• Avoid confusing potential listeners. Send them to ONE place when sharing your podcast.
• Optimally, this means your own website, as you have the most control over their journey and experience.
• But there are some other great tools for linking to and sharing your podcast, too, from Podnews and Rephonic to Podgagement and pod.link.
• Read on to find out more…

It’s never been as easy to share a podcast. Ask anyone who started in the 00s. I still wake up in a cold sweat, images of stand-alone mp3 players and a “failed to synchronise” warning flashing in my head! Imagine trying to explain to someone in 2024 why you had to plug it in, delete old episodes, and copy over new ones. It was a monstrosity!

The trouble is, though, it’s still not easy enough. Thanks to the head-spinning range of listening options, there’s no ONE place to link to your podcast. In fact, if you plough through ten podcasts, you’ll find ten hosts sending their listeners to 100 different places to listen! Follow! Subscribe! Review!

So, how do we link to our podcast? How do we take Auntie Gertrude from “You make a Pod-what?!” over to “Sonny boy, that episode you did on prawn cocktail crisps was sick!” Well, we put the subscribe/follow links in a place people understand and give them an easy guide on how to listen to a podcast – that’s how.

Let’s look at the first half of that right here—where we put the podcast online and what we include there. 

Step 1: Linking to a Place to Listen to Your Podcast

Create Your Mothership

For me, it still all comes back to your website. That’s the mothership. We can talk about smart speakers and fancy new apps til the vegan version of cows come home, but some of your potential audience might still have no clue what you’re talking about.

Even if they do understand those concepts, the next problem is that your Uncle has a Google Home, and your Gran has Alexa. We’re a long long way from standardization, which makes for a slew of “if….then” in your instructions. 

So, when looking at how to share a podcast, we need to take it back a couple of decades: What does everyone understand? A web address—the humble URL—and a nice, clear web page on the other end. 

Create a website for your show, and slap a nice custom domain name on it. It’s not hard, honest – check out our podcast website guide to learn how. Then, drop a podcast player right there on the front page. That’s it – you’ve made it easy to listen. 

Even more simply, just use the website your host provides and slap the domain name on there instead. Every good podcast hosting provider (e.g. Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Alitu) offers this. You’ll lose a bit of control and customisation this way, but it couldn’t be easier to set up. Captivate actually has a nice “one-click subscription” feature as part of their hosting tools, so that’s a great start if you publish your show over there (or plan to!).

Speaking of easy, a brilliant middle ground between setting up a website from scratch and using the default site of your hosting provider is Podpage. Podpage is a brilliant service that generates a superb, highly customisable, shareable, and feature-packed podcast website for you in minutes. And yes, you can point your domain name to that, too!

Now, when someone asks, and especially when they don’t, send them to mybrilliantpodcast.com on your platform of choice.

So there you go – that’s how to share a podcast! Get it in your ears, captive listener.

The Extra Benefits of a Website Home Base

If you’re anything like me, the main purpose of your show is to get listeners onto your website anyway. That’s where you can offer even more value, ask them to subscribe to email, support your Patreon, take a look at your products, your services… 

So, if we can encourage an easy listen AND offer up a really nice eBook in exchange for an email signup, then huzzah! Double-dipping.

Remember, podcast apps are great for encouraging regular, habitual listening, but they’re someone else’s platform. You don’t control them, and it’s hard to incite action. So, use your own site well and get listeners there first, if you get the chance. 

Step 2: Linking to a Place to Subscribe or Follow Your Podcast

Stick to the Basics: Apple and Spotify

Next, whatever you do, forget about the apps. If you’re saying to Uncle Bert: “Well, if you’re on Pocketcasts, then click this, then…..” you’ve already wandered down the wrong path. 

If Bert has downloaded a 3rd party podcasting app all by himself, that means he knows the medium. He knows how to search for your show, all on his lonesome. Instead, we’re catering to the folks who don’t know what a podcasting app is, least of all the fact that there’s one on their phone already! 

So, the basics. Cater to the two most popular platforms for brand new listeners, and them alone. Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Get yourself a button for each, and place it as close to the aforementioned big play button as is humanly possible.

Then, when Auntie ‘casual listener’ Gertrude graduates from ‘web listener’ school, she picks up her phone, clicks the right button (we hope…) and is taken right into one of those popular apps. Maybe she’ll one day end up dropping Boostagrams for Adam Curry on TrueFans, but for now, we’ve helped onboard her as a brand-new podcast listener with minimal friction, fuss, and confusion.

How to Share a Podcast: Listening App Hubs

While I’d argue it’s worth sending people to your website, there may be valid reasons why you don’t run one or care to do so. So, if you just want to get potential listeners to hit play in a listening app right away, you’re in luck. There are no shortage of handy resources:

Podnews

Podnews isn’t just an essential daily newsletter, it also has an excellent feature for sharing your podcast. Go to Podnews.net, type your show’s name into the search box, top right, and find it in the listings below. Then, on the show page, scroll down, and you’ll find a plethora of buttons for apps you didn’t even know existed. Here is the Podcraft page. Scan the QR code on your phone and see what happens (and give us a follow whilst you’re at it, eh )

Pod.Link

Another convenient service is pod.link. Again, same idea, and it’ll show potential listeners a list of your latest episodes, too. Here’s the Pocket-Sized Podcast page on pod.link.

Rephonic

Famed for its cool 3D “find similar podcasts” graph, Rephonic is also a way to link to and share your podcast. Not only do you get a bunch of buttons to your show in multiple listening apps, you can also see all your reviews on these various platforms, too, from Apple Podcasts to Podchaser and beyond. Here’s Podcraft on Rephonic.

Podgagement

Formerly “My Podcast Reviews,” this service started as a way to collect, share, and encourage—funnily enough—your podcast reviews. Of course, it’s still a brilliant tool for doing that, but the button-packed “follow the podcast” feature is particularly relevant for linking to and sharing your show. As you might expect from the name, there are a lot of other growth and engagement features in Podgagement, too. Heads up that our link here is an affiliate, so we’d earn a wee commission if you signed up through it, though never at any extra cost to you!

13 Ways to Turn Non-Listeners Into Podcast Lovers

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Creating a “How to Listen to a Podcast” Guide

In some cases, I think creating a ‘how to listen’ page on your site is a good idea. Many folks will figure it out pretty quickly, using the two-platform approach above. But others need a bit more coaxing. That’s when it’s time to hold them by the nose… or the hand, and lead them through it, step by step. 

Creating a simple guide to finding and following your podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is a great starting point. But if you’d rather spend time working on your actual content, you can always just direct people towards our How to Listen to a Podcast guide. It’ll walk your listeners through every step. 

How to Link to a Podcast? Keep it Simple

There are a few handy platform-agnostic tools out there that let you link to and share your podcast. That said, I still, more often than not, guide people towards my website as the first stop. I control exactly what people see there, and I can really tailor and optimise their experience, too.

Remember, if you want to know exactly how to set up a website for your podcast, we have our pillar podcast websites guide with a full range of options – though we tend to recommend Podpage to most podcasters, these days, as it’s such a simple yet potent and customisable website builder.

The bottom line is that having any type of website makes it easier to link to and share a podcast. And even if you don’t have one, you’ll find a ready-to-go landing page full of listening options on Podgagement, Rephonic, pod.link, or Podnews!

Now that you can easily link to and share your podcast, why not take it to the next level by creating content so good that your listeners feel compelled to share it as well? Our courses in the Podcraft Academy can help you do just that, and you’ll get access to our downloadable resources and weekly live Q&A sessions, too!

Well, I can’t change your voice, but I can tell you the best hosting options! There are some fantastic services out there; it’s not one-size-fits-all. But here, I’ll give you the pros and cons and help you find the best podcast hosting for your own unique needs.

Below, you’ll find 17 of the best hosting platforms out there, with a full breakdown of features, price and special offers. Plus, further down, you’ll find four free podcast hosting options, just in case you want a no-risk dabble, first…

If you’re short on time and looking for more of an at-a-glance guide, then check out our handy new podcast hosting chooser tool instead. Click here to jump straight in and find your ideal podcast hosting provider in less than a minute.

And remember, if you’re still at the start of the journey, check out our full guide to getting launched:

Learn How to Start a Podcast: Every Single Step

So you know, this article contains some affiliate links, which help support our site at no extra cost to you. Thanks for the help!

Captivate

Huge, Excellent Feature-Set incl. Powerful Website, Network Features, Growth Tools & more

Captivate’s Notable Features

• Calls to action in the podcast player.
• Unlimited team members – share the burden of running your show.
• Run a private podcast on all payment tiers.
• Extensive listen/subscribe link options, incl. Attribution Links & Single Promotional Link.
• Well-designed, highly customisable and mobile-friendly website, built-in
• Transcription feature
• WordPress plugin option for connecting to your own website.
• Tools to connect and grow your email list.
• Custom trackable Attribution Links for your sponsorships, social media, or affiliates.
• Collections feature – hand-pick episodes to create shareable playlists
• Guest booking tool
• Captivate doesn’t make any changes or alterations to your episode files.
• Audio mastering and Dynamic Ad insertion
• Run a podcast network inside your normal account

Captivate is a hosting platform that concentrates on helping you to grow your audience. Their tagline is ‘the only growth-oriented’ podcast host, and they have a feature set built to live up to that.

Captivate’s growth and monetisation tools include their ‘One-Click Sponsor’ kit, ‘Calls to Action’ in their podcast players and an excellent Single Promotional Link that you can link to anywhere. They also enable you to easily connect and grow an email list so you can stay in touch with your audience in various other ways.

You can also run private (or members-only) podcasts with Captivate. You can start one for your team, business, or organisation even if you’re on Captivate’s lowest payment plan of $19 a month.

Captivate Pricing

Captivate’s competitive pricing is based on ‘downloads per month.’ You can host as many shows as you like on one account and pay based on the total downloads accumulated by all of them.

• $19 per month ($204 when paid annually) for up to 30,000 downloads per month
• $49 per month ($528 when paid annually) for up to 150,000 downloads per month
• $99 per month ($1,080 when paid annually) for up to 300,000 downloads per month

See How many downloads do podcasts get? for a rough guide here, but the lowest tier will be more than enough for the vast majority of podcasters.

Sign up below for a 30-day free trial to look around the Captivate dashboard.

Sign up for Captivate

Alitu

Recording, Editing, Production, Hosting (& More!) All in One Single Place

Alitu’s Notable Features

• One login and one subscription fee for everything you need to podcast
• Call recording for remote conversations
• Solo recording
• Podcast editing – quickly and easily chop out mistakes
• Text-based podcast editing – edit audio directly from transcripts
• Episode builder – add in music, transitions, and other segments
• Merge double-ender recordings from alternative call recording software
• Automatic post-production – Alitu cleans up your audio, fixes the volume levels, and optimises your sound
• Free podcast music library
• Auto-generated podcast transcripts
• Publish to Apple Podcast, Spotify, and all other podcast listening platforms

Looking for the least possible amount of subscription plans and tools to streamline your workflow? Then look no further than Alitu. This podcast maker tool has everything you need to record, produce, and publish your show, with regular new feature releases, too.

Whether you run a solo show, co-host show, or do remote interviews, you can record directly into Alitu. Editing is easier than navigating your average social media app, and audio cleanup (noise reduction, levelling, etc.) happens for you automatically. Once you’re happy with your episode, you just hit publish, and you’re done.

Whilst Alitu has everything you need, it also plays well with other services. If you still want to use one of the other podcast hosting platforms here, then it’ll automatically connect to most of them, so you can still publish from within Alitu’s interface. Or, you can easily download your finished episode and upload it elsewhere manually.

If you prefer to use other remote recording software, it’ll automatically merge double-enders, too, and give them the usual audio cleanup TLC.

Podcast transcription is essential for audience accessibility, and Alitu will auto-generate transcriptions of your episodes. This helps you to deliver written versions of your episodes at no extra cost.

You can also edit your podcast directly from your transcripts with Alitu’s text-based audio editor. This is a perfect on-ramp for folks short on time, or with little experience working with audio.

Alitu is an all-in-one tool that suits busy people, non-techy folks, and people looking to save money on their overall podcast spend.

Alitu Pricing

With Alitu, you get access to ALL of its features for a flat rate of $38 per month. If you pay annually, you get two months free.

On the podcast hosting front, pricing allows for up to 1000 total downloads per month, which is typically more than enough for most podcasters. But if you’re lucky enough to be getting a few thousand per month, then the cost would rise by $10.

Get a 7-day free trial to test out Alitu for yourself.

Sign up for Alitu

Free Podcast Hosting Chooser Tool

If you already have a basic understanding of how hosting works, as well as a rough idea of your needs and wants, then our podcast hosting tool can help you choose a service quickly and easily.

With just a few clicks, you can see exactly what platforms and tiers have what you need and how much they’ll cost.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a deeper dive into these offerings, jump forwards towards our main post.

PS We’d love to hear your feedback on our new hosting picker.

