25+ Best Podcast Hostings – Ultimate Analysis & Review 2023

Best Podcast Hosting companies provide you with sufficient storage and bandwidth for your show to grow. We also expect from best hostings to deliver responsive support, detailed analytics, and tech reliability. We have assessed 25+ hostings across 14 groups of criteria, most relevant from the podcasters’ perspective!

There are already over 2,000,000 podcast shows available on Apple Podcasts. Globally this number is even higher. Listen Notes search engines list even 2,200,000 shows with many of them also not active any longer.

We also observe constantly growing revenue in the industry. Every year was record-breaking, and this year will be no different. 

Growing revenue and listenership invites more creators, and this, in turn, attracts more companies willing to provide services. A core service every podcast needs is a Media Host. In this article, we will review if sticking with established providers is the best option, or should you consider new companies.

Media hosting providers offer a lot of additional features that can be important for some but are not deal breakers for most users. That’s why we don’t evaluate providers based on the total number of features but the most crucial core features.

TL;DR summary:

• The best podcast media hosting is buzzsprout. Its overall score crushes competition as it is an overall excellent service provided.
• Number 2 and 3 media hostings are respectively: Castos and Transistor,
• Another awesome alternative is Captivate.

Best Podcast Hostings in 2021 for Beginners and Pros

TOP	Podcast Host	Register with this link and get a bonus
1		Buzzsprout is the best solution to host your show. I like them for their transcripts, a Creator’s Program to help with monetization. Get buzzsprout and claim $20 Amazon gift card
2		Castos is rich in features supporting the growth of your show. Register with Castos for a 14 days free trial
3		Transistor offers in-depth analytics in each plan and is the best if you also need private podcasts. Register with Transistor for a 14 days free trial
4		Another awesome, modern, and rich in high-quality features podcast hosting platform. Check Captivate with a 7 days free trial

Below you can find which categories we analyzed, who offers the best service in each category, and in the end, you will find conclusions of this review.

Scope of this Podcast Media Hosting Review

We have analyzed 28 service providers across a group of 14 criteria.

28 companies that were evaluated:

• 23 podcast hostings that took part in the final score counting and a chance to get to the top 10
• One comprehensive service provider: Podcast Websites, which due to its nature was incomparable to standard hostings,
• Two 100% free media hostings – RedCircle, Anchor. Due to their 100% free nature, they were also incomparable to standard hostings. The didn’t compete in the main TOP media hosting comparison, but I will separately discuss the nature of free hostings in a dedicated post,
• Two large corporate hostings – Megaphone, omnystudio – for now, they offer their services only to large media companies. There are rumors that they might be preparing smaller hosting plans, but until they do, they do not take part in the final classification.

23 hostings that took part in the final review

Podcast Websites, RedCircle, and Anchor were all fully evaluated for all the mentioned criteria, but they were simply not incompatible to adequately compare to the rest of the hosting providers. 

23 podcast hostings that were compared:

1. buzzsprout
2. Podbean
3. BluBrry
4. Transistor
5. Libsyn
6. Simplecast
7. Captivate
8. Spreaker
9. Castos
10. Audioboom
11. PodServe.fm
12. Podiant
13. PodcastGiant
14. Whooshkaa
15. Fireside
16. PodOmatic
17. FeedPress
18. SoundCloud
19. Acast
20. Podigee
21. Pod Blastoff
22. Pinecast
23. ShoutEngine

Categories considered in the review

To make a final verdict, we firstly assessed all the podcast hosts based on the below criteria and found the best podcast host in each of them. For the final verdict, however, we took all the scores and made a final summary judgment.

Core Parameters

1. Hours of Storage
2. Downloads Bandwidth 

Pricing

3. Storage hours per $1
4. Downloads Bandwidth per $1
5. Pricing Policy

Key Features

6. Technical Stability
7. Technical Support
8. Analytics
9. Player

Secondary Features

10. Monetization Tools
11. Special features

Social Proof

12. Number of Clients

Accounts

13. Free Trial Accounts
14. Best Value Accounts

Media Hosting Core Parameters

1. Hours of Storage

Storage tells you how much audio content you can make available to your audience. Some media hosts give you a number in MB or GB. Others provide you with hours of storage. When comparing, we have eventually recalculated all the offers into the hours of storage.

