How to Choose the Right Podcast Hosting Platform

When planning to launch a podcast show, the first factor to consider is the availability of a podcast host.

Making a movie with a host should be done carefully to ensure that it can meet your present and future needs in delivering consistent and uninterrupted quality for your shows.

Though it may not appear so at first, every host is entirely different in mode and quality of operations but every single one offers to manage your podcast’s RSS feed and integrate it with the popular podcast directories.

Let’s consider the following criteria when selecting the right podcast host:

Audience Analytics

This involves a stringent review of your podcast’s listenership. A good host is supposed to do such reviews to the end of creating more engaging content that will draw the right sponsors to advertise on a podcast show. Most podcast hosts provide some form of a basic summary of the listening audience report, but they may not all be giving you accurate stats. 

To grow a podcast’s engagement, it’s vital for a reliable host to understudy the audience, know where they’re listening at, verify how long they listen, and pinpoint what platforms they’re listening to. The hosts recommended by wiredclip.com/buzzsprout-review/ have been proven to have a high degree of reliability. They also improve on their analytics regularly to stay in business. 

A host with excellent audience analytics will give its customers a clearer and deeper insight into what will work well for their shows. Such hosts will be able to track the stats of each episode and allow seamless integration between themselves and the listening platforms. 

Large Storage Capabilities

The more the sounds and video shows you complete, the more the space required.

A lot of hosts only allow for a limited storage capacity. You’ll have to purchase a new plan when you must have exhausted your space allowance. As you deliberate on which hosts to choose, check out for those with very large or unlimited storage because you won’t want to have any hassles in quickly disseminating information due to a lack of space.

Running out of space as your show grows isn’t really a good idea. Hence, before you settle down with a host, be sure you’re satisfied with its storage provisions; though, unlimited is always the best.

And just in case you need to release multiple podcasts in the future, you need to make sure that the host is capable of hosting each of your shows on a separate RSS feed within one dashboard.

Website Integrations

A good number of podcasters use WordPress for their website. The website provides a space for listeners to find out everything about you and your podcast and may decide to subscribe to your shows or tune in to the latest episode while finding out more about your brand.

It’s, therefore, necessary to ensure that a host has the capabilities to integrate with your WordPress website at least. You can find out if the host site has a dedicated podcasting WordPress plugin or if you can manage your podcast show within your WordPress dashboard. 

A host with such capabilities will save you time and help you keep your site up to date with your latest uploads and vice versa. Manually uploading an episode to the podcast host and then manually embedding the link on your website is a lot of work and time. 

Another point to check here is that If you don’t have a podcast website already set up, the host should provide the option of creating a personalized one for your work. This will help you start to work on doing excellent shows and promoting them on your free site almost immediately and with minimal effort.

Content Distribution Services

Every podcast host distributes podcasts across tens to hundreds of listening platforms. However, it would be more fruitful, if more of your works went straight to YouTube, the world’s second most used search engine.

Posting podcasts straight to YouTube is gaining popularity nowadays because more and more users are going there to listen, and there are billions of them. For these reasons, many hosting agents are adding the YouTube Integration option to facilitate the distribution of podcasts there rather than the regular manual upload.

Not all hosting sites have incorporated this facility; so, you might need to be careful when choosing your host in light of this concern.

Another way to make your podcast more accessible is to include a full transcription of each episode on your website. For the sake of those with hearing disabilities, you may have to transcribe your episodes and this can only be done with the help of certain software if you’re working alone. This could prove a little difficult to handle especially when you’re concerned with meeting a podcast release deadline. 

Hosts are supposed to provide transcription services and save you the extra work. Therefore, be sure to select hosts that offer a seamless transcription of your episodes. Do some extra research to find the right transcription service but we prefer one-stop-shop software. 

As you compare podcast hosts, keep these 4 pieces of criteria in mind. You need to use host sites that would support the growth of your show. They should also be concerned with making frequent upgrades to their platform for the best hosting functions. After making a choice, feel free to use their trial versions just to be sure.