Transistor.fm

Private Podcasting & Flexible Player Options

Transistor’s Notable Features

• Private podcasting tools built-in to create a members-only podcast for your members or your company team.
• Single episode, latest episode, multi-episode & dark mode players.
• Publish your show to YouTube automatically.
• Invite multiple team members to manage your show.
• In-built website integrates with many email providers (Convertkit, Drip, etc).
• Free podcast website builder tool

Transistor is another host that aims to make things easy and offers all of the normal tools a podcaster might need. One area in which they excel is their private podcast feed feature, and in the range of players they offer.

Private podcasting has long been an effective way to monetise your show or to engage an existing community. Imagine running a public show, with a ‘premium content’ option alongside, which your real fans pay for. Or, create a community-based show, only available for members. Or an internal staff podcast which updates your company’s team on a weekly basis. Transistor makes it really easy to run a private show, in any form. You simply invite your users, and they do the rest.

Transistor recently released their multi-episode player, which is a great way to showcase your back catalogue. You can show off your most recent episode alongside your 25 latest episodes. It’s a great way to entice listeners into your older episodes, encouraging a bingeing session and increased loyalty.

Transistor.fm Pricing

You can host as many shows as you like on one account, and pay based on the total downloads accumulated by all of them.

• $19 per month for up to 20,000 downloads per month
• $49 per month for up to 100,000 downloads per month
• $99 per month for up to 250,000 downloads per month

See How many downloads do podcasts get? for a rough guide here, but the lowest tier will be more than enough for the vast majority of podcasters.

Sign up for Transistor

RSS.com

RSS.com is an easy-to-use podcast hosting platform. They offer unlimited episodes and unlimited downloads with no alteration to audio files. They are fully localized in three languages (English, Spanish, and Italian), which includes their customer support.

 RSS.com’s Notable Features

• Cheaper than many of their competitors, without a reduction in quality.
• Free episode transcripts you can use to enhance and promote your podcast.
• Ability to convert your audio-focused episodes into videos and upload them directly to YouTube from your dashboard.
• Detailed podcast analytics to help you grow your podcast.
• Option to host multiple podcasts from one account.
• Sponsorship opportunities, Apple Podcast Subscriptions integration, and Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) for approved podcasts.
• Privacy features like the removal of your email address from your public RSS feed.
• Ability to add collaborators (Admins and Analysts) to simplify how you manage your podcast.

RSS.com Pricing

You can sign up and upload one episode for free without a credit card. After you’ve tested the water though, you’ll need to sign up fully to keep on podcasting.

RSS.com have a great value tier for students and educators costing only $4.99 per month. Their general podcaster tier costs $14.99 per month, and you can save 20% by paying annually.

RSS.com Special Offers

Use the promo code THEPODCASTHOST to get two free months on the standard monthly subscription.

Sign up for RSS.com

Castos

Great for WordPress Integration & Their Podcast Editing Service

Castos’ Notable Features

• Integrate with WordPress via the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin.
• Create unlimited podcasts with no cap on downloads.
• Built-in episode transcriptions.
• Option to create private podcasts.
• Option to outsource your editing to Castos Productions.

Castos are the media host behind the popular Seriously Simple Podcasting WordPress plugin, which you can use to integrate Castos hosting with your own WordPress website.

You simply install the WordPress plugin; from then on, you can upload and publish podcast episodes directly from inside your website. No need to log into your hosting. Read our full guide on how to set up your own podcasting website for more details.

The Complete Guide to Podcast Websites (with Dinosaurs)

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Another thing Castos specialises in is tools for private or “membership” podcasts and premium content. This can be run inside your Castos Dashboard and integrates with Seriously Simple Podcasting to run a private or members-only show directly from your WordPress site.

Castos has a handy tool in the form of their transcription service. This helps you create a more accessible podcast and offers a text version of every show for listener revision or skimming.

Castos even offer a podcast editing and production service, which you can add to your hosting.

Regarding your files, Castos doesn’t alter your bitrates or metadata in any way.

Castos Pricing

You can podcast on Castos from $19 a month, giving you unlimited podcasts, downloads, and episodes. There are two higher tiers at $49 a month and $99 a month. With the middle one, you can republish your show to Youtube, whilst the higher one lets you host video podcasts.

Castos Special Offers

Get a free month by using our coupon code TPH22

Sign up for Castos

Other Great Podcast Hosting Services

With our top recommendations done, here’s a roundup of some of the most popular hosting platform alternatives.

Buzzsprout

Buzzsprout offers a few unique features built around automation, all of which can save you, as a podcaster, a lot of time. If you’re into clipping for social media, for example, Buzzsprout allows you to select parts of your audio to turn into video clips.

Buzzsprout can also automate adverts or cross-promotions, too, through it’s dynamic ad capabilities. This means you can easily add up-to-date and relevant ads to the beginning and end of all of your existing episodes.

They also offer the option to add chapter markers. This gives listeners the ability to quickly navigate through an episode to review the content. Great for learning shows, in particular!

Buzzsprout Pricing

You need one paid account per podcast, and pricing is based on how much you upload, every month. You can upload two hours of content per month for free, but episodes are deleted after 90 days. Their paid plans store your episodes so long as your account is active, priced at $12/month (3hrs), $18/month (6hrs), and $24/month (12hrs).

Visit Buzzsprout

Podbean

Podbean have made huge strides in recent years to provide a range of brilliant tools to help Podcasters grow and monetise their shows. Their hosting is great quality, and can be easily tied in with their sponsorship marketplace, their dynamic ad insertion and their premium content service.

Podbean Pricing

Their flagship plan is the $14 per month (or $9 per month if paid annually) ‘Unlimited Audio Plan’, which would suit most podcasters. From there, you can upgrade for extra design options, their Podads and Patron programmes.

Read our full Podbean Monetisation Guide here for more info.

Podbean Special Offers

Get a month’s free hosting with Podbean when you sign up using the coupon code podcraft

Visit Podbean

RedCircle

RedCircle promises unlimited storage to host your podcast, and supports running multiple shows. Their features include the ability to take donations, subscriptions to premium content, cross-promotion with other RedCircle podcasters, dynamic ads, and YouTube distribution.

RedCircle Pricing

RedCircle has a free tier, which includes unlimited storage, exclusive content, and the ability to take donations. Upgrading to their $20 a month Growth plan though (annual savings are available), will let you host unlimited podcasts (actual shows, not episodes), get advanced statistics, and ad-free webpages.

Visit RedCircle

Spreaker

Spreaker is a podcasting platform that offers a lot more tools than most, with apps for live broadcasting, offline recording and some parts of production. You can see more about them, and other options, in our best podcast-making apps article.

Spreaker have a great distribution platform, which publishes you to all of the main directories without leaving the Spreaker platform. Finally, they have a good monetisation option in the form of dynamic ads insertion, if you’re happy to outsource the ad content.

Spreaker Pricing

Spreaker has a free tie, though opting for the $20 monthly plan gets you advanced stats, enhanced private podcasts, in-app support, and more.

Visit Spreaker

Blubrry

Blubrry have been part of the podcasting world since the early days, providing quality hosting to tens of thousands of users. They’re also well known for their excellent Powerpress plugin which allows anyone to run a podcast from their own website. You can learn how to set up Powerpress or a new podcast website here.

Blubrry were one of the first independent podcast hosting services to be given IAB certification, meaning they comply with official podcast measurement guidelines. That can be a help if you’re looking for sponsorship.

Blubrry doesn’t alter your uploaded files in any way.

Blubrry Pricing

If your show is on the short side, you might get away with their $12/month plan, for 125MB of uploads every month. Otherwise, their $20/month 400MB storage plan should suit longer shows.

Blubrry Special Offers

Get a month’s free hosting with Blubrry when you sign up using the coupon code: podcraft

Visit BluBrry

Libsyn

Libsyn is one of the old-guard of the podcast hosting world – similar to Blubrry, serving tens of thousands of happy customers, with a quality, reliable and extremely knowledgeable service.

Libsyn pride themselves on empowering you to be found anywhere that podcasts are consumed, and with their Destinations you can publish to any day/time in the future to the minute to each directory, independently of each other.

Also, what you upload is what your listener downloads. They don’t change your files at all – though they do provide tools to add metadata to your episodes if you choose to.

Libsyn Pricing

Libsyn starts at $5 a month for 162MB of uploads per month (approx three hours).  Their 324MB plan is more suitable for most weekly podcasters, though, and runs at $15 per month.

Libsyn is also well known for its Enterprise offerings, catering to professional podcasters, podcast networks, celebrities, government agencies, and big media companies. You’ll have to get in touch to get a quote based on what exactly you’re looking to do.

Libsyn Special Offers

Get a month’s free hosting with Libsyn when you sign up using the coupon code podhost

Visit Libsyn

Podcast.co

Podcast.co is a company, like their name, that aims to make things as simple as possible. They offer a platform with lovely design and great ease of use, including all the standard tools you’d expect in your hosting.

One unique feature is that Podcast.co also offers launch, growth and production services. So, if you think you’ll need extra help at any stage, you can add this on to your package.

Finally, they also offer a private podcasting service, but only on the $49 package and upwards. If you’re looking to do a members-only or internal team podcast, though, it could be a nice add-on.

Podcast.co Pricing

Podcast.co follows the ‘monthly downloads’ model and starts at $19 per month and 15,000 downloads. That ramps up to $49 for 75k downloads and $99 for 200k. Podcasts.co now offers unlimited podcast feeds on all tiers.

Visit Podcast.co

Acast

Acast is a well-known podcast hosting platform with some handy monetisation, promotion, and transcription features.

Acast’s interface is clear, clean, and straightforward. They offer embeddable podcast players and snippets which make it easy to promote your show. On top of that, you can add dynamically inserted adverts into your episodes, too!

Acast Pricing

Acast offers a free tier with all the basics. Unlimited uploads, basic analytics and a basic podcast website.

The $25 a month “Influencer” tier offers advanced analytics & website, integration with Patreon, as well as other monetization options.

On Acast’s $ 40-a-month “Ace” tier, you get transcriptions, along with professional workshops, more customer support, and team and network management.

You can save on the $25 and $40 monthly payments by paying annually.

Visit Acast

Podcast Websites

Podcast Websites is a service built on the Captivate podcast hosting platform I mentioned above. It’s the highest-priced product here at $97 per month (or $77 annually), but it sets you up with what amounts to your own self-hosted WordPress website, equipped with a range of really powerful plugins to help you engage your listeners and grow your show. If you want to run a powerful, customisable podcast website, but you’d like someone else to take care of it, Podcast Websites could be well worth the extra cost.

Podcast Websites Pricing

Podcast Websites likes to keep it simple, with just one unlimited premium tier, at a monthly cost of $97. But, you can pay annually, at $77 per month to save $240 over the year.

Podcast Websites Special Offers

Use our coupon code – HOSTME – to get $10 OFF the monthly cost for life.

Visit Podcast Websites

Simplecast

Simplecast markets itself as “the modern independent podcast hosting and analytics platform”. They offer great stats and sharing options for podcasters, giving you the tools to help you grow your show and to track the progress of that growth.

File-wise, Simplecast will re-encode MP3s that are over 128kbps to that bitrate, but they won’t alter anything uploaded at a rate of 128kbps or lower. Stereo/mono encoding is kept as-is at all times. If you’d really like to run your podcast at a higher bitrate though, they’re happy to discuss that with you.

Simplecast Pricing

You can run an account from $15 a month, which puts a soft limit of 20,000 total monthly downloads on your show. You can upgrade to their 50,000 package for $35 a month, or their 120,000 package for $85 a month. Discounts are available when paying annually.

Simplecast Special Offers

Get 50% off your first two months on Simplecast when you subscribe with the promo code ONSIMPLECAST.

Visit Simplecast

Ausha

French podcast hosting platform Ausha has recently expanded to the US and is now IAB Tech Lab Podcast Measurement 2.1 certified. Founded in 2018, they had become the leader in hosting and broadcasting native podcasts in France by the beginning of 2020.

Ausha Pricing

Their “Launch” tier costs $156 a year or $15 when billed monthly. This gives you unlimited storage, episodes, and downloads, along with a newsletter feature of up to 1000 contacts. If you upgrade to their “Boost” tier ($35/month, annual savings available) you can get 5000 newsletter contacts and distribute to YouTube.

Visit Ausha

CoHost – Podcast Hosting for Brands & Agencies

CoHost is built specifically for brands and agencies to better measure the impact of branded podcasts. Their primary focus is on providing valuable, actionable data that helps a brand better understand what is and isn’t working in their audio efforts.

CoHost Pricing

CoHost has launched with a $59 package, but if you’re an agency or network, they’ll create a custom, discounted rate depending on the number of shows you’re looking to onboard. Get in touch with their team for a demo and to discuss pricing! 

Visit CoHost

Free Podcast Hosting: Is it a Good Idea?

The eternal question! Yes, there can be a place for free podcast hosting, as long as you know the downsides and it suits the stage you’re at.

Using a free hosting platform can be a decent way to test the waters when you’re starting out. Podcasting isn’t for everyone, after all, so being able to try out the medium for a month or more, for free, can be nice.