If you are serious about podcasting, you will need about 52 hours of storage in a plan per year. 

52 hours of audio per year will allow you to publish an hour of podcast content every week. 

And this can be delivered either in one 60minute episode, two 30minutes episodes, or four 15minute episodes. You need to discover what works best for your listeners

An hour of mono podcast audio content takes little less than 30MB.

That is actually not a lot. You can easily achieve those small file sizes when you optimize your final mp3 file correctly. Small file sizes are expected by listeners, as many shows are listened on the go (in public transportation, in a car, at the gym), where data plans are being consumed. 

Learn more about what is a sampling rate or a bit depth.

So to publish 1 hour of content monthly (52 hours per year), you will need around 1.5GB of storage per year. This really isn’t a lot.

Naturally, you might need more if you want to have longer podcasts, more frequent episodes, or record in stereo.

Many providers have unlimited plans. Others provide a decent amount of storage space per month. They are usually expressed as the amount of storage of hours of shows that you can upload each month, with a renewable limit each month.

This category would be very close if we would look only if media hosts would provide enough storage. So we also looked at the price points at which they offer their plans.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of hours of storage:

If neither of the four criteria was met, hosting didn’t receive any points.

Generally, we are not surprised by many media hosts getting top ratings in this category. They are basically reselling commodity storage offered by large data center providers, and that storage is getting cheaper each year.

The fact that 13 media hosts offer unlimited offers under $20 per month, and 4 companies offer at least 52 hours of storage per year under $10 shows:

• Podcast media hosting companies have recognized that users when comparing offers look at storage
• Affordable storage and unlimited offers are highlighted in order to attract clients

2. Downloads Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the second key parameter that is crucial to understand when starting a podcast. It tells you how much data will be transferred to your listeners during a month or a year.

Following our example, and the requirement to host 52 hours of podcasting per year, our bandwidth requirements can rise quickly. With just 1,000 downloads you will need

For benchmarking, you can assume that:

• >5,800 downloads – shows in the top 10% of podcasts,
• >14,000 downloads – shows in the top 5% of podcasts,
• >41,000 downloads – shows in the top 2% of podcasts,
• >88,000 downloads – shows in the top 1% of podcasts.

With regular high-quality content publishing, you can easily get to the 10% tier. If you want to grow a podcast even further, you need a good strategy.

With just 5,000 downloads per episode, you need at least 7.4TB of bandwidth per year for a show that delivers an hour of new content each week.

But luckily, complex calculations are not necessary if you have different requirements. Most podcast media hosts have reasonably presented their offer in downloads per month form.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of downloads bandwidth:

If neither of the four criteria was met, hosting didn’t receive any points.

Companies that have all offers with unlimited downloads, of course, received max points.

Podcast hostings in the first place are most flexible with their offers, which supports those shows that plan to grow in numbers of downloads.

Pricing of Podcast Hostings

3. Storage hours per $1

Comparing podcast hosting by storage hours per $1, we checked how expensive are offers when we look at this core parameter. Storage is what most people are looking for, and it is the parameter that providers are strongly exposing and advertising.

This gets complicated when you start comparing companies that have limits on their accounts to those that call their accounts as unlimited. Especially since usually there are always caps built into the systems to prevent users from abusing the service.

We have made some reasonable assumptions on how much “unlimited” really means by estimating how much hours you could upload that would border on abusing the service. 

Our main assumption was based on the average number of working days during a year (250), and the fact that you still need to record, edit, etc. Then we have averaged out that through all accounts offered by each hosting.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of hours of audio storage per $1:

Media hostings that took 1st place offer the most storage per $1.

Interestingly in the group that is in the 4th place, 3 hostings, i.e., BluBrry, Whooshkaa, and FeedPress, offer unlimited storage. It means those accounts are expensive from a storage perspective.

This parameter tells us how expensive storage is priced, but not necessarily which hosting is best for you.

