Some of the Best Podcast Platforms
What is the best podcast platform? It depends on what you need, whether you’re looking to listen to a podcast or upload it for your audience. It all depends on the content you’re looking for and, of course, your budget. Not all podcasts are the same, not all audiences, nor not all monetization systems. In addition to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, there are dozens of platforms available, and every day a new one appears, hence it is essential that you get familiar with, at least, the most popular ones, and that’s what this article is for. Let’s take a look.
Soundcloud
This platform has almost two hundred million users and is one of the most famous tools in this market. In the beginning, Soundcloud was focused mostly on music but it is not nowadays. A good number of content creators use it to record podcasts and then upload them to the cloud to share them with their followers. It is important to consider that, as a platform, Soundcloud was created for the podcast format. Soundcloud was born to target independent composers but gradually gained popularity among the podcasting communities. After all, its subscription plans offer statistics and many other features that make it an important alternative to consider.
Probably the biggest advantage in SoundCloud’s favor is that it is not just an audio streaming platform. It is a social audio platform. The main problem is that the SC limits its podcasting by the hour. Other hosts do this by file size. It’s important to consider. When it comes to podcasting, it is normal to skimp on bitrate and sampling because the difference in quality usually goes unnoticed. However, it is a free tool (or, rather, it can be free), and is a good start for beginning podcasters.
Blubrry
Blubrry is one of the most recommended services for hosting and publishing podcasts. The reason for this is that this platform manages to adjust to the requirements of each of its users through four subscription plans. The cheapest one offers unlimited bandwidth, 100 megabytes of storage per month, professional statistics, free file migration, a free blog, and an integrated custom player. The most expensive one, provides 1000 megabytes of monthly storage, for a cost of seventy-nine dollars per month. The interesting thing is that this type of hosting provides completely unlimited monthly storage capacity, for a fairly reasonable price, when compared to other data storage sites (which, the truth to be told, do not offer the rest of the podcasting services). In addition, it also offers 1 TB of monthly bandwidth, a network add-on, advanced statistics add-on, and dynamic ad insertion.
It is clear that the difference in the plans offered by Blubrry compared to other platforms is, first of all, the storage capacity: the greater the amount of space, the more money users will have to spend.
Buzzsprout.com
This service has been designed to ease simple and generous podcasting. Consequently, it is considered as one of the best solutions to distribute and publish your podcast episodes, while making sure that you acquire more plays and expand your listener reach since it allows you to get your podcast on directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Alexa.
Plus, its elaborate design allows you to spend more time creating content. It’s simple, and you won’t waste time trying to decipher the interface to figure out how to upload a file. Among its most interesting features among users is the undeniable audio quality of the sound files. Aside from this, Buzzsprout has an added transcription integration and counts with a text editor for show notes.
On this platform, you will find the option of affiliate marketing, which could offer you additional earnings. Regarding its cost, it is important to note that Buzzsprout provides a completely free plan that only has a single problem: its episodes are deleted after ninety days on the platform’s servers.
Transistor.fm
This is an excellent podcast hosting and analysis platform that is mainly focused on brands. Transistor’s main intention is to help the recognition and expansion of podcasters’ brands in the digital environment. It is also an ideal service for all those users who take this work seriously, whether they are novices or experienced.
In this sense, it allows to include and manage different team members, such as editors or producers to achieve better results. To top it off, you can present as many different programs as you want and get numerous statistics to improve your strategy. It even has a private podcasting function that allows you to create public and more intimate podcasts under the same account, without having to pay for a new hosting plan.
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