But, you know what they say – if you’re not paying, then you’re the product. The upside is obviously saving some money. But, here are the downsides:

• Often adds advertising to your show, for the hosting co. or others.
• May add advertising to your podcast website, or players
• Options for analytics or customisation tend to be limited
• You may give up a lot of control (eg. Anchor owning your feed on Apple Podcasts.)
• Free podcast hosts may struggle to monetise. Historically we’ve seen them change their approach rapidly or go out of business.
• Support can be limited
• Free hosting has created some podcast piracy issues

The upsides of paying for podcast hosting are huge, such as features to grow your show, full ownership over your feed and content, detailed analytics, reliable support, and all the other things we’ve talked about in the recommendations above.

But, there are four free options, which can be a good starter – as I said, to test the waters – and that’s Podbean, Spreaker, RedCircle and Buzzsprout. Plus, there’s Spotify for Podcasters, which I don’t necessarily recommend, but I’ll let you know why, below.

Podbean’s Free Podcast Hosting

Podbean‘s free package has the following limits:

• 5 hours of audio, maximum, forever
• 100GB monthly bandwidth

And that’s it! This is interesting because it means that you could run short episodes for a few months, inside that limit. Let’s say 15 episodes of 20 minutes each.

If you decide, at that point, that you don’t like it, you just stop. But, because of the limits here, your show is still available, forever.

RedCircle’s Free Podcast Hosting

RedCircle have a great free tier which lets you host one podcast with unlimited storage and distribution. Instead of charging a fee upfront, they provide tools for podcasters to earn revenue and then take a cut if/when they do. You can learn more about this in our dedicated RedCircle review.

Buzzsprout’s Free Podcast Hosting

Buzzsprout offers a free package, with the following conditions:

• You can upload up to 2hrs of audio each month
  (enough for a weekly 30min show).
• But episodes go offline after three months of publishing

The 3-month episode shutdown means it’s not a viable option for running a long-term podcast. You’ll want your back catalogue available permanently.

But this works as a great free trial for Buzzsprout, and can help you decide if you want to keep going with them and sign up to their $12-per-month plan.

Spotify for Podcasters’ Free Podcast Hosting

Spotify for Podcasters (Anchor) is the big dog of free podcast hosting. Their platform has made it easy and accessible for ‘toe-dippers’ trying podcasting out to see if it’s for them or not.

The downside of this is that it has created a lot of ‘one-episode then gone’ clutter in the podcasting realm. That said, almost half of the podcasters we surveyed said they didn’t care about this (though a third of them did). The Podcast Index also re-evaluated what they considered to be a valid podcast, too, as their total number was grossly inflated by a lot of 20-second “hey, is this thing on?” shows.

Of course, if you’re simply curious about podcasting then none of this will matter much to you. But if you want to test the water with free podcast hosting on a platform that can grow with you, then opt for RedCircle, Spreaker, or Podbean.

Spreaker’s Free Podcast Hosting

Spreaker have a decent free plan if you only want to run a single podcast. You’ll get up to 6 months’ worth of basic stats. Upgrading to their paid tier will give you access to features like enhanced private podcasting, Apple Podcasts subscriptions, advanced statistics, and in-app support.

Podcast Hosting FAQs

If you’re still deciding, here are a few questions you might have about finding the best podcast hosting.

What is Podcast Hosting?

Podcast hosting does two things. First, it’s the place on the web where you upload your podcast episodes. Second, it generates the RSS feed which you submit to listening platforms – eg. Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc – and which allows people to subscribe to your show.

Podcast hosting is generally a subscription service. You sign up for a monthly fee, and you can upload your new episode files every week. There are a bunch of extra features that come with hosting, such as stats, marketing tools, podcast websites and more, but the basic principle is that it’s a place to put your audio files.

Go Deeper: What is a podcast host, and why do I need one?

How Do I Choose the Best Podcast Host?

Good question! There isn’t a one-size-fits-all, so it’s worth going through the strengths and weaknesses of the best in the business.

For this roundup, we’ve run through all of our experiences with every host and drawn thoughts from many others we know and trust. Our top picks are all hosts that we actively use, either with our own shows or with other shows we work on. And, the ‘best of the rest’ are all hosting platforms we’ve at least used in the past.

Can I Host My Podcast on My Website?

The short answer is: no. With caveats. It’s all about bandwidth. Audio files can be pretty big: let’s say 30mb for an average kind of episode. Then, if you do well, you might get a few thousand downloads of your new episodes, every week. 3000 x 30mb is nearly 100,000MB per week, not counting downloads of your back catalogue too.

While most web hosts claim they run unlimited, unmetered bandwidth, they generally have fair use policies that disallow this volume. So, it’s common for self-hosting podcasters to be kicked off their hosting, or forced to upgrade.

Worth knowing, that you can still treat your main website as the home of your podcast (maybe a category within it), but you’ll upload audio files to the podcast host, and then embed the player on your own episode blog posts.

Remember, you do get a basic website as standard with your podcast hosting account (some of them look pretty good, too), and you can even get custom domains to point to them. For some, this is a quick and easy alternative to setting up a WordPress site.

Go Deeper: Can I just host my podcast on my website?

How Does Podcast Hosting Storage and Bandwidth Work?

It depends on who you opt for. But there are two common ways of working.

The first is that a hosting provider will charge you a monthly fee and limit the amount of content you can upload that month. BUT, you could suddenly become the most famous person on the planet and get a billion downloads the next day, and you’d still be golden.

The second is that a hosting provider will charge you a monthly fee and you can upload as much content as you like. BUT, there will be a cap on how many times it can be downloaded.

A caveat on this is that, firstly, the download ‘cap’ number is usually set very high. Far higher than the average new podcaster is going to have to worry about hitting any time soon (and if they do, what a nice worry to have, eh?).

Secondly, no decent podcast hosting platform is likely to cut you off the minute you reached such a limit. Instead, they’ll tend to reach out to you to discuss upgrades to your account. If you’re doing really well, they will want to take good care of you!

Podcast Host Pricing: Is It Better to Be Charged for Uploads or Downloads?

The promise of “unlimited bandwidth” can be confusing, because it might mean uploads, downloads, or both.

But the good news is that few podcasters need to worry about upload or download limits in their podcast hosting account.

Libsyn is a host that charges by uploads. Their lowest tier of $5 a month still allows for around three hours of monthly storage to be added. So if you’re running a weekly show of 30-45mins, you should be totally fine. They don’t put any cap on downloads either.

If we take Captivate, by contrast, you have unlimited storage space. You can host as many podcasts and publish as many episodes as you like for $19 a month. Captivate charges based on downloads, so your limit here is 30,000 per month, spread across all of your shows and episodes.

30,000 monthly downloads is massive. Even if you have a few popular shows with big back catalogues, they might not quite hit that lofty number.

In summary, upload or download limits probably aren’t a reason to choose one particular podcast hosting provider over another.

Does Hosting Handle Podcast Distribution?

Not directly, but most of the good hosts give you a lot of help when it comes to distributing your podcast. For example, both Captivate and Transistor have a podcast distribution page for every show you host with them.

These pages give direct links to the top podcast directories, so you can list easily. And, in some cases, they can submit for you. Captivate and Transistor registers your show on Spotify with one click. They’ll also help you submit to Apple, whilst Google Podcasts just finds you automatically (that’s what they do, after all!).

Once you have your podcast hosting set up, head over here for our complete podcast distribution guide to make sure your podcast gets found by potential listeners.

Go Deeper: Complete Guide to Podcast Distribution

Can I Upload Video Podcasts to My Podcast Host?

Video podcasts can be confusing. The vast majority of podcasters who run a video component to their show will upload their episodes to YouTube, and a YouTube channel technically isn’t a podcast feed.

That said, YouTube has now rolled out a dedicated “podcasts” section to US-based users, so things are changing. But video podcasting in the technical sense (where you can subscribe to shows inside many major listening platforms) is a bit more niche.

Podbean is a podcast host that lets you upload videos and run a video podcast. Whether you should run a video show alongside the audio version is another matter. Some argue that this can split your downloads and subscribers over two different content streams, and this can affect your “searchability” in podcast apps.

As it stands, it’s probably best just to create a YouTube channel and upload your video episodes there. Whether YouTube’s official venture into podcasting comes to anything or not is irrelevant. Tonnes of people are “listening to podcasts” on there, even if that’s often not technically correct.

Do Podcast Hosting Providers Offer Transcriptions?

Some podcast hosts have advanced features where they can auto-generate transcripts of your episodes for you. Alitu and Castos do this.

Many other hosting providers will provide a space to upload or copy in transcriptions, but you’ll need to use another service to create them. Here’s how and where to get your podcast transcribed.

Which Hosting Provider Has the Best Embeddable Podcast Player?

Your podcast hosting provider will offer an embeddable player for your episodes. This means you can add them to your website and blog posts.

Most of these players are pretty customisable in terms of their colours, and the buttons you can add to them. There are a lot of nice attractive options out there these days, too. Check out our full guide to podcast players right here.

Do Hosting Providers Have Podcast Production Tools?

Alitu is one of the few “all-in-one” services that has both podcast hosting and editing and production built-in. It’s important to differentiate between “editing” and “production” because the latter can be used as a term to describe enhancing your audio, but not necessarily chopping out mistakes and unwanted segments.

Captivate and Buzzsprout are two podcast hosts offering mastering tools that fall into the “production” bracket. These can help sharpen up the sound of your uploaded files. But if you’re looking for full editing and production options, opt for Alitu or Spotify for Podcasters.

Can I Have Separate Hosting Accounts for Team Members?

If you have a team of people working on your show then some hosting providers give you the ability to have individual logins and accounts for each one. The most notable options here are Captivate and Transistor.

Are Podcast Hosting Sites the Same as Podcast Networks?

No, in almost all instances, they are different things. Some podcast networks may have criteria that their podcasts are hosted on a particular platform, but your host is your host, and your network (if you are on one) is your network.

Many hosting providers do have special tools and features allowing you to create and run a full podcast network on their platform. Notably, Libsyn and Captivate.

What’s the Best Podcasting Hosting for You & Your Content?

Loads of information there, but hopefully that’s helped you to find a service that looks like a great fit for your show. Or, at the very least, helped you to whittle all the options down to a shortlist! Here, again, are our top choices for podcast hosting solutions right now:

If you’re looking for growth tools, private pods, network features & a great site:

Choose Captivate

If you’d like recording, editing, and hosting all in one place:

Choose Alitu

If you’re a native Italian or Spanish speaker, or, are looking for a lower subscription cost without a reduction in quality:

Choose RSS.com

If you’re looking for simplicity & automation:

Choose Castos

If you’d like private podcasting feeds & a variety of players:

Choose Transistor

Reviewing Podpage

Before we dive into the meat of this Podpage review, a quick heads up that our link is an affiliate. That means we’d earn a small commission if you signed up through it (at no extra cost to yourself!). Affiliate links help support all the free content we put out on the site, but don’t worry—they never cloud our judgment when reviewing products or services.

Right, with that all said and done, let’s get into it:

What Is Podpage?

Podpage is a service that can create a great-looking website for your show, almost instantly.

On their homepage, they explain that you can “build a podcast website in less than 5 minutes. ” They elaborate, “Podpage makes it easy to create a podcast website with just a few clicks. Every page is optimized to be found on Google, and it stays up-to-date forever. No technical knowledge necessary.”

Sounds good, right? But…

Do You Need a Podcast Website?

You don’t need a podcast website, but there are many compelling reasons to have one. Having a home for your show online helps you grow your podcast, be more discoverable, and even sell your own products or services.

Fortunately, you’ve got plenty of options when it comes to creating a website.

Default Podcast Hosting Webpages

You do need media hosting to run a podcast. Basically, this is an account you’ll use to upload and publish your episodes. Most media hosts create a basic “website” or webpage for you as part of your account. Some hosting providers, like Captivate, provide superb options for website creation.

Peerless Podcast Websites

Some podcasters build their own self-hosted websites from scratch. Whilst this is the most flexible and customisable option, you need a wee bit of technical knowledge to make something decent, and to be able to fix it quickly whenever it goes down.

Or, Podpage…

But, if you want to create something great with a minimal amount of time, know-how, or fuss, and the site your media host offers you isn’t up to scratch, then Podpage could be the ideal solution.

Podpage Review: Getting Started

I’ve already touched on media hosting, and there’s an important criterion for using Podpage—your podcast must already exist. If you’ve not yet launched your show, bookmark this article for later and head on over to our Step-by-Step Guide on How to Start Your Podcast.

If you’ve already launched your podcast, though, and have at least one published episode (even a short trailer), then you can start playing with Podpage.

The first step is to try the quick preview on the Podpage homepage. Here, you simply type in your show’s name, find it, and enter an email address so they can send you the link.

You’ll then see a page with numerous templates that show you exactly how your site will look. Here, Podpage tells you that they’ve done the heavy lifting. “Your website already has a page for every episode, is search engine optimized for Google, and looks great on mobile.”

There’s a wide range of templates available, covering many different moods and aesthetics.

When I last reviewed Podpage in 2021, I felt that some of the templates looked a bit “titled”, and I’d see a show’s cover art repeated again and again. They’ve obviously worked to sort this out, though, and it’s a huge improvement.

In preview mode, you’ll be walked through the incredible amount of tools and options you suddenly have in your podcasting arsenal. I’ll talk more about those in the features section.

First up, you might be wondering, “How much is this all going to cost!?”

And the answer is a refreshing, “Not very much at all!”.