4. Downloads Bandwidth per $1

As already discussed, a number of downloads is another key parameter promoted by the hosting companies. Podcasters also look at this parameter when choosing a hosting company.

Similarly, as with storage hours per $1, we had to make assumptions regarding all the accounts offering unlimited downloads.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of downloads bandwidth per $1:

All media hostings that took 1st place offer accounts with unlimited downloads and their accounts are priced very competitively.

5. Pricing Policy

This is a very important piece of our analysis that shows friendliness towards clients from the perspective of pricing products, discounts, and refund policies.

We looked here at four things:

1. Annual subscription discount

We looked if a podcast hosting offers a discount when you pay annually for a subscription, and how big is the discount.

Out of 23 hostings, only 9 companies offer discounts when purchasing yearly subscriptions.

Biggest 3 discounts are offered by:

• Podbean – you can save 36%, i.e., $60 on their cheapest account that costs $14 monthly when you pay for a full 12 months. And you can save 23%, i.e., $360 on their most expensive account.
• Transistor and Castos – as they have the same pricing, you can save 23%, i.e., $38 on their cheapest accounts that cost $19 monthly, when you pay for a full 12 months. And you can save 13%, i.e., $198 on their most expensive accounts.

2. Number of trial days

Out of 23 hostings, 16 companies offer trial periods. I think this should be a standard in case of any software services model.

Trial periods offered by podcast hostings look like this:

• 90 days – buzzsprout
• 30 days – Podbean, Blubrry, Audioboom, SoundCloud, PodBlastoff
• 14 days – Transistor, Simplecast, Castos, Podserve.fm, Podiant, Fireside, FeedPress, Acast, Podigee
• 7 days – Captivate
• No trial period – remaining 7 hostings do not offer any trial periods

3. Refund policy

Refund policy offered by media hostings can be broadly categorized into groups:

• Friendly – accepting broad refund requests – buzzsprout, Pincecast
• Basic – accepting partial refund requests or on an individual basis – Transistor, Simplecast, Spreaker, Audioboom, PodServe.fm, Podiant, Whooshkaa, SoundCloud, 
• Not-friendly – no refunds accepted – PodOmatic, FeedPress, Acast, Podigee, PodBlastoff
• Omitted – remaining 8 hostings not mentioned above do not mention refunds in terms of service or in any other documentation on their site

4. Any other bonuses or financial incentives

At this moment, only buzzsprout is worth mentioning as they offer a $20 Amazon gift card for new subscribers.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of pricing policy friendliness:

Key Features

6. Technical Stability

By reviewing the service stability, we wanted to be sure that your podcast will always be available to your listeners.

This is the area where podcast media hostings need to step up in terms of transparency. Honestly, for the prices, most companies are charging information about the technology they use should be readily available. 

If website hostings can clearly provide information about data centers, service availability, recovery time, etc. there is no reason why media hostings should not provide this information.

We were looking at three types of information.

• Data Center provider – Podbean, Fireside and Spreaker state they are using Amazon Web Services (AWS),
• Data Center type/tier – hosting based on AWS infrastructure uses Type 4, highly redundant infrastructure, while buzzsprout writes they are using Type 2 data center,
• Content Distribution Network (CDN) – five media hostings use a content distribution network (so your files are in multiple data centers around the work, minimizing the file download speed for your listeners). PodcastGIANT charges an extra $10 monthly for this service.

In most cases, that information was not easily available on hosting websites. 

There are few exceptions, and only 8 hostings make this information available or at least partially available.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of technical stability and soundness:

7. Technical Support

Being able to contact support staff and resolve any issues quickly is essential. Thankfully most of us need to deal with support rarely. Still, in the unfortunate event of breaking your setup and making files unaccessible for the audience, you need to be able to get help without delay.

Unfortunately, just like in the case of technical stability, the full information on the types of support provided is often not easy to find.

We get it that support may be expensive, but in the case of many expensive hosting options, providers should clearly state how they will help to solve your problem.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of technical support channels and quality:

Unfortunately, most podcast hostings still do not communicate clearly how they will help you to solve your problems, which can limit confidence in their responsiveness.

8. Analytics

Having access to good analytics and all the data about your audience is crucial in making good marketing decisions. You need this to understand, e.g.:

• how to develop your content,
• which format works the best,
• who is your target audience,
• what kind of marketing and sales effort will be most successful?

Analytics is not easily comparable between services, although most providers give the basic dataset. In fact, we would expect that in order to support and grow their podcasting business, the media host providers would actually give good analytics up-front.

This should be simple as most data is already available for media hosting companies.

We really hoped all media hosts would score high here, but unfortunately, we had to score some of them low.

We don’t mind that Podbean or Castos give you good analytics only with paid accounts as free accounts are mainly for extended trial purposes. 

Unfortunately, in some cases, you get advanced analytics only when you buy a subscription, e.g., $35 monthly.

Pinecast offers an interesting pricing model. They have one basic account priced at $10 per month, with add ons each also priced at $10 per month. So their account with advanced analytics priced at $20 may be a good solution for some.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of analytical toolset:

To have a full picture of your audience and even more data to make good decisions, you need to have a good podcasting website, and add advanced analytics from Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.

9. Website Player

Having an embeddable player is crucial if you want to grow your show and monetize your podcast using a website. There are many possibilities to monetize a podcasting website, and it is helpful if you have a high volume of traffic coming from Google search.

Once people get to your site, they should be able to read a transcript of an episode and even listen to the episode directly on your site. Listening directly through a site is important as it makes the online session last longer and is a clear signal to Google that your content is enjoyable and relevant.

On top, a player is great as it allows people to discover your episodes directly in your browser, removing an additional step of launching podcast apps.

All of the podcast hostings allow you to embed a player on your side. Some, however, stand out offering high-quality, frequently updated tools that are useful for podcasters.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of player and plugins:

There are two WordPress plugins that stand out and have over 200 positive reviews each:

• PowerPress Podcasting plugin by Blubrry, that is used on more than 60,000 sites,
• Seriously Simple Podcasting by Castos, that has been installed over 20,000 times.

Secondary Features

10. Monetization tools

There are many ways you can monetize your podcast. In our dedicated guide, we cover over 30 strategies you can use to monetize your show. And in the long run, managing monetization on your own is a better approach. That is why monetization tools are a secondary, non-essential feature for us.

However, when you are just starting, having monetization tools readily available may be attractive to you. Sometimes it is even better and simpler than joining a podcasting network. 

It also can be a good option for people who have a very limited time working on their podcasts and need a monetization already integrated into their hosting providers.

Only 12 media hostings offer some form of monetization options. The most popular, of course, are auto inserted ads. 

Overall you can find four types of monetization channels offered to podcasters:

• 10 hostings offer ads support, either in the form of auto insertion,
• 4 hosts offer a form of affiliate marketplace or a connection with a brand for host read ads,
• 3 media hostings offer tools that will help you with direct sales of products to your listeners,
• 5 podcast hostings offer a form of patronage program or creator support where podcasters can have an option to request donations from listeners.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of monetization tools:

Once you grow your show, you will find a lot more monetization options.

11. Special features

In this category, we grouped a couple of features we were looking at.

They are not standard, and different podcast hosting has implemented them differently. Also, their value for content creators is different.

Special features we were looking in podcast hosting that might be valuable to podcasters are:

• Free podcast website – 13 media hostings offer a dedicated website for a podcast. It may sound like a good deal for starting podcasters, but in the long term, you want more flexibility and capabilities offered by a dedicated website.

• Video format support – 4 media hostings (Podbean, BluBrry, libsyn, and Castos) support hosting video files. That may come useful in case of some monetization strategies. In other situations, e.g., for promotion, I recommend you to use YouTube. In the long term, benefit from exposure to 2 billion YouTube users worldwide. Additionally, you can always capitalize on YouTube ads over a long time as your podcast episodes get views for years.

• API and Alexa Integration – 12 media hosts offer API, and 3 podcast hostings (Podbean, BluBrry, and Whooshkaa) provide integration with Alexa. This is an important and advanced feature. You will mainly benefit from Alexa integration as podcast listenