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Podcast hosting is different from website hosting because it offers special instruments designed to make the most of the subscriber experience.
As an important aspect of any podcasting journey, choosing a dependable podcasting hosting site is essential for your podcast. With a good podcast hosting service, you can effortlessly grow your audience faster. More so, it becomes much easier to manage your podcast files.
Here, we provide a list and detailed analysis of the best podcast hosting sites you can use in 2022. Some of these podcast hosting sites are free, while others charge a small fee because they deliver enhanced support and mechanisms.
What are the Best Podcast Hosting Sites?
There are several sites rendering podcast hosting services. Nevertheless, we will be looking for the ones that offer the best tools and support, are the easiest to use, and allow flexibility in file sizes.
Below are our picks for the best podcast hosting sites
Without further ado lets get into the details of each software.
1. Buzzsprout
Great for Simplicity, Video Promotion & Good Value
Summary:
Buzzsprout is a podcast host that delights in its speed and ease of use. This host makes it easy and quick to upload and publish your podcasts. Also, their import tool can transfer you from another host quicker than you imagined.
Key Features:
In addition, Buzzsprout delivers a few outstanding features designed around automation. All of these features can save you, as a podcaster, a lot of time.
Prominent among the features is creating a video ‘highlight’ right inside the episode dashboard. There is the chance to select a section of your show, and they’ll develop a video version of that. With that, you can share your podcasts on social media effortlessly. This feature is a great way to provide your listeners with a glimpse into what your show’s all about.
Pros:
- Buzzsprout allows you to embed a podcast player right on your website
- Unique “Listeners” stat: gives you an estimate of your total listener numbers based on past trends.
- Nicely designed, mobile-friendly and pretty well-featured website, built into the hosting.
- One of the nicest looking embedded podcast players around
- Multiple episode players available.
- “Magic Mastering” option to help the inexperienced producer with their sound.
- Dynamic ad capabilities.
- Easily create ‘video soundbites’ for sharing on YouTube or social.
- Add chapter markers right inside the episode interface.
Pricing Plans:
- Free – $24/month
2. Spreaker
Best Content Management System and Monetization
Summary:
Spreaker is a podcasting site that delivers a lot more tools than others. You have apps for live broadcasting, offline recording and certain aspects of production. More so, Spreaker has a great distribution platform, which publicizes you to all of the main directories. This hosting site does this without leaving the Spreaker site at all.
Finally, you enjoy a good monetization option in the form of dynamic ad insertion. This strategy only works if you’re comfortable with outsourcing the ad content.
Pros:
- Content management system – allows podcasters of any “level” to automatically enable the distribution of new episodes to the major listening platforms (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio, Alexa, Deezer, etc.)
- Manage and schedule multiple podcasts under the same account, and to
- Strategically set your monetization (provided via dynamic ad insertion) at the episode and show level.
- Team management features and can add collaborators.
- Statistics certified by the IAB
Pricing Plans:
- Free Speech Plan: free
- On Air Talent Plan: costs $8/month
- Broadcaster Plan: costs $20/month
- Anchorman Plan: costs $50/month
- Publisher Plan: costs $120/month
Sign up for Spreaker now.
3. Transistor
Best Built-In Podcast Analytics
Summary:
Transistor is one other host that strives to make things simple. Again, this hosting site offers all of the usual tools a podcaster might need. A particular aspect in which they thrive is their private podcast feed feature. More so, the range of players they offer makes them stand out.
Key Features:
Lately, Transistor introduced their multi-episode player. This feature is a terrific way to showcase your back-catalog. Now, you can show off your most recent episode, alongside your last 25 all at once. Here is a great strategy to attract listeners to your older episodes. With this, you subtly encourage a binging session and bolster loyalty.
Pros:
- Host unlimited shows.
- Manage multiple users per account.
- Generate branded websites with your own domain name
- Distributing your podcast to major networks.
- View advanced analytics and reporting.
Pricing Plans:
- Starter Plan: costs $19/month
- Professional Plan: costs $49/month
- Business Plan: costs $99/month
Sign up for Transistor now.
4. SimpleCast
Industry-Leading Features Powering Top Brands
Summary:
Simplecast parade itself as “the modern independent podcast hosting and analytics platform.” Here is one host that provides great stats and sharing options for podcasters. They provide you with the tools to help you grow your show. Also, there are features that help track the progress of that growth as you go on.
Key Features:
File-wise, Simplecast will re-encode MP3s that are more than 128kbps to that bitrate. Still, they won’t change anything uploaded at a rate of 128kbps or lower. Meanwhile, stereo/mono encoding is kept as-is at all times. For anyone who would really like to run your podcast at a higher bit rate though, you have the opportunity to discuss that with them.