Podpage Review: Pricing

Once you’ve picked out a template, you’ll go to a signup page where you can start a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).

If you’re smitten with your new website, then you have a choice of subscription tiers.

• Basic: $12/mo
• Pro – $19/mo
• Elite: – $39/mo

You can save 34-37% by paying annually.

Naturally, the features and options increase with each tier. However, all users get the Pro features for free in their first week. This lets you really dive in and see what’s really going to be useful to you, your podcast, and your audience.

Podpage Features for Discovery, Engagement, & Growth

I want to avoid making this Podpage review a full step-by-step tutorial for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there are just so many features that it would require an entire course.

Secondly, they seem to be tweaking, updating, and improving their features constantly. Rather than trying to walk you through everything here, you can simply try it out for free yourself. The Podpage site makes it very easy to do so.

With that said, here are some of the key features that most podcasters will love the sound of.

Connect Your Own Domain Name

Your initial Podpage URL will look like podpage.com/your-podcast-name by default. This is totally fine for a start, especially if you’re running your show purely for hobby or enjoyment reasons.

However, you can connect your own domain name to your Podpage site no matter which tier you’re on. This can improve your SEO and make you look more professional. If you’re podcasting as part of a business or brand, then you’ll definitely want to go down this route.

Once you’ve nailed down the basics, you can go about adding the bells and whistles to your Podpage site…

Comments & Audio Feedback

To encourage engagement, you can let listeners comment on your episodes or contact you directly via a form. The contact form tool allows you to route specific types of feedback to specific email addresses. You can also set up to receive voicemails, which can be played on your show.

Build an Email List

You can collect emails to build and grow your list. Podpage lets you offer incentives like ebooks, PDF downloads, or other premium content, which you can use as lead magnets to encourage new subscribers.

Monetise Your Podcast

With Podpage, you can add revenue integrations that make it easy for listeners to financially support you and create simple, pretty links for sponsor and affiliate redirects. The “Sponsor Support” section makes working with advertisers seamless, and you can automatically add Google ads to your site, too. To top it off, you can create and run popups on your site, and there are a range of donation widgets available for the likes of Patreon, Ko-fi, and Buy Me a Coffee.

Collect & Display Podcast Reviews

With Podpage, you can easily browse all of your existing Apple Podcast reviews in one place, whilst making it simple for listeners to write their own reviews, too.

By default, Podpage only shows 4—or 5-star reviews; the rest are hidden. They also make it easy to share your reviews on social media.

Optimise for Search

Podpage includes a Search Engine Optimisation tool which works similarly to Yoast on WordPress. Here, a podcaster can specify the keyword or keyphrase they’d like a post to rank for (e.g., “how to start a podcast”), and the tool will give them tips on improving it.

Post to Social Media

Podpage lets you connect your social accounts and set up to post new content to them, automatically.

Import YouTube Videos

If you run a companion YouTube channel for your podcast, you can automatically add YouTube videos to your site and create posts around them. This makes Podpage a great option for YouTubers, even if they don’t have a podcast.

Manage Guests

Podpage has an impressive and useful suite of guest management tools, from guest forms and scheduling to automated emails once an episode goes live. These can really improve your workflow if you run an interview podcast.

Podpage AI: Generate Written Content

AI tools for podcasters are gaining popularity, and Podpage recently joined the party with its Podpage AI tools. Here, you can generate AI blog posts, email newsletters, or summarise your reviews into one simple paragraph. I would never recommend publishing AI-generated content in its raw form, but these can give you a great first draft to work with, especially if you’re not big on writing.

Examples of Great Podpage Websites

It’s always useful to see some real-world examples of a product or service in action. Check out these great-looking podcast websites, created and managed entirely on the Podpage platform.

• All The Hacks
• Morning Brew Daily
• My First Million
• Lenny’s Podcast
• Curry & The Keeper

Podpage Review: Conclusion

I’ve listed many of Podpage’s features and capabilities here, but we’re really only scratching the surface of what you can do on the platform. As I’ve mentioned already, they’re tweaking, adding, and improving things constantly.

Quite simply, Podpage is perfect for podcasters who want the best possible podcast website, for the minimum amount of time, cost, and technical know-how.

In years past, I’d have been keen to offer the caveat that “you still won’t have the full flexibility of a self-hosted WordPress site.” Whilst this remains true on a technical level, I honestly don’t think there’s anything a podcaster needs from a website that you can’t get from Podpage. And if anyone finds such a gap, they’ll probably build it.

For the vast majority of podcasters, the benefits of Podpage over self-hosting are too good to ignore. Anyone who’s ever spent half a day chatting to Bluehost support because their site has gone all 404 on them will attest to that. And you can run your Podpage site for half the price, too.

But, don’t take my word for it. Remember, you can try Podpage for free and see – in minutes – how your website could look there.

Our Castos link is an affiliate which means we earn a small commission should you choose to sign up via it. This is never at any extra cost to you. In fact, you can get a free month on Castos by using our coupon code TPH22

Custom Website and Seriously Simple Podcasting

Castos owns the Seriously Simple Podcasting WordPress plugin, which makes it easy to manage your podcast via your WordPress site. But not every podcaster wants to make a WordPress site. Good news: your Castos account includes a website. This isn’t just a title, art, description, and episodes, either. The website includes sub-pages for: 

• Host and creator profiles
• Links to help your audience find your show on their favorite listening app. 

If I were making multiple podcasts and promoting a personal brand, I’d find this really helpful.

Speaking of podcast brand, yours remains unique. Castos helps you pick custom colors in a palette (there’s a difference between #f70a0a and #fa0202!). If you’ve purchased a domain name, you can use that as the URL for your Castos website.

And Castos’ website looks great on desktop or mobile devices. No pinching or zooming is required.

YouTube Republishing

The definition of “podcast” is changing, and YouTube’s got at least 2.6 billion active users. Because Google owns YouTube, posting even just highlights from your podcast there can improve your podcast’s SEO. Castos has offered YouTube republishing since the beginning, for Growth plan users. If you’re already good at making a podcast and want to add YouTube to your directory list, Castos can help. They make a video using your podcast’s audio for you. Plus, you can set it up once, and let automation take the wheel for future episodes.

Transcribe Your Podcast

Some podcasters don’t have transcripts of their podcast. But, transcripts can:

• improve your podcast’s SEO
• expand your audience to more people
• enhance understanding of your content
• make it easier for journalists to write about your show
• help you re-purpose your content in the future

And you don’t pay extra for transcripts.  Each tier comes with a set number of transcription credits. You can download and manage your transcripts right in the episode details page.

That being said, Castos doesn’t transcribe until the episode is published, and the transcript will need editing. In this case, this solo podcast was mis-identified by the transcription software as having multiple speakers. Podcasters should go back in and edit the transcript for length, clarity, and accuracy.

Private Podcasting

Private podcast feeds are great for anyone who wants to share a lot of information with an exclusive group. Castos’ pricing tiers allow varying subscriber amounts. You add each name and address to manage within Castos, instead of giving out an RSS feed and hoping no one leaks it.

Plus, Castos’ mobile app feature helps private podcasts. Your audience can avoid distractions by not having to use another listening app. 

Make Money with Castos and Your Podcast

Castos Commerce enables audiences to support your show, either via one-time or recurring donations. The only fee is Stripe’s processing charge, which is thirty cents plus 2.9%. Castos doesn’t take a penny. This benefit is available to all paid Castos users. 

Not only does Castos help with crowdfunding, but they also help you earn ad revenue with, as they say, “zero setup, no minimums.” You don’t have to reach a certain number of downloads or pay for a specific tier, either. As their site says, “Castos will automatically stitch in a couple of short, brand-appropriate ads into your every episode. One at the start and one at the end.”

Castos’ Bespoke Podcast Production

And, if all of this seems like too much work, Castos offers podcast production services, too. You come up with the ideas and words. Castos does the rest.

Pricing and Feature Tiers

Castos has feature packages to cover podcasters from indie solo artists to big corporations. 

• Essentials: For $19 a month, you can make an unlimited amount of podcasts and episodes. You can acquire up to 100 private subscribers and have 20K downloads each month. This tier comes with ten monthly episode transcription credits. If you’re beginning to build your audience, this tier is for you.
• Growth: At $49 a month, you get everything at the Starter level, and YouTube republishing, integration with Headliner to make audiograms, up to 250 private subscribers, and up to 75K downloads per month. Plus, each month, you get 25 episode transcription credits. If you’ve built your core audience and want to expand, this could be your tier.
• Pro: For $99 a month, you get all of the previously mentioned features, video file hosting, up to 500 private subscribers, and up to 200K downloads per month. Not only that, but also you get monthly transcription credits for 100 episodes. The Pro tier even has video file hosting: with the mobile app, It seems you can make a private video podcast without having to rely on YouTube. Pretty snazzy.
• Castos Premium: For $499 a month, you get all of the aforementioned features, custom contracts and invoices, single sign-on, increased limits, and a dedicated account manager.

Castos Grows Through User Experience

As podcasting changes, Castos listens to what its users need. The result is that Castos enhances its features to help podcasters satisfy their audiences and grow. The direct, minimalist interface makes this a great choice for podcasters who need to manage many episodes and shows with just one laptop. Whether you want to make a daily podcast or build many shows into a podcasting empire, Castos has a solution to meet your needs.

Remember, you can get a free month on Castos by using our coupon code TPH22

Or, still shopping around? Check out our Best Podcast Hosting Services roundup.

• You can host on Captivate for as little as $19 a month
• Captivate has a clean and easy-to-use interface.
• Captivate’s player and customisable podcast websites also look great.
• You can seamlessly link up your podcast and WordPress site by using the Captivate Sync plugin.
• Their Submit to All button instantly submits your podcast to every single-click directory.
• They offer solid stats for all tiers, no upgrade required to access better analytics.
• Captivate makes no changes to your uploaded episode files in any way.
• You can create unlimited podcasts with Captivate, as well as build and organise teams.
• You can create private (members-only) podcasts, even on their lowest payment tier.
• Captivate also has some great monetisation tools, such as memberships, dynamic ad insertion, and tipping.
• Read on to get the full lowdown in this 2024 Captivate review…

Captivate is a podcast hosting platform brought to you by the good folks who run Rebel Base Media and Podcast Websites. They know the podcasting space inside out, and this is reflected in Captivate’s look, features, and reputation as one of the best in the industry.

Choosing a hosting provider for your show is an important step in launching and running a podcast. After all, it’s the central hub of your podcast, handling all of the uploading, publishing, distribution, and more.

So what makes Captivate a safe pair of hands in the podcast hosting space?

Our Captivate link is an affiliate, which helps support all of our free content. That doesn’t cloud our judgement when it comes to reviews, though – we’ll always give you our honest opinion!

Captivate’s Cost & Download Limits

So, let’s get the price stuff out the way first. Captivate has three pricing tiers.

• $19 per month ($204 when paid annually) for up to 30,000 downloads per month
• $49 per month ($528 when paid annually) for up to 150,000 downloads per month
• $99 per month ($1,080 when paid annually) for up to 300,000 downloads per month

With Captivate’s pricing, the total monthly download limits are the only thing that’s tiered. All other features are open to users from the Podcaster plan upwards.

Each plan includes a 30-day free trial, so you can play around with the service first-hand to decide if it’s right for you. All plans allow you to host multiple podcasts/RSS feeds for one cost.

Which Tier Will I Need?

For 95% of podcasters running one single show, the lowest tier will be more than enough. Even with multiple shows with decent-sized audiences, it may still be adequate.

For a deeper dive into stats, see What’s a good number of downloads for a podcast? But, if you did end up hitting the ceiling, Captivate would contact you to discuss an upgrade rather than cut you off. And if your show is doing that well, you’ll have tonnes of monetization options available to help cover costs!

Captivate Review: Getting Started

If you’re a brand new podcaster, logging into a media hosting site for the first time can be a bit intimidating. That isn’t the case with Captivate.

Not only is the dashboard well designed and easy to navigate, they also make sure that any questions you might have are answered quickly and easily. Each time you visit a new screen, you’ll get a complete tutorial of what it’s for and how it works. There’s also a little chat box on each page that guides you along the way, offering you hints, tips, prompts, and advice.

Whether you’re creating a brand new podcast or moving an existing one from another media host, the process is simple throughout.

Stats

Captivate provide download analysis on a number of different fronts.

• Downloads Overview – A breakdown of downloads across set time periods.
• Download Averages – On average, how many downloads your show gets across the stated period.
• Daily Trends – The amount of total downloads your show had on each specific day.
• How They Listen – This shows you the various ‘user agents’ your show has been listened to via (for example, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, etc)
• Where They Listen – Captivate’s location stats show you where your listeners are, from country to country. They plan to hone in on this further to include things like states and cities in the near future.
• Episodes Overview – The total downloads each episode has received.
• Performance Comparison – Review episode performance against one another in an easy-to-analyse graph format.

Files & Publishing

Captivate have a handy ‘Default Publish Time’ setting you can use. This would be useful for someone who, for example, wants to release all their new episodes at 7am. This would save them from having to set the time each time they upload new content.

Captivate is one of the few hosting platforms that doesn’t make any changes to your files. What you upload, your listener will download. That means no changes to file names, metadata, bitrates, etc.

