These days it seems like everyone is starting a podcast. You might want to jump on the bandwagon and start reaching a wider audience with your entertainment content. For this, you need to ensure you have the right podcast hosting platform.
Why do you need a podcast hosting platform? While you might think you can use your website hosting to store your podcast files, this isn’t advisable because podcast episodes are large files. Deriving them from the same server will cause problems.
Luckily, there are many top-quality podcast hosting services available. If you’re just starting out with making podcasts, you’ll want to ensure they have beginner-friendly features. Read our guide to find the best ones so you can start making podcasts and enjoying the process.
What Are The Best Podcast Hosting Services For Beginners?
PodBean
PodBean is one of the most popular podcast hosting services. It’s been providing podcasting as well as social audio services since 2006. It combines hosting, publishing, distribution, and analysis tools in a beginner-friendly platform. It currently has more than 600,000 podcasts on its platform.
You’ll love that PodBean is easy and straightforward to use. It has fast upload and download speeds, while giving you valuable data about your listeners, such as where in the world they’re located, which will help you to better target them with content.
With just one click you’ll be able to distribute your podcast to major podcast platforms, which is a bonus.
Pros
- PodBean offers a free plan, in which you gain 100 GB of bandwidth per month and five hours of storage.
- You can publish your podcast via the Android or iOS PodBean app.
- The platform has a streamlined user interface so that uploading episodes of your podcast is easy.
- You’re able to set the date and time for podcasts – perfect for scheduling them ahead of time.
- You can track a variety of data on PodBean, such as user interaction, top 10 episodes, daily listeners, and more. It also works with Google Analytics.
- PodBean offers various monetization services, such as the ability to run your own ad campaigns and create a PodBean premium channel so listeners can tune in with a one-time payment (which is a premium podcast feature).
Cons
- You have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want more customization options for your website.
- You’re only allowed to use PodBean live chat support on the most expensive plan.
Buzzsprout
Buzzsprout is another leading player in the podcast hosting game. It’s been around since 2009 and offers a web-based service on which you can host and store your podcast episodes.
It provides a wide range of audience-analytic features so that you can improve your marketing and make money from your podcast as you grow your audience. Buzzsprout (see also ‘Buzzsprout Vs Blubrry‘) has over 100,000 users and is continuously expanding.
It’s very appealing to beginners who don’t know much about podcasting jargon and who might feel overwhelmed at the thought of what goes on behind the curtains of setting up a podcast.
Buzzsprout makes the process easy, thanks to its smooth and simple user interface as well as how it takes care of the marketing side of things so you can concentrate on creating high-quality content.
- Buzzsprout is recommended by Podcasters from beginners to experts.
- Podcast Hosting made easy!
Pros
- It helps to have a website to build your audience base. Buzzsprout offers a free website where you can display all the episodes of your podcast.
- Buzzsprout enables people to find you on search engines because it provides transcription services.
- Buzzsprout has an affiliate marketplace to help you monetize your podcast. You just have to sign up so you’ll get to connect with various brands and their programs. Conveniently, Buzzsprout adds the affiliate link right into your episode notes.
- The hosting platform contains various exciting features to help you get started. These include Visual Soundbites which lets you choose a short audio piece from a podcast episode and make a video of it. This is like a trailer to hook your listeners.
- It comes with a free plan as well as various paid plans.
Cons
- If you want to use the free plan, it comes with ads. You’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan to remove them.
- The free plan only makes your podcast episodes available for 90 days.
➡️ BuzzSprout Vs Podbean review.
Blubrry
Blubrry was established in 2005, and since then it has grown a dedicated community of podcasters. It’s especially advantageous for people who use WordPress as it has a WordPress plugin.
If you have a WordPress site, being able to install the WordPress plugin lets you upload content directly from your WordPress dashboard. This makes starting a podcast so easy and convenient.
This podcast hosting platform has five different payment plans, and even the most cost-effective one will offer unlimited bandwidth.
Pros
- If you don’t keep your podcast episodes to a strict amount of minutes and you exceed your monthly uploads, Blubrry will offer a 25 percent leeway without charging you more money.
- Gaining data is easy with Blubrry as it organizes it into readable custom reports – it will also email daily summaries to you.
- Blubrry is IAB-certified. This means that you’ll be able to trust that its statistics and data are the real deal.
- It’s one of the podcast hosting platforms that offers the best customer service, whether you wish to contact them via phone, email, or video call.