Pros:
- One-click publishing.
- Multiple web players and podcast players.
- A fully-functioning website.
- Advanced analytics tools.
- Collaborate with multiple team members in one account.
Pricing Plans:
- Basic Plan: costs $15/month
- Essential Plan: costs $35/month
- Growth Plan: costs $85/month
Sign up for Simplecast now.
5. Captivate:
Best for Marketing and Growing Your Audience
Summary:
Captivate is a hosting site that focuses on enabling you to grow your audience. Captivate’s tagline is ‘the only growth-oriented’ podcast host. Also, they have a feature-set developed to live up to this reputation.
This hosting platform is great for new podcasters too! Thanks to Captivate’s interface and dashboard, things are easier for beginners and folks who’d deem themselves “non-techy.” This hosting site walks you through the procedure of creating your podcast and uploading your first episode. That is one excellent way to keep things ultra-simple in the early phases.
Thanks to this and many more details, it is evident that the team behind Captivate has without a break bettered and promoted the service throughout 2021. So, it will be ‘captivating’ to see what more features they’ll roll out for podcasters in 2022.
Pros:
- All plans come with an unlimited number of podcasts, unlimited team members, a new podcast player, advanced analytics, and marketing tools.
- A few standout growth features are their automatic podcast website and built-in calls to action.
- Every plan comes with a customizable, mobile-friendly website with donation support built-in.
Pricing Plans:
- Personal Plan: costs $17/month
- Professional Plan: costs $44/month
- Business Plan: costs $90/month
Sign up for Captivate now.
6. PodBean
Easiest Podcast Hosting
Summary:
Podbean has made huge strides in the last few years to deliver a range of brilliant tools. These tools help Podcasters develop and monetize their shows. The hosting you get here is of great quality. Also, it can be effortlessly linked to their sponsorship marketplace, their dynamic ad insertion and their premium content service.
Moreover, Podbean is one of the best podcast hosting service providers on the market. It is lovely to see them offer unlimited podcast hosting plans with unlimited bandwidth. Also, their services include delightful design tools to host your website with customizable themes. Again, you can effortlessly embed the Podbean podcast player directly into your WordPress posts and pages.
Key Features:
In addition to this, they also have podcast promotion tools. With these tools, you automatically submit your episodes to all top podcast directories. That way, your audience can use their best tools to listen to and download your podcasts.
Pros:
- Five hours of storage on the free plan.
- Unlimited storage on the $9/month plan.
- Dynamic ad insertion.
- Patreon program to accept recurring revenue from listeners.
- Auto-uploads to YouTube.
- Mobile app.
- Auto-posting to social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Pricing Plans:
- Basic Plan: free
- Unlimited Audio Plan: costs $9/month
- Unlimited Plus Plan: costs $29/month
- Business Plan: costs $99/month
Finally, Podbean offers an advertising marketplace which gives opportunities for podcasters to monetize their content. There is a huge community of podcasters already using Podbean as their podcasting platform, you should join today.
7. Castos
Best WordPress Podcast Hosting Solution
Summary:
Castos are the media hosting service behind the prominent Seriously Simple Podcasting WordPress plugin. With this plugin, you can incorporate Castos hosting with your own WordPress website. It starts when you install the WordPress plugin. From then on you can upload and publish podcast episodes straight from your website. It rids you of the need to log into your hosting.
Pros:
- Automatic transcription – upload your audio files and transcriptions are added to your dashboard within minutes.
- Republish to YouTube.
- Podcast editing services by Castos Productions.
- Customizable podcast webpage.
- Podcast analytics.
Pricing Plans:
- Starter Plan: costs $19/month
- Growth Plan: costs $49/month
- Pro Plan: costs $99/month
Join Castos now
9. PodOMatic
Summary:
PodOMatic permits podcasters to record, upload, and promote their new audio content, all in a single dashboard.
Key Features:
For PodOMatic, one of their fortes is the capacity to improve your podcast advertising and crowdsourcing with the help of Patreon and Advertisecast.
More so, PodOMatic possesses social sharing options, and your podcast get played directly on Facebook and Twitter feeds. This hosting site partners with Weebly to help you build a website. There is a free podcast app for iOS and Android as well.
Pros:
- 500 MB storage with 15 GB monthly bandwidth.
- Weebly (a Pro Design tool) is not available for designing a professional looking podcast site.
- Advanced stats and integration with Patreon to get funding from your listeners are also restricted.