This makes Captivate a good option for folks running highly-produced shows, such as stylised documentaries or audio dramas. If you want to encode your fully soundscaped episodes in stereo at a high bitrate, then you can. Here’s more info on podcast bitrates if that’s something you’re unfamiliar with.

Captivate also integrates with Alitu, our very own ‘podcast maker’ tool.

Alitu users can connect their Captivate account and publish/edit their shows using the two tightly integrated systems. This can make your podcasting workflow super simple.

Captivate Vs Alitu

You can use Captivate alongside Alitu, or, you can exclusively work inside Alitu for all of your recording, editing, production, and hosting.

Alitu might be the more attractive option to those looking for an all-in-one solution. This means fewer subscriptions, fewer tools, and fewer logins. Alitu is the perfect podcast maker for busy and non-techy folks alike. You can even edit your podcast by deleting text from the auto-generated transcripts. Once you’re ready, you can publish directly to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all the other listening platforms out there.

Captivate, on the other hand, is a hosting and growth platform first and foremost. They have a much more extensive range of additional features in this area than Alitu. If you’re already happy with your recording and editing workflow and are looking for a comprehensive hosting package, then opt for Captivate.

Podcast Websites on Captivate

All media hosts these days will give you a basic website for your show. These are, naturally, a lot more limited than if you were self-hosting your own site.

The site you get with Captivate looks anything but basic, though. It’s a heavily customizable space that you can make your own. Start by choosing one of three fully responsive website templates that look great on any device.

In your Captivate site, you can list your episodes in ‘start at the beginning’ order or by the newest episode first. There’s also a search bar, so your listeners can immediately seek out the content they’re after. You can pin your favourite episode or trailer to the top of the page, too!

Domain-wise, by default, you’d have showname.captivate.fm. But it’s really easy to set up and connect your own domain for free.

Working Inside WordPress

If you plan to run your own site, then Captivate Sync is a plugin that “allows you to easily link your WordPress website to your Captivate podcast hosting account and seamlessly publish from one platform to the other.”

This plugin means you can control much of your show in one single place. For example, you can publish, edit, or delete episodes in WordPress, and those changes will immediately be reflected in your Captivate account. Or, you could do the same inside your Captivate account, and the changes will be reflected in your WordPress site.

This can go a long way towards streamlining your workflow, saving you time, and generally making life easier.

Captivate’s Embeddable Podcast Player

Captivate’s superb-looking podcast websites are complimented by equally superb-looking embeddable podcast players.

These come with play speed settings and sharing buttons. Just like the websites too, they’re fully responsive on any device.

The players have a couple of really nice additional features, though. You can register as a Captivate affiliate, and this automatically turns the Captivate logo on your player into a referral link.

That means you can earn commission from everyone who clicks through their on your player and signs up to the service.

There’s also a nice ‘Calls to Action’ feature accessible from the player. I’ll talk more about this in the ‘Growth’ section.

You can now showcase all episodes of your show by embedding their ‘Playlist Player’ on your site. Or, you can embed a ‘Latest Episode Player’ that always shows and plays the most recent episode of your show. Either one of these would be great for your show’s homepage or ‘subscribe’ page.

Captivate Review: Distribution

Submitting your show to podcast directories like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and more can all be done from inside the Captivate dashboard. This is yet another process that they make really simple.

Captivate gives you a Submit to All button, which instantly submits your podcast to every single-click directory. The one major place this doesn’t include is Apple Podcasts, but you can submit there easily via the Captivate dashboard, too.

Once in Apple Podcasts, you’ll automatically appear in major apps like Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Podcast Addict too. Captivate automatically generates links to these aggregators, which is a really nice touch.

You can also integrate your account with your Podchaser profile, if you have one. Podchaser is considered by many to be “the IMDB for podcasts”.

Sharing

Captivate automatically generates buttons on your site to places your show can be found. This makes it easy for your listeners to find and subscribe to the podcast on their app of choice.

You can also get special URLs for each episode to copy into your social media posts. These automatically generate an episode player to appear on platforms like X and Facebook.

Privacy

In this era of increasing privacy concerns, Captivate offers a handy feature with their ‘Full Transparency Mode’.

There are a few third-party tracking, sponsorship and advertising tools on the market these days, such as Chartable & Podcorn.

Enabling ‘Full Transparency Mode’ will stick a short, nicely formatted statement to the end of each of your episode show notes. This will disclose to the listener which third-party analysis tools are being used within your show. On top of this, there’ll be a link to each service’s privacy policy so that the listener can dig deeper into those services, should they have any questions.

Create Unlimited Podcasts

If you feel a compulsive need to start a podcast about every topic you’re interested in, then Captivate is a great option.

You can start as many new shows as you like on whatever payment plan you choose. The only thing you’ll need to keep an eye on is the total combined number of downloads of all your shows. Start hitting that limit, and you’ll need to upgrade. However, Captivate gives you a 10% grace overage. You’ll only need to upgrade if you use that grace for the second month in a row, or push past that 10%. If you have a sudden publicity spike, for example, this is great.

Create Private Podcasts

Captivate also lets you create private or members-only podcasts. This is an excellent option if you’d like to run an internal show for a team inside a business or organisation. You can also use a private podcast as premium content to aid in your monetisation ventures.

You can use Captivate’s private podcasting feature even if you’re on their lowest payment tier. On the $19 plan, you can run a members-only show with up to 150 subscribers. For $49 a month, you can up that to 1000 subscribers, and on the $99 plan, you’d get three private feeds and up to 5000 subscribers.

Build & Organise Teams

If you have others working on your podcast(s) with you, then Captivate makes teamwork and collaboration simple.

You can add unlimited team members to your account, assigned to the roles of editor, producer, show manager, host, or brand partner. No need to be sharing around the same login details.

You can also create bios for each team member and have them appear on your website. This integrates neatly with Podchaser’s team functionality.

Monetisation Tools in Captivate

Whether you’re looking to recoup some hosting costs, outsource your editing, or aspire to swim in a Scrooge McDuck pool of gold, Captivate has lots of options to monetise your content.

Captivate’s secure transactions are powered by Stripe Marketplace. You’ll find an easy-to-use earnings dashboard inside your Captivate Wallet where you can track earnings and review each method’s performance. This is a brilliant way to bring your monetisation under one roof and free yourself from third-party tools such as Patreon.

Memberships

Memberships enable your listeners to support you on an ongoing basis. You can set up tiers, pricing, and benefits, such as exclusive or early access content. You can limit the amount of slots, too, which is ideal if you’re selling sponsorship as a membership.

Dynamic Ad Insertion

And if you’re selling sponsorship, you can easily add ad-reads into all of your episodes using Captivate’s Dynamic Ad Insertion tool. They even have a cool “Ad Painter” tool to easily overwrite old baked-in ads in your back catalogue that are no longer relevant.

Dynamic Ads are a great way to monetise, but they can also work well for growth strategies such as trailer swaps, or promos for other shows in your stable.

Tipping

Not all listeners want to commit to regular financial support, but are happy to throw you a one-off tip now and then. Captivate makes this easy with their tipping tool. Here, you can even suggest tip amounts, as well as customise your please and thank you messages.

Growth Tools in Captivate

Captivate market themselves as “the world’s only growth-oriented podcast host”. They provide some useful tools to help you grow and monetise your show.

Calls to Action

I’ve already mentioned the ‘Calls to Action’ feature. This lets you create two links to anything you like, which are accessible through the episode player, as you can see below.

Common uses for these links would be things like downloadable resources, or you could use them to encourage support through platforms like Patreon or Captivate’s own monetisation tools.

You can set these same CTAs to appear in every episode player, or use an ‘Override’ feature when publishing. This means you can have a unique CTA link for an individual episode, too.

You can edit and change these at any time, so if one particular CTA is time-sensitive, you can always update it to something relevant and useful in the future.

Custom Trackable Links

With Captivate, you can create custom trackable short links for your sponsorships, social media or affiliate deals. You’ll get analytics for each link, making attribution and marketing decisions easier going forward, too!

Email Opt-Ins

You can also capture emails for newsletters straight from your Captivate website. You can integrate with AWeber or most other email providers by using an HTML snippet.

Captivate also supports in-built opt-ins, allowing you to manage your lead magnet fully within Captivate and your email provider. If you choose to upload an image alongside your email opt-in, Captivate will make your opt-in layout look great automatically, too!

One-Click Sponsor Kit

The Sponsor Kit is another really cool feature. Inside your dashboard, you can automatically generate a nice-looking PDF media kit, complete with at-a-glance analytics. The document also displays key details about your show, your target audience, and your contact details. This makes it easy to reach out to potential podcast sponsors!

Captivate Review: Summary

Captivate gives you all the tools and features you’ll ever need from a podcast hosting provider but offers them in a way that isn’t overwhelming to brand-new creators. The team behind Captivate are friendly, forward-thinking, and always open to new ideas and suggestions, too. It’s a brilliant company, and a brilliant service.

Need More Help Choosing a Podcast Host?

Thanks for checking out this Captivate review. And if you’re still looking to shop around, be sure to check out our Best Podcast Hosting Roundup.

And, if you’d like more guidance and support about hosting, publishing, or any other aspect of podcasting, then take a look at the Podcraft Academy.

There, you’ll find all of our courses, downloadable resources, community forum, and weekly live Q&A sessions. It’s the one-stop-shop place for building and growing a great podcast!

Uploading and publishing a podcast is a step that foxes nearly every new creator. That’s totally understandable, too. It’s not intuitive. You don’t upload it to iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or any other directory. You don’t upload it to your own website. Instead, you upload your podcast somewhere else entirely and then publish it out to those places from your show’s one “home” online.

So, where DO we upload our podcast files? How do you publish a podcast? Where do podcasts live?!

The answer is your podcast hosting account. And, after running through this quick guide, you’ll have podcast followers and subscribers in directories and apps you didn’t even know existed.

Uploading & Publishing Your Podcast

There are three main steps when it comes to publishing your podcast online and making it available to everyone.

1. Upload your podcast files to a podcast hosting service
2. Submit your entire show to iTunes/Apple Podcast, Spotify, etc, (just once!)
3. Publish episode players, from your hosting account to your own website

Simple, eh? Well, it sort of is, but only if you know how. So, let’s find out how!

First, you need to sign up for a podcast hosting service, also known as a “podcast host”, “media host”, or “hosting provider”.

Quick Recommendation? Use Captivate

Captivate is a hosting platform with tonnes of brilliant tools and features. These include private (members-only) podcasting, a one-click sponsor kit, and their Submit to All button instantly submits your podcast to every single-click directory.

Our Captivate link is an affiliate so we’d earn a small commission should you opt to sign up through it, at no extra cost to you!

Alternatively, you can get podcast hosting, recording, editing, production, & more, all in one single place by using Alitu.

Or, if you’d like to do some shopping around, try our free podcast hosting chooser tool, below.

Podcast Hosting Chooser Tool

What Is a Podcast Host & How Do They Work?

Podcast hosting services are companies that are designed to do exactly what it says on the tin: host your podcast audio files. Here’s a brief outline of how they work:

• you create an account with a podcast hosting service
• you enter all your podcast’s details, and your show is born
• you upload your audio (episodes) to your hosting account
• they store those audio files
• they organise them all into a podcast ‘feed’ that people can subscribe to
• they deliver the audio files to your listeners on-demand, to all and any listening apps

It’s worth mentioning here that podcast hosting services aren’t responsible for actually growing your show. They’ll give you the tools to do it, but the rest is up to you.

Now, there are two ways to use a podcast hosting service.

1. They can host your entire podcast website
2. They can host just your audio files, and you have your own website

Option 1 is very easy – the host provides a website with space for show notes and players that show up automatically. But these sites tend to be relatively simple, and you won’t have much control.

Option 2 takes a little more setup but gives you way more flexibility and control. In this case, you’ll upload audio files to your podcast host and then publish the show notes and the audio players on your own website. There are a lot of advantages to this, and the setup isn’t that complicated.

Read our full guide on setting up your own podcast website

In a moment, we’ll look at how to upload a podcast and run your website through your hosting account. First up, though, another frequently asked question…

What Is the Difference Between a Podcast Hosting Platform and a Podcast Directory?

We’ve already dissected this a bit, but to break it down even more simply, a podcast hosting provider or platform is where your audio files live. Some hosts are paid services, some are free, and most offer tiered pricing structures based on extra features and download limits. Most podcast hosting sites provide built-in analytics as well. Essentially, this is your cloud storage platform for your podcast.

As we’ve already highlighted, directories, on the contrary, are places like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and TuneIn. Most automatically list your content by aggregating RSS feeds from Apple, so if you’re in there, you’re in most other directories by default.

You don’t upload audio files to a directory; you submit your podcast feed to a directory to provide potential listeners with a searchable platform to find you. These directories have podcast players built in. They often have an accompanying mobile app or podcast apps for ease of use on the go.

Creating Your Host-Provided Podcast Website

Okay then, back to the website stuff. When you create an account with a podcast host, you can fill in all the details about your podcast series. The show’s name, a description, and the category that best suits it. You can upload your own cover art, too.