Cons
- Blubrry analytics don’t come with all the plans that are available.
- There’s no free plan available on the hosting platform.
Transistor
Another beginner-friendly podcast platform to consider is Transistor. It prides itself on being valuable for beginners and professionals alike, and it’s filled with all the standard podcasting tools you need to be able to publish your pod, as well as analytics so you can track how well your podcast episodes are doing with your listeners.
Some of the best data that you’ll get with Transistor include how many monthly listeners you have, the total number of listeners per episode, the average downloads per episode, and even what devices your listeners are using. All of these can help you to better understand your audience.
This podcast hosting service lets you host an unlimited number of podcasts and you can also host private podcasts if you like. You can choose a design for your website and Transistor will even generate a website for your podcast so you can attract more listeners to your brand.
You’ll be able to distribute your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and more platforms.
Pros
- This podcast hosting server offers a convenient drag-and-drop interface so it’s beginner-friendly.
- It comes with a 14-day free trial so you can check it out before committing to a plan.
- It has a multi-episode player. This allows you to highlight certain episodes for your listeners, which is a great way to attract them.
- When you want to reach out to your listeners, you’ll appreciate that this platform can be integrated into your mailing list sites and newsletter.
- You’ll be able to make use of a professional-looking website that you can customize so that it matches your brand. As a bonus, you’ll also be able to use your own domain.
Cons
- You can’t use Transistor to record episodes of your podcast. You will therefore have to record your episodes for distribution to other platforms.
- There’s no free plan available on Transistor, as is the case with other podcast hosting services.
What Are Some Benefits Of Podcast Hosting?
If you want to start a podcast, signing up for podcast hosting is a good move. Here are some important benefits that you’ll be able to enjoy.
You’ll get more storage
As you know by now, podcasts can require a lot of storage, so podcast hosting services will help you in this regard by ensuring you get all the storage you need and offering bandwidth plans to accommodate you.
When relying on a podcast hosting service, you will ensure that you produce high-quality audio episodes because you won’t be falling into the trap of compressing your audio.
As long as your podcast hosting service offers enough storage for your audio and video files, then you won’t have to worry about this element of making podcasts.
You’ll get faster streaming
One big faux pas that you might encounter with podcasting is that your listeners battle to stream your episodes, such that they encounter buffering delays. This can put your listeners off your podcast, so don’t let it happen.
By signing up to a podcast hosting service, you’ll be able to gain enough bandwidth so that you don’t run out of it. This will boost the overall professionalism and quality of your podcast, so it’s essential.
You’ll get lots of useful data
You have to know and understand your listeners so that you can better tailor content to them to ensure they continue tuning into your podcast. A podcast hosting service will provide you with a variety of data so you can get more information about your listeners.
This is especially useful for you if you’re a beginner and you don’t have the tools you need to track this data yourself.
Examples of some useful data that you’ll gain from a podcast hosting service include what devices your listeners are using to tune into your podcast and where in the world they reside.
You’ll protect your podcast
You want to ensure that your podcast remains secure, so signing up with a podcast hosting service ensures that the company’s team will keep your podcast protected from online security threats.
This means that you can concentrate on building your online content without having security-related concerns or spending extra money to protect your pod.
It’s good to know that many podcast hosting platforms will provide you with in-built security features that will conveniently be included in your plan subscription price.
For example, Transistor has security measures in place that include ensuring that every user has passwords which are hashed with the use of BCrypt before they’re stored and their passwords don’t get stored in plain text.
Related Questions
What is the difference between podcast hosting and podcast distributor?
The difference between a podcast host and podcast distributor is that a podcast hosting site stores episodes of your podcast online, whereas a podcast distributor is a site where you can access your show and other shows, such as iHeartRadio, Apple, and Spotify.
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How much does it cost to get podcast hosting?
Generally, the cost of subscribing to a podcast hosting service can vary from around $5 to $50 per month, depending on a variety of factors. These include the company, how many podcast episodes you want to create every month, how much storage you need, and more.
Conclusion
Starting a podcast can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure how you should go about it or you’re wondering how to have it hosted.
But, with the variety of podcast hosting services that are available, you will be able to make the process much easier so you can worry less about how to get a professional podcast to your listeners and focus on providing memorable and entertaining content to them so they keep coming back to give you a listen.
In this article, we’ve given you four of the best podcast hosting services that are available, featuring their pros and cons so choosing one is easier.
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