Pricing:
- Basic Plan: free
- Pro Plan: costs $2.49/month
- Pro Plus Plan: costs $8.32/month
- Pro Platinum Plan: costs $20.82/month
- Broadcaster Plan: prorated and billed annually
10. SoundCloud
Summary:
SoundCloud is the world’s biggest music and audio hosting site. This platform launched its hosting site in 2015. Here is a host that boasts 175 million different monthly visitors and a remarkable 12 hours of content uploaded every minute on their website.
Key Features:
When you use their hosting services, you get access to all of their embedded players, Twitter cards, and timed comments. Also, with a free account, you can upload 3 hours of content every month and receive basic reporting on your uploads.
Finally, the more developed SoundCloud Pro Unlimited account provides you with unlimited upload time, organized releases, embed management, and the capacity to pin five podcasts to your profile.
Pros:
- Only 3 hours of audio upload is possible, but acceptable file size is up to a generous 4GB.
- Advanced stats and control of their visibility, a Pro badge, and monetization and numerous other tools are not available.
Pricing:
- All for free
Frequently Asked Questions:
Podcasts and podcast hosting have been around for a long time. When you consider how quickly things can age in the technical space, you will agree that these ones are here to stay. However, some things remain the same, and baffles podcasters of all experience levels. This section looks to answer some of the most frequently asked questions, and address some popular podcast hosting misgivings!
What is a Podcast Hosting Service?
Podcast hosting is a technical service that creates a means to store and provide media files related to a podcast. In the same way you need a website hosting service to store all your website files, a podcast hosting site renders the same service. However, this time, it is for your podcast’s media files.
Meanwhile, you may be wondering, ‘Couldn’t I just use my website hosting to store my podcast files as well?’ The truth is you can do that. However, that wouldn’t be best for your website or your listeners. Keep in mind that podcast episodes are large files. Therefore, delivering them from the same server will require a lot of server resources. That way, it makes your website slower, and it can even crash when there is a high load.
Moreover, if several users start downloading simultaneously, then most shared hosting services will completely halt the operations that are taking up server resources. What this means for users is that they will not be able to download your podcast. That alone renders your whole effort useless. Now, you see precisely what a podcast hosting service is and its importance.
Is Starting a Podcast Worth It?
Have you got some good ideas and a real desire to share them with the world? Then, starting a podcast show will be worth it. This will give you the sense of self-satisfaction in sharing your knowledge and fascination with an audience.
Most people consider starting podcasts or do start them. Yet, they never really get them off the ground. Most times, this is a result of the podcast host not having a real interest in the content of their podcast. Other times, it is that they haven’t put the time into planning their podcast show painstakingly.
In simpler words, no one wants to listen to an inadequately orchestrated, rattled monologue about any topic. Therefore, make sure that you’re ready to put time and energy into creating each show episode.
Meanwhile, note that starting a podcast is not an easy way to make money fast. Hence, avoid this one if you are out for some quick cash. Nonetheless, it can be worth it for the financial gains as you go on. For not being a podcaster, they earn thousands of bucks a month in income from their podcast show. But, this only comes after a lot of hard work has been put into their podcast creation.
Eventually, whether or not starting a podcast is worth it depends on your dedication to both the topic you will talk about and your devotion to making the podcast flawlessly.
Do I Need Podcast Hosting?
When recording a podcast, you generate a huge number of media files that you’ll have to share online with your audience. For those who know what they are up to, it is best to create a website to host and share those media files.
However, most website hosts don’t have the storage or bandwidth capabilities required for large audio and video files. Therefore, using your own website could lead to a bad user experience with problems like slow load times or even page crashes.
Therefore, to get the best results, get your podcast online using a podcast hosting platform. With a podcast hosting site, you get ample space to store files for as long as you want. Using most platforms will enable them to assist you with distribution so people can find your show and tune in effortlessly.
The best podcast hosting sites deliver great value for money when getting your show off the ground for the first time. You enjoy important benefits like a website, podcast player, analytics and customer support built into that one structure.
What Makes a Great Podcast Hosting Site?
Most podcast hosting sites, free and paid, will empower you with essential features like an RSS feed and analytics. However, as your podcast thrives and evolves, you’ll probably require more than just the bare bones. Therefore, understanding what a podcast hosting site has to offer from the beginning will make things simpler for you when further along in your podcast path.
So, the best podcast hosting site for your show now banks on your needs and how you intend to use the site
Final Thoughts
Keep in mind that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Therefore, it’s worth going through the strengths and weaknesses of the best in the business. In this post, we’ve run through what you get with every host, the bright sides and the other side.
Meanwhile, our top picks, above, are all hosts that we actively use, either with our own shows or with other shows we work on. So, trust us when we say using any of these sites is a recipe for growth in your podcasting journey.