Publishing episodes is a similar process. Uploading audio is no different to uploading images on social media. You create a new episode page within your hosting account, then enter your episode title and that particular episode’s show notes. Podcast ‘show notes’ are a description of what’s in the episode, as well as links to any websites mentioned. After that’s done, you hit ‘Publish’.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a live podcast episode, and your media host will have created a simplistic website for your show.

At this point, your podcast won’t appear on your own website (if you run a separate WordPress site, for example) or in directories like Apple/iTunes. That’s what we’ll sort out next.

And, if you’d like to see an example before we get there, check out Podcraft. That’s our own ‘how to podcast’ show, which we host with Alitu. We publish episodes to our own website, here at thePodcastHost.com/podcraft-podcast/, but you can also see how the Podcraft site on Alitu looks.

How Do I Get My Podcast Into Apple/iTunes or Spotify?

Imagine if the answer to “how to upload a podcast” was that you spent an entire day publishing new episodes to over 100 different listening platforms. Well, the good news is that’s not the case.

Rather than uploading to Apple/iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else, you’ll instead simply submit your podcast to their directory.

You only have to submit your show once.

You’d do this after publishing your very first episode. It doesn’t even need to be a “proper” episode either – you could upload a short promo trailer or episode zero. The bottom line is that you just need to have one single episode published in order to appear in all the podcast directories.

From then on, once the directory knows your podcast exists, they’ll check in regularly for new episodes and send them on to all your subscribers on that platform.

Step by step: How to get your podcast in iTunes / Apple Podcasts.

Step by Step: How to get your podcast into Spotify

You might still be panicking that there are still so many directories and apps to submit your podcast to, even once. More good news though! You only really need to submit to the top 4/5, and your show will appear everywhere else automatically. Check out our full podcast directories guide to get the finer details.

What About Publishing a Podcast on YouTube?

Podcasters have uploaded video versions of their episodes for many years, but YouTube has recently moved towards supporting podcasts on an “official” basis.

You can set it up so that YouTube pulls any new episodes you publish from your hosting account, and they’ll appear there as static image videos where your audio will play alongside an image of your cover art.

Podcasting on YouTube is still a little clunky because of its one-way RSS ingestion. This might sound complicated (or painful), but it simply means that once a new episode is published there, it’s no longer connected to your hosting account. Because of this, any edits you make to the title, show notes, or audio won’t update on YouTube, unlike in all other podcast directories. If you had to update an episode on YouTube, you’d need to log into the platform and do it manually.

If you log into YouTube Studio, you can create a new podcast, set an existing playlist as a podcast, or submit an RSS feed from your hosting provider. Some hosting providers already have a “distribute to YouTube” function in place; if your host does, I’d recommend using that instead of submitting directly to YouTube. Your podcast hosting provider will always give you the optimal podcasting experience.

How Do I Make My Podcast Appear on My Website?

For me, sending listeners to your website is nearly always better than a host-provided one. It means you then have complete control and ownership of what they experience. This can be a better option if you plan to run sponsorships or monetise your podcast.

If you already have a website for yourself, your company or your brand, you can use that! No need to create a new one, unless you really want a separate site for your podcast. Just create a ‘Podcast’ section within that site. On WordPress, you might create a new category called ‘Podcast ‘and use that for podcast posts, for example.

If you don’t have your own site yet, we have a ‘create your own podcast website‘ guide here that walks you through the process of setting one up. It’s a surprisingly easy and low-cost thing to do!

Once you have a website, you can start publishing podcast episodes there. For this, you’ll need an embed code for your player. As an example, I’ve embedded a Pocket-Sized Podcasting episode below. The episode is hosted on Alitu, but by embedding it here, we can send people to our own site, instead.

To find it, go to your episode inside your podcast host and look for the episode’s link/embed options. Here, you’ll find some HTML code. On your own website, create a new post and copy this embed code over from your media host.

In WordPress, you can use the ‘Custom HTML’ block to post in the code directly. If you hit ‘Preview’ or ‘Publish’, your episode should then appear in the post as a player.

A Heads up on WordPress.com Embedding Issues

If your site is on WordPress.com this might not work. WordPress.com sites are ‘lite’ versions of WordPress, with much less flexibility and control.

Long term, you’re better to move from WordPress.com to your own self-hosted WordPress website. This means you’ll be able to properly link the site up with your podcast hosting account and get the maximum benefits of both. Again, our podcasting websites guide walks you through this entire process for free.

How to Upload a Podcast – Downloads & Delivery

Still curious as to how the magic of podcast hosting works?

You don’t need to understand this, so skip it if you want! But, in case you’re interested…

When you create your podcast inside your hosting account, you’ll be given a unique URL called an “RSS Feed“. This link is the “signal” that’s used to send your episodes to places like Apple/iTunes and Spotify. Remember, the show isn’t technically ‘hosted’ on these platforms.

Instead, episode files are pulled from your podcast host via your RSS feed whenever someone requests them. A request could be someone hitting ‘play’ or ‘download’.

If you think of your own website as the shopfront, then Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the other directories are catalogues in which you list your product. That means your media host is like the warehouse where all the products are delivered.

In that case, to stretch the analogy, your RSS feed is the delivery driver. Someone comes to your site or Apple/iTunes, requests your podcast, and it’s delivered to them from the warehouse via RSS. Of course, this process only takes a matter of seconds for the user, and they don’t need to know (or care) how it works. Thankfully!

What About Publishing Private Podcasts or Selling Podcast Episodes?

The vast majority of podcasts are available freely to everyone – but there are exceptions.

Some folks want to create private podcast feeds. This might be for an internal company podcast as a way of communicating with employees. Or, it might be done as premium content alongside an existing show. In any case, here’s our full guide on how to create a private podcast.

And speaking of premium content, too, here’s our guide on how to sell podcast episodes, if you’re looking to go down that route.

How to Combine Recording & Editing With Uploading & Publishing a Podcast

‘Podcast maker’ tool Alitu lets you do every podcast-related task from within its dashboard. Alitu is designed for folks who know little or nothing about audio production (or, are too busy to spend hours editing) but still want to put a great-sounding podcast out there in as simple a way as possible.

You can record episodes inside Alitu (either solo or remote calls), easily chop out mistakes, and build your episode, adding in things like music and other segments using simple drag-and-drop tools.

Alitu does automatic processing on your recordings to clean them up, enhance them, and make them all consistently the right volume level for optimal listener experience.

Then, you can publish your episode directly from within Alitu, meaning that’s just one place to log in to do everything you need to do to get new episodes out there. Or, you can quickly and easily connect it to a separate hosting account (like Captivate).

How to Publish a Podcast – Next Steps

Remember, the key to uploading a podcast is to find yourself a good podcast hosting service.

My favourite one at the moment is Captivate, a growth-oriented service with loads of brilliant tools and features.

We’ve also talked about ‘Podcast Maker’ tool Alitu, which includes podcast hosting. This is perfect if you want to do all of your recording, editing, and publishing in one single place.

And, if you want to explore the other hosting options, here’s our list of some of the best Podcast Hosting companies around right now.

Of course, there’s more to making a podcast than the act of publishing. If you’re a little further back in the process, or maybe even still at the ideas stage, our Step by Step Guide on How to Start a Podcast might be the ideal place to begin!

What is a Podcast Player?

In its most basic form, it’s a play button for a particular podcast episode. But podcast players can have many other features built into them, as we’ll see from this roundup.

Every podcaster has access to podcast players via their hosting account. Published episodes will have a few “share” options, one of which will be a player embed code. Third-party or “standalone” podcast players are available, too, if you don’t like the default (native) one your hosting provider gives you. We’ll take a look at those later on in this roundup, too.

Best Native Podcast Players

Let’s start with a look at what you can get by default from each of the podcast hosting platforms. There are a few factors to consider when choosing a podcast hosting provider. As you’ll see from our roundup, pricing and storage limits are high on that list. The look and features of a host’s native player may not be reason alone to opt for a particular service or not, but if you run a high-traffic website then this will still be important to you.

Quick heads up: we use affiliate links to some services mentioned here, which means we’d earn a small commission should you choose to buy through them. This is never at any extra cost to you, and affiliates help support all of the free content we put out!

Captivate

For years now, Captivate has been one of the more reliable and innovative media hosting services we’ve tried. Their player is fully responsive on any device, and the buttons underneath the play bar offer value for your audience and growth for you.

Captivate Podcast Player Features

• Speed and skip controls
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• A page of custom links
• Call to Action button.

Plus, if you sign up for their affiliate program (like we did), the ‘Captivate’ link in the window is an affiliate link.

Captivate’s podcast player offers a straightforward way to share your show, expand on the episode with your show notes, and include affiliate marketing. Not much to complain about here.

Buzzsprout

Buzzsprout’s player is like their hosting. It’s great looking, feature-rich, and a lovely user experience. The single-episode player has two styles: Wave (which shows the waveform) and Minimal, which shows the episode’s show notes. Which is more expansive than “minimal,” but Buzzsprout didn’t ask me.

If you enable monetization for your podcast, your player can include a donation link, too.

Buzzsprout Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed and skip controls
• Chapter list
• Button to show the show notes
• Social sharing
• Donation button (Can connect to Patreon, PayPal, Buy Me a Coffee, and more)

Buzzsprout’s podcast player doesn’t show all of these options until users glide their mouse over the player to make the symbols appear. Users have to click on the options to find out what the symbols mean. This might be why most people don’t know how feature-rich this player is. It’s a good one.

Transistor

Transistor is another versatile and affordable media hosting option. Podcast player options include multi-episode, single-episode, and most recent episode. This is great for when your show is mentioned in someone else’s roundup or on their website. Your content stays fresh, even if they never update the article.

Transistor Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed and skip controls
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• Share button with customisable start time
• The “More Info” button takes you to the show notes. 

Libsyn

Libsyn is one of the longest-running players in the podcast game. Their commitment to podcasting education and audio quality makes them stand out. But, their embedded player was bare-bones for so long, it was almost retro. When Libsyn Five came along, they updated their embedded player to keep pace with their media hosting peers.

Libsyn Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed and skip controls
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• Customizable start time and colors
• You can assign a stats tracking code, so you’ll know what kind of traffic the player generates. 

Blubrry

Blubrry’s new Blubrry Web Player offers closed captioning for their hosting customers. The transcript opens in a window below the player, with a box you can un-check if you don’t want auto-scroll.

If you host with Blubrry, or are thinking of joining them, then you might want to skip down to the PowerPress section. Blubrry owns PowerPress, and if you have a self-hosted WordPress website, you can use PowerPress as your embedded audio player. 

Blubrry Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed and skip controls
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• Closed Captions (transcription)

RedCircle

Powered by RedCircle

RedCircle aims to facilitate the podcast-advertiser relationship. They make it easy for podcasters to run shows with ads. They also make it easy for businesses to advertise on podcasts. This explains why the player doesn’t have a “skip” button. However, listeners can still drag the playhead along if they don’t want to sit through an ad.

RedCircle Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• View Episode takes you to show notes
• Pro users can customize the colors of the podcast player. 

Podbean

Podbean is a veteran hosting company with the added bonus of having a free tier and a bunch of options for advertising and monetization. Their podcast player offers customizable sizes and colours, along with the usual stuff you’ll know to expect by now.

Podbean Podcast Player Features

• Playback speed
• Follow/subscribe options
• Social sharing
• Customize the size and colors of the player.

What are The Two Kinds of Podcast Players?

To the casual web surfer, there may not appear to be much of a difference in podcast players. For podcasters, though, there’s a distinction that affects what you can do with the player itself. There are standalone WordPress plugins and native podcast players.

We’ve just taken a look at native podcast players. These come by default with your media hosting account. Your host generates a chunk of code that you copy and paste. You can embed this in a blog post, and voilá: podcast player. Embedding a native podcast player works on Squarespace, Wix, and many other website builders. They offer more flexibility than a WordPress plugin, but not as many features.

Standalone WordPress plugins work on a self-hosted WordPress site. These little nuggets of software offer more options than native players. Our guide to creating a self-hosted WordPress podcast website can help get you set up, if you’re in the market for your own space on the web. Remember, though, you don’t need to own a website to have an online presence for your show. But it can help.

Standalone Podcast Player Plugins

Again, these plugins have features beyond simply listening to your show. Some fit into the browser so the user can navigate through your site while listening. Others have transcripts or customizable buttons for different kinds of user engagement.

Fusebox (Formerly Smart Podcast Player)

The Fusebox Podcast Player & Transcript Tool is meant for podcasters who want to make their show accessible and drive traffic to a specific location. Sure, audiences can enjoy your podcast in their favorite listening app. But with the Fusebox podcast player, your podcast episodes can match up with other online content, providing more value for each. The Sticky Player lets users listen to the podcast player while navigating between pages, too.

Fusebox also now includes podcast hosting, making it a strong competitor to the native options listed in the previous section!

Fusebox’s full podcast player has:

• A customizable call-to-action button
• Email capture
• Speed Control
• Custom Colors
• Custom Episode Sorting
• Featured Episodes
• Light & Dark modes
• Mobile-friendly adjustment

Fusebox’s single-episode player has:

• playback speed adjustment
• volume control
• customizable call to action button
• links to find your podcast in different apps.

Fusebox’s Transcript plugin displays the text of your episode in a fixed window with scroll capability on the page. Not only can this boost your SEO, it doesn’t distract from other information on the page.

