You got yourself a microphone and recorded the first episode of your podcast, and now what?
One of the most difficult things to do when you are a new podcaster is finding a way to share your podcast with your audience.
This is where podcast hosting sites, like Blubrry and Castos, come into play. They allow you to upload, share, and manage all your shows.
In this article, we’ll find out more about the key features and compare Blubrry vs Castos which are two of the biggest podcast hosting sites.
Castos Podcast Hosting Platform: Key Features
Castos helps you upload and publish your audio files, and share them with your audience. The platform has a range of great podcasting features.
WordPress Website Integration
Castos is well known for its straightforward integration with a WordPress website through its own Seriously Simple Podcasting.
If you have a WordPress website, then just download the free plugin, install it and set it up to manage all your podcasts.
The Simple Podcasting WordPress plugin allows you to synchronize your podcast episodes straight to WordPress, and also to your website.
This saves you a lot of time when it comes to managing your podcasts and audio files; and sharing them on your own site.
While this feature isn’t unique amongst podcast hosting sites (for example, Blubrry also has a WordPress plugin) it makes the platform very appealing to many website owners.
Analytics And Stats
With Castos podcast hosting site, you can view detailed podcast stats as well as your audience. This can help you grow your channel and increase the number of listeners.
Share Podcasts
There are a number of different ways to share your episodes on Castos. You can create an embeddable player that can be added to your website, blog or social media page.
As you are not limited to how many uploads you can do with Castos, you can distribute your shows to some of the biggest podcast platforms, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Costs
When it comes to podcast hosting cost, Castos offers a tiered pricing system that gives you different features and a certain number of downloads and subscribers per month.
It’s worthwhile keeping an eye out for any promotions the podcast site is running to get the best deal.
As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to start with a basic plan and upgrade if you hit their limits.
Unfortunately, Castos doesn’t offer a free plan, like some other podcast hosting providers.
Unlimited Episodes And Podcasts
All Castos plans allow you to create multiple podcast episodes as well as different podcasts.
You can create individual RSS feeds for each podcast, and each also has its own analytics dashboard.
Publish Podcasts To Youtube
Running a podcast means you want to get your content to as many people as possible, and also onto social media platforms, like Facebook and Youtube.
With Castos, you can republish your content to Youtube with just a few clicks.
Monetize Your Podcasts
Similar to other podcast hosting sites, Castos also gives you the ability for podcast monetization of your content.
However, it has very limited functionality, so you can’t sell a podcast subscription or collect a donation from your audience.
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Blubrry Podcast Host: Key Features
When it comes to features, Blubrry and Castos podcast hosting platforms are very similar, but there are a few powerful differences. Here are Blubrry’s (see also our comparison of Blubrry and Podtrac) main features.
WordPress Integration
Blubrry also has a WordPress plugin called Powerpress. This can be downloaded through your WordPress site, and it allows you to easily and quickly share podcasts to your own website.
The plugin is surprisingly powerful. It lets you create multiple RSS feeds, for example.
But there are also a number of other tools that create a seamless workflow in WordPress, so you can manage your podcasts and site all in one place.
One of the more unique features of Blubrry’s WordPress plugin is that you can upload new episodes directly through WordPress.
You don’t have to go through Blubrry’s dashboard to upload a file. Everything can be easily managed in WordPress.
While this is a great advantage for WordPress users, people who run their podcast websites on other platforms won’t be able to get the powerful features from Powerpress.
However, they can still upload, publish and manage all their podcasts with the Blubrry interface.
Blubrry Podcast Hosting Service Costs
One of the great things about Blubrry is that it’s very affordable.
Their basic hosting plan starts at just $10 per month, and you can also choose to pay annually and get two months free.
They also offer a premium podcasts plan for $17 per month, which gives you additional features such as advanced statistics and additional themes and plugins.
CHECK THIS OUT: Blubrry Promo Code – Podcasting Hosting Coupon Deal
Create Your Own Customizable Podcast Website
While most podcast hosting companies create a specific podcast site for you, with Blubrry you can run this site as part of your WordPress integration.
This means with Blubrry’s WordPress plugin, you can customize the site to match with your branding.
Statistics And Analytics
Being able to see podcast statistics and detailed information about the performance of your podcasts, different channels, and your audience is essential.
Blubrry has created an entire dashboard that allows you to access reports based on date, episodes, and other details.
Although there is a lot of information in these reports, the graphs help to visualize the growth of your podcasts very easily.
Some of the statistics in the report include location demographics of your audience, operating system, distribution data, total downloads as well as the applications used for downloads.
You can also easily download the reports as PDF to share with your team.
Access to the details of your podcasts is crucial to find out what your audience is listening to and who your audience is.
This will allow you to tailor your podcast content to your audience in future.
Customer Support
Blubrry’s customer service support is one of the best. You can contact them 24/7 via phone, email, and even video call.
In fact, Blubrry (see also our comparison of Blubrry and Spreaker) is one of the few podcast hosting companies that offer phone support.
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Final Thoughts On The Comparison Between the Two Best Podcast Hosting Platforms
Both Castos and Blubrry (see also our comparison of Blubrry and Podiant) have some great features for podcasting beginners and also advanced podcasters.
While Castos has some solid analytics features, it doesn’t come with a free plan, so this may not be ideal, if you just want to try before you buy.
On the other hand, Blubrry has a great integration with WordPress and the platform provides very detailed podcast reports.
Choosing the right podcast hosting platform depends on your budget, what features you want and your type of podcast.
