. Essentially, all the data wanted that will help you monetize your podcast.
Captivate additionally gives a number of different development and monetization instruments. There’s the ‘Calls to Action’ characteristic that you should use to insert two customized hyperlinks within the podcast participant, as an illustration, to your Pateron web page.
You can even use Captivate to host non-public or members-only exhibits, which is one other avenue for monetizing your content material.
Captivate gives three pricing choices, all of which provide all of the options of the platform. They differ solely in phrases of the quantity of downloads. If paid month-to-month, the $19/mo plan allows12,000 downloads/month, whereas the $49/mo plan permits as much as 60,000 downloads/month, and the $99/mo plan, geared in the direction of established creators permits 150,000 month-to-month downloads.
Transistor is one of the latest entrants within the podcast hosting enterprise, and pitches itself to each learners and professionals alike. The platform has all the standard podcasting instruments to add and publish your exhibits. The service additionally gives podcast analytics that will help you monitor the efficiency of your episodes.
Transistor’s providing carefully resembles that of Captivate, in that they each permit customers to host a vast quantity of podcasts, limiting accounts by the quantity of month-to-month allowable downloads. Another similarity is that each platforms mean you can host non-public podcasts as nicely. The two nonetheless differ in phrases of the quantity of non-public podcasts they’ll host together with the quantity of staff members you could share your podcasting duties with.
The two platforms are additionally related in phrases of pricing. Just like Captivate, the three Transistor plans value $19/mo, $49/mo, and $99/mo. However, Transistor gives a larger quantity of downloads per thirty days with every plan, permitting 5,000, 75,000, and 200,000 month-to-month downloads respectively.
Can’t I host podcasts with my common internet host?
You is likely to be questioning, why cannot you simply add the podcast to your current web site? Well, though there’s nobody stopping you from doing that, you wouldn’t have the ability to replicate the identical person expertise in your listeners as you possibly can with a specialised podcast host.
Then there’s the matter of feasibility. Podcasts are giant information, and relying on the size of your present, and the way you’ve encoded the information, it wouldn’t take too many episodes to balloon to humongous sizes.
Your common internet host isn’t designed for hosting giant information. They are optimized for delivering heaps of textual content information and photos together with an affordable quantity of multimedia content material.
In truth, some internet hosts explicitly prohibit utilizing the hosting house as a repository for big information and take into account it a violation of their utilization phrases if you happen to resolve to make use of them for hosting giant multimedia information equivalent to podcasts.
There’s additionally the query of bandwidth. Streaming podcasts eats bandwidth and, relying once more on the dimensions and recognition of your present, you’ll shortly exhaust your quota if you happen to host it on a typical internet hosting plan.
Exhausting the bandwidth wouldn’t simply make your web site slower or unavailable, it would even entice the wrath of the net host who may kick you out for hogging up all of the bandwidth, particularly if you’re utilizing a shared hosting service.
This is why you want a devoted podcast hosting platform that’s tuned to the wants and sensibilities of a podcaster.
These podcast hosting providers specialise in storing and delivering giant media information. They are made particularly for podcasters and are optimized for storing and delivering giant multimedia information in varied codecs.
Using a devoted podcast hosting supplier will make it easier to keep away from all kinds of sudden points that might value cash and beneficial time. Furthermore, specialist podcast hosting companies supply a bunch of helpful options to reinforce your podcasting expertise, together with the power to monetize your podcasts.
Benefits of podcast hosting
There are a number of benefits of utilizing a devoted podcast hosting service.
1. Storage prices
Podcasts can weigh quite a bit relying on the size of the present and the selection of the audio encoder. Podcast hosting companies value their plans to be sure you have ample storage in your podcast, with a variety of acceptable bandwidth plans. In truth, you’ll quickly uncover {that a} podcast hosting supplier is much more value environment friendly, particularly if you happen to think about the fee of the bandwidth as nicely.
2. Faster streaming
Podcast hosting companies go to nice lengths to ensure your listeners can stream your exhibits with none buffering delays. Many such companies additionally supply ample (if not limitless) bandwidth to make sure you don’t have to show away listeners since you’ve exhausted all of the accessible bandwidth.
3. Built-in analytics
Just like with an internet site, the proper analytics will provide you with the suggestions you could assist establish the weak and the blind spots in your content material protection. All the great podcast hosting companies offer you analytics which can be tuned that will help you extract essentially the most helpful details about your podcasts to allow you to make the proper selections primarily based on the preferences of your listeners.
4. Security
Just as with something hosted on the net today, safety is paramount. Different varieties of information require totally different varieties of protections and self hosting a podcast provides an extra degree of complexity and an pointless overhead to the podcasting expertise. A podcast hosting service has folks working behind the scenes to make sure that your podcast stays proof against on-line safety threats, permitting you to focus on your podcast.