And, now, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, and many other sites can fit together with Fusebox plugins.

Fusebox’s podcast players can improve your SEO, help listeners get to your episodes right away, and give them direct links to engage more deeply with your ideas, products and services. If your business depends on your podcast finding new listeners on a regular basis, this should help.

Simple Podcast Press

Simple Podcast Press is a plugin created by Hani Mourra, a long-time supporter of the podcast community. Simple Podcast Press is all about growth, providing a bunch of tools to increase subscriptions and engagement.

It also extends a little outside the ‘player’ experience, adding a range of unique features that ramp up the user experience on your shownotes themselves.

• Lead magnet style email signup form to increase conversions
• Subscribe and share links right up front
• Play speed, skip and volume controls built-in
• Link to various hosting platforms & automate shownotes publishing
• Shows podcast reviews inside your WordPress dashboard
• Create clickable episode timestamps which skip to that point in the episode
• Collapsible transcripts: include the transcript without cluttering your shownotes page
• Include your own custom ‘call to action’ buttons right inside the player

And finally, the extra features are the icing on the cake, from clickable timestamps to the ability to create tweeable quotes from your show. If you use Simple Podcast Press to its fullest, the potential is huge.

Simple Podcast Press is as fully featured as it gets when it comes to increasing the growth of your audience, and moving them through your funnel.

The email signup form is really useful, allowing you to add in a headline and description. This allows for including a ‘content upgrade’ or another kind of bonus, which can be great for educational shows.

The buttons inside the player are super-customisable, so no matter what your aim is, you can put it right up front. Subscribe links, email signup, ‘leave a review’ or ‘sign up for my Patreon’. No matter what your Call to Action, you can include it.

PowerPress

Blubrry’s contribution to the standalone podcast player plugin game is PowerPress. What makes this WordPress plugin different is that your podcast episode files are hosted by Blubrry, but your RSS feed is under your URL. You manage your podcast from your WordPress dashboard instead of logging into Blubrry. This is great if you want to manage your website and your podcast in one online spot, rather than logging into different services. You can read more about how to install and use PowerPress on our Podcast Websites guide here.

Features include audio and video players, jump to a given time stamp, podcast import and migration, subscribe tools, and, PowerPress works in eight different languages.

Though you pay for Blubrry hosting, this plugin doesn’t cost anything. All in all, it’s a simple and effective podcast player.

Choosing a Podcast Player: What Are Your Needs?

Like almost every question in podcasting, the answer to “What podcast player should I choose?” is “It depends.” 

If you’re not pushing email lists or a sales funnel, then use the native player from your media hosting service. There’s nothing to download or set up. The code loads quickly. You don’t have to pay for anything else.

If you’re running a business, you need a player with more features. Simple Podcast Press helps you lead your audience to different locations in your site. The Fusebox player is great for panache.

Need Help Choosing or Setting Up a Podcast Player? 

We can always help you narrow down the choices and make your podcast player help your show grow more effectively. In The Podcast Host Academy, we have courses that can help you understand the details of podcasting, so the big picture makes more sense. We also run weekly Q&A sessions there, so you’ll never get stuck on anything again.

• Transistor. fm is one of our favorite podcast hosting platforms.
• It lets you pay one price and manage one or many podcast feeds.
• The drag-and-drop interface is clear and easy to use.
• Private podcast feeds are now available for all pricing levels. 
• You can automatically post your audio podcast to YouTube, with a static image. 
• There are no limits on the number of team members you can add to your podcasting account. 
• Responsive embedded players make sharing your podcast even easier.
• Transistor integrates easily with email newsletter software and social media.
• Pricing is reasonable and based on the amount of downloads and/or subscribers.
• For the full review, read on!

Transistor are one of our favorite media hosting platforms. We recommend them highly in our best media hosts roundup. But with more new podcast hosting providers appearing each month, this space is becoming increasingly competitive. With that in mind, it seemed like a good idea to revisit our dedicated Transistor.fm review.

Editor’s Note

Our Transistor.fm review was initially written in 2020. We update this post periodically to reflect changes in technology, our recommendations, and because we’re always learning new things.

Our Transistor.fm link is an affiliate because it’s a service we know and love. We’d earn a small commission should you choose to sign up, though never at any extra cost to yourself. Rest assured; affiliates never influence our content or conclusions – you’ll always get our honest thoughts, no matter what!

If you need a media host (yes, you do need a host for your podcast), Transistor is a great place to start. For the majority of independent podcasters, this could be your podcasts’ forever home.

Notice I said plural, podcasts, and I don’t mean episodes. Transistor lets you have multiple RSS feeds, whether public or private, for one price. Other than that, Transistor is so straightforward that writing a review of this podcast host is harder than using it.

Transistor.fm Is Easy to Start and Use

Transistor has a clear interface where all the steps are nice, big, and welcoming. You can drag and drop your audio and cover art files. The only confusing part about this media host is when you’re thinking, “It can’t be that simple.”

Additionally, there’s plenty of opportunity to try all aspects of hosting with Transistor and see how it works, before you commit financially. The 14-day free trial gives you time to test it thoroughly. 

In the past, I’ve used podcast hosting services where I was grateful for their customer support because I had to use it to understand the interface. While Transistor has a knowledge base one click away (and responsive customer service), you might not need it.

Transistor.fm & Audio Files

Unlike some other media hosting services, Transistor doesn’t compress your audio. Though Transistor has file size limits, they’re so big that they won’t affect the average independent podcaster. Transistor says, “We typically don’t recommend files any larger than 200MB… audio files (MP3 is preferred) should be encoded at 44100 Hz and around 128 kbps quality.”

If this doesn’t make any sense to you, consider this. Episode 6 of Jarnsaxa Rising runs just under 25 minutes and has at least eight voices and many tracks of music and sound effects. The audio file clocks in at 29.2 MB. In short, you’ll be fine.

Multiple Public and Private Podcasts

We all know that once you launch a podcast, you start thinking of other ones you can make. Transistor.fm will let you set up as many podcasts as you want for one membership fee. This is great if you want to make podcasts for your business and personal interests. It’s also excellent if you want to have one public podcast and a second private podcast with bonus content. Transistor now has private podcasting for all price tiers. At the Starter level, they’re simply unlisted and can have up to 50 members.

Transistor.fm helps your private subscribers access their podcast, and helps you keep it private. For the Professional and Business plans, each subscriber receives their own RSS feed, an onboarding email, plus a unique website player that tracks their progress through the episodes. If you’re teaching a course through your podcast, you can even see how far along your subscribers are in the process. 

Transistor and YouTube Auto-Posting

Transistor users who purchase the Professional or Business plan can automatically send every podcast episode to YouTube. Your audio files get converted to “video” files, which display your preferred static image.  And, Transistor only stores your secure access token in order to talk to the API. They don’t access any of your other Google or YouTube info. 

Unlimited User Logins for One Price

If you have help making your podcast, Transistor doesn’t make you swap around one login. Instead, they allow unlimited user logins for the same account, and with different permissions (either as admins or members). This is great for security.

Responsive Embedded Players

By default, Transistor.fm’s player has three buttons that only appear when the user hovers their mouse cursor over the player. The buttons’ options are “subscribe,” “share,” and “more info,” which provide the show notes in the embedded player window. The player is thoughtfully created to prevent autoplay from skewing your download data. 

A multi-episode player lets you showcase specific episodes. If you have a special montage episode, a trailer, or introduction episodes, you can highlight them for new listeners.

Transistor’s Integrations for Audience Engagement and Analytics

Transistor.fm integrates neatly with newsletter and mailing list sites like MailChimp, Convertikit, HubSpot, and more. You can share a link to your episode directly to Twitter/X, too.

Transistor provides all the basic analytics you need, such as how many downloads over time, and a “best guess” of the subscriber count.

Recently, Transistor added an Episode Comparison feature, which displays daily download numbers for different episodes as a table. This makes it easy to see which parts of your show or promotions have the most impact. 

And you can integrate your RSS feed with third-party analytics services. This means if you use a service like Gumball, Podder or Chartable to see your rankings and reviews in other countries, you can lock that into your dashboard with Transistor.

Transistor’s integrations can save you a lot of task switching.

Dynamic Audio Insertion

Not only does Transistor offer dynamic audio insertion but also dynamic show notes. If a part of your show notes doesn’t change, you can type it in once, and apply it to all or some of your episodes. Transistor isn’t integrated with an advertising network, but they recommend a few in their knowledge base. 

Transistor.fm Pricing

Transistor.fm is neither the most expensive nor the least expensive podcast hosting service on the Internet. After your 14-day free trial, pricing works like this:

• Starter: $19/month, or $190 a year
• Professional: $49 a month, or $490 a year
• Business: $99 a month, or $990 a year 

When you pay annually, you get two months for free. Considering its features, Transistor.fm is reasonably priced.

These pricing tiers are based on download and subscriber activity.

• Starter: 20K downloads a month and 50 private subscribers
• Professional: 100K downloads a month, 500 private podcast subscribers, plus dynamic ads and show notes, and auto-posting to YouTube
• Business: 250K monthly downloads, up to 3K private subscribers, dynamic ads and show notes, auto-posting to YouTube, and you can remove Transistor’s branding from the player.

If you’re an indie podcaster starting out, that first pricing tier is not a bad place to be. It’s unlikely that anyone would suddenly find their podcast went from 250 downloads a month to 250,000 in a matter of hours. Even if this does happen (congratulations!), Transistor’s policy is to work with the user and avoid surprise charges. Their FAQ says, “There’s no ‘automatic shut off;’ we’ll continue to serve audio for your listeners.”

They probably assume that if you want to auto-post to YouTube, you have monetization set up and are willing to invest the extra $30/month for convenience.

Is There a Downside to Transistor.fm?

Honestly, I tried to find one. The model of pricing based on downloads (not uncommon) might worry some podcasters, but you’d be surprised at how high these upper limits are when it comes to average podcast downloads. Put it this way: if your show gets that popular, you’ll have no problem monetizing and covering any increased hosting costs.

Since this article was first published, Transistor’s prices haven’t increased, but each pricing tier’s limits have expanded to allow even more downloads and subscribers. Plus, they’ve added dynamic audio insertion, which is a great feature, especially regarding calls to action. Now, independent podcasters get more for their money.

There are loads of great hosting options on the market these days, but Transistor.fm stands out as an excellent choice for simplicity, ease of use, and premium content. That said, if you’re still looking to shop around a bit, you might want to check out our ultimate podcast hosting roundup, which has a free “hosting chooser” tool to tailor your desired features.

• Easy of use 5/5
• Pricing 4/5
• Tools & Features 5/5

Affiliate Disclaimer

Our link to Podcastpage.io is an affiliate. If you choose to sign up and pay for the service via our link, we will earn a commission (at no extra cost to yourself). Affiliates help support our free content, though they never cloud our judgement or prevent us from giving you our honest opinions!

How Can a Podcast Website Update Itself?

When you create your podcast inside your podcast hosting account, it automatically generates an RSS feed for you.

You may already know how RSS feeds work. But if you don’t, imagine that your podcast is a train. The train cars are your episodes, full of exciting ideas. The train station is the directory where your audience goes to meet your episodes. In this metaphor, the RSS feed is the train tracks or the podcast’s route between your podcast hosting service and the station. 

Like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other directory is a station for that RSS feed to visit, the website you make with Podcastpage is a station. You don’t have to know how to code. RSS-fed websites ask you to fill out a short form; then, the interface is drag and drop. Podcastpage takes the information from your RSS feed and displays it in the template of your choice for your audience.

What Makes Podcastpage Different From Podpage?

It’s a little bit confusing because Podpage and Podcastpage have similar names, logos, and color schemes. But, Podcastpage offers many features with their basic tier that other website providers charge more for. Or, don’t provide.

For starters, Podcastpage’s templates provide more features and customization options. And, their websites can import episodes from your YouTube channel or playlist as easily as from your podcast host’s RSS feed.

Podcastpage has a page builder which lets you add additional pages for transcripts, host bios, or whatever content you need to add. A blog option rounds out your audio or video content.

The sticky audio player (like on Podchaser) allows users to listen to your show while browsing different parts of your site. They won’t have to navigate away from your episode player. Users can customize the Podcastpage default audio player, including time stamps. Or, embed a podcast episode player from any of 20 different podcast hosting services.

Podcastpage also integrates with Instagram and Podchaser.

Essentially, Podcastpage is equally easy to use as Podpage, but Podcastpage has more resources.

How Can Podcastpage Make It Easier For People To Find My Show? 

Podcastpage’s templates include a blog and custom pages to help you make your podcast website unique and valuable for your audience. This can help improve your podcast’s SEO.

Say you interview Neil Gaiman about his new book, and he also wants to discuss a charity he supports. In the course of the conversation, he happens to talk about how much he loves roasted beets. Your podcast website can include separate posts about the book, the charity, and his favorite recipe for roasted beet salad. Or, publish one blog post with all three topics. In the future, anyone looking up information about these topics could easily find your podcast. More informative content means more ways for people to find your show.

Not only can your podcast website have blog posts, but also Podcastpage helps you add custom pages to dedicate space for your media kit, host bios, a guide to how to listen to a podcast, or anything you want. Again, this is drag-and-drop editing; you don’t have to know how to code.

How Does Podcastpage Help Me Connect With My Audience?

Did you know that over 80% of podcasters wished they received more feedback from their listeners?

Podcastpage offers more ways for your audience to communicate with you. The service can automatically import your podcast reviews from Podchaser and Apple Podcasts. Plus, you can add a form for your audience to write a review on your website. What if you get a bad review? You can hide it.

A Voice Message widget makes it easy to run a voice feedback survey, or have your audience submit their questions.

And, of course, there’s always the usual contact form, too.

Pricing and Features

Podcastpage has a 14-day free trial. When you pay monthly, the tiers are:

• Podcaster: For $15 a month, you get a website that automatically imports your new episodes from YouTube or your podcast host, as well as any reviews from Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Plus, you get custom pages, a blog, a guest intake form, and up to 100 voice messages monthly, for one show and one team member login.
• Business: For $22 a month, you get everything at the Podcaster level, for “multiple” podcasts and/or YouTube channels, with three team member logins, built-in analytics, and up to 500 voice messages monthly.

These tiers work out at $12 and $18 when paid annually.

The only negative aspect is that you must pay for the Business level to get site analytics. Maybe they assume you’ll depend solely on your hosting provider for analytics if you only have one podcast. But, if you use the blog, it’s good to know how many people engage with it.

Yes, Podcastpage is a little more expensive than Podpage. But, it also has more features, even at the least expensive tier.

Podcastpage: Saves You Time, Expands Your Reach

Websites are supposed to be a set-it-and-forget part of your podcast workflow. It’s meant to take time and effort at the start, then a little maintenance later. As technology changes and tech companies compete, website software and podcast hosting software don’t always play nicely together. Integrations can expire or lose cohesion. But, Podcastpage depends on RSS feeds. This standard piece of code helps open podcasting and keeps your website up to date. You can rely on your RSS feed to ensure your new episodes reach your Podcastpage audience. Then, you can put your time and energy into engaging with your audience through Podcastpage’s other features.

Third-party podcast website services like Podcastpage and Podpage will be appealing to the majority of podcasters who seek simplicity and efficiency. If you’d still like to weigh up building a podcast website that you own and control 100%, though, then check out our handy guide. And once you get up and running with your fancy new site (no matter which platform you use), be sure to join us in the IndiePod Community where we’ll happily give you some feedback!

As of July 2022, 44% of all podcasts were hosted on Anchor (now Spotify for Podcasters). This makes the platform attractive to advertisers because the company has a lot of ad placement inventory (podcast episodes). Ad sales make investors happy. Unfortunately, Spotify isn’t helping podcasters make great audio. Spotify has little to no room to negotiate with music labels. They prefer to make up their margin via podcast ads. The following review makes clear why, despite its accessibility as a podcasting tool, Spotify for Podcasters is limited.

Why Has Anchor Rebranded as Spotify for Podcasters? 

In essence, Spotify wanted to paint over or erase Anchor’s reputation. Those who use Spotify regularly for podcasting will know Anchor. Anchor was the first combined podcast maker and hosting service. One could create, edit and publish content to appear on Spotify and beyond. Anchor has always been a good platform for new podcast creators who want to try it before spending money.

But Anchor was rife with problems. Before 2021, users couldn’t control their RSS feeds, preventing them from fully understanding their show’s performance. Moreover, because the barrier to entry was so low, the tool was prone to podcast piracy. In addition, people would start shows there and abandon them, rendering Anchor a podcast graveyard.

The average number of episodes per podcast is 21.7; and the average number of episodes for shows hosted by Anchor is 13.6 (a third fewer).

Podcast Index also automatically removes many inactive shows from Anchor; so the difference may be even higher.

Are Anchor podcasts different?

Although Spotify purchased Anchor in 2019, it didn’t change anything about the tool’s interface or security. Even in March of 2023, when Spotify absorbed Anchor into Spotify for Podcasters, the underlying tool remained the same. 

In short, Anchor is a rudimentary tool, and Spotify hasn’t improved it. 

Does Spotify for Podcasters Have New Features? 

Spotify says, “We have a new look, but we’re still offering the same podcasting tools you love. We’re always working hard in the background to make your experience better.” Other than changing the logo and name, however, there aren’t any additional features.

Does Spotify for Podcasters Have a Mobile App With an Episode Builder? 

Yup. Straight away, The Spotify for Podcasters app guides you from recording to adding music, then previewing, publishing, and setting up monetization. The app makes me nervous because it prompts you to record and asks you to publish before they know your podcast’s name, which feels a little cart-before-the-horse to me.

Is the Sound File Recorded in My Mobile App Available on the Desktop Version?

Spotify’s mobile app holds your library of audio files in cloud storage. You can record using your phone’s microphone and then edit it on your computer or another device.

How to Start a Podcast on Spotify for Free

If you’re used to podcast editing software like Audacity or Reaper, Spotify for Podcasters is a different user experience. But, if you’re used to the editing tools in Alitu, you may find the process familiar. Whether you use the mobile app or the browser site, Spotify for Podcasters guides you through recording, trimming and publishing a podcast.

Recording in Spotify for Podcasters

In Spotify for Podcasters, you record your dialogue into files.

With the mobile app, use your phone’s mic, attach a microphone, or record on the desktop version with your preferred mic.

If you make a mistake, you can tap “Add Flag.” This marks the track so you can return and trim your sound files around the mistake.

Editing in Spotify for Podcasters

You can either:

• trim, removing the beginning and end of the audio you want to keep
• split, so that you break the audio file into several clips

Each clip that you keep goes into your Spotify for Podcasters Library. Then, you arrange the audio clips in the order you want them in the episode and preview it. Again, the interface is somewhat similar to Alitu, except it can’t polish your audio. I saw a button with a picture of a magic wand that said, “Enhance.” I tapped it but couldn’t hear a difference in the sound quality.

Even Spotify’s guide to editing doesn’t hide the fact that their editing tools don’t help you improve the audio. Their editing guide says, “Spotify for Podcasters’ editing tools are an example of a DAW you can use.” High praise.

You can also create your episode with your own recording and editing software. Then you can upload the finished file to Spotify for Podcasters.

Here’s an excerpt from a sample episode I made. It shows what’s possible using their free, easy recording and editing tools.

Can I Add Music and Sound Effects to My Podcast’s File?

Spotify for Podcasters has music loops to add to each section of your podcast episode. The editing interface will automatically lower the volume to accommodate the dialogue. For each sound file in the episode, that music loop starts over. It’ll sound like you’re signalling a new or different idea.
You can upload any sound recorded separately to your library to add your own music files or sound effects.

Can I Add Spotify Music to My Podcast?

If you use Spotify for Podcasters for hosting, then yes. Link your Spotify (listening) account to your Spotify for Podcasters (podcasting) account, and you can create a Music+Talk Episode. The guidelines adhere to copyright law. Your episode has to contain a substantial amount of talking, and you can’t use Spotify’s monetization options on that episode. You can use Spotify’s music tracks as background music but not as the primary focus.

Spotify Music + Talk is intended for Spotify’s artists to promote their music.

What Marketing Tools Does Spotify’s Platform Offer?

Spotify for Podcasters offers a long article on ways to promote your podcast. They include innovative strategies such as posting about your podcast on social media or having a guest on your show.

Their Q&As, Voice Messages, and polls prompt the audience to think more about what’s in your show. This feature is in the episode’s show notes, so it’s not extra work for the audience. It’s a really useful option that more podcast apps should adopt.

Despite a commitment to cool engagement tactics, Spotify for Podcasters only offers transcripts for audiograms. “You can’t generate transcriptions of entire episodes.” Transcripts improve accessibility and SEO. Surprisingly, Spotify for Podcasters hasn’t provided such a broadly requested engagement tool.

Other than that, Spotify for Podcasters’ creators have the freedom to find listeners however they can.

Is Spotify for Podcasters a Quality Service? 

Any software is as “good” as how people use it. If you script your episodes ahead of time and don’t need multi-track editing, then you can make a reasonably good-quality podcast.

You will need to record in a space that’s treated to reduce reverb and eliminates or reduces background noise. Make sure you’re not dehydrated or overhydrated, practice your mic technique, and use a pop filter, to prevent mouth noises. In other words, if something goes wrong, you won’t have many options to “fix it in post.”

Related Article

How to Upload a Podcast to Spotify – Quick & Easy Walkthrough!

Spotify is one of the biggest podcast listening platforms on the planet. Here’s how to get your show involved.  Find out more »

Does Spotify for Podcasters Use My Email Address in My Podcast’s RSS Feed?

Yes, they do. Formerly, many podcasting hosting services would put the email address used at sign-up in your RSS feed to identify ownership. Media hosts still use email to contact members. But they’ve stopped keeping email addresses in the RSS feed to prevent spam and security issues. (Spammers scrape RSS feeds for email addresses and then sell them in bulk.) At the time of writing, Spotify still keeps email addresses in its RSS feed.

Can Other Media Hosts Help Me Put My Podcast on Spotify? 

Yes, any media host can get you listed in Spotify’s directory. Spotify always wants more content to entice people to use their platform. Here’s our full list of podcast hosting options, including costs, benefits, and features.

Alitu vs Spotify for Podcasters

I mentioned Alitu earlier, which is our own all-in-one podcast maker. Spotify for Podcasters’ user interface looks much like it. Making a podcast with Alitu is analogous to Spotify for Podcasters’ process. There are a lot of similarities between the two. The differences aren’t immediately obvious but vital in the long run. They are:

• Alitu automatically performs noise reduction, so your voice stands out.
• Volume levelling: Alitu manages loudness to keep your volume level stays consistent.
• Video podcast episodes: Alitu can create a video version of your full episode with an image, a title and a moving waveform. Spotify for Podcasters can generate a video from a minute-long segment. Or, you can upload a video made elsewhere.
• Alitu can transcribe all your content: Spotify for Podcasters only does this for the 1-minute video clips.
• Spotify has a mobile app and a desktop interface. Alitu is desktop-only.
• Alitu’s editing tools are more fluid and intuitive.
• Alitu is a subscription package, whereas Spotify for Podcasters is free.

Related Article

How to Make a Podcast With Alitu: Save Time, Hassle, & Tech Stress

Know little or nothing about audio production? Or, just interested in saving as much time as possible without scrimping on quality?  Find out more »

You can start a podcast quickly and easily with either Spotify for Podcasters or Alitu. Spotify’s free model makes it a good choice for someone dipping their toe and testing out podcasting for the first time. For those planning to stick at it long-term and really grow their audience and brand, Alitu’s going to be the better option, though.

How Much Does Spotify Pay Podcasters?

Not much. In 2021, The Verge reported that Spotify was paying “tens of thousands of dollars” to Anchor podcasters to run ads. But, none of the podcasters who spoke to The Verge could show they’d made more than a thousand dollars per year.

Spotify wants to ensure they have a lot of inventory, which makes advertisers and investors happy. Travis Hoium of Riiv Investing recently opined that “Spotify aims to ‘own your ears’ by connecting creators, listeners, and advertisers on a single platform… The key to Spotify’s success comes down to building a thriving user-generated content ecosystem, much like what YouTube did with video.”

Hoim also pointed out that “Spotify charges a monthly fee to subscribers and shares a percentage of that fee with record labels (who then pay artists). Unfortunately for Spotify, there are only three major record labels, and losing any label would be devastating to Spotify’s business. So, the company has little negotiating leverage and shares about 70% of its revenue with labels.”

Podcasters make up the difference in Spotify’s margin. Spotify for Podcasters’ goal is to get as much content as possible on the platform, fast, and put advertising on it. They want you to make and consume content (and ads) on their platform alone.

Spotify for Podcasters: As Easy as Falling Off a Log.

Since 2008, when Spotify first started making podcasts available to their followers, the US population that listened to podcasts routinely grew from 9% to 38%, or an estimated 109 million people. That’s just one country. Spotify has worked hard to increase awareness of podcasts worldwide. As much as “Apple” and “iTunes” were once synonymous with podcasts, Spotify wants that coveted brand association. But in trying to become “the place for podcasts,” their walled-garden mentality is at odds with open podcasting. This isn’t a sustainable plan for any platform. Luminary tried, and now Apple Podcasts has Luminary’s subscription channel. Recently, Spotify has released some of their Gimlet shows outside of Spotify, including ads for newer Spotify-exclusive content.

Anchor, now Spotify for Podcasters, has always been a minimalist tool. Ease of use and the price tag (or lack of it) makes it a good starter choice for people who need to decide if podcasting is right for them.

However, Spotify for Podcasters doesn’t try to sustain podcasters’ efforts long-term. For example, they don’t have transcripts, and the monetization program’s success is chancy. Spotify for Podcasters’ interface has a few basic editing tools. But when you bake cookies, the shape of the cutter doesn’t affect the flavor.

Using Spotify for Podcasters to make your podcast is fine, but you won’t have much support. When a service is free, you are the product, not the customer. For now, indie podcasters and musicians are the creators keeping Spotify green.

• Still shopping around to find the right podcast hosting service for your show? Check out our full roundup.
• Still on the lookout for recording and editing software? Here are your full range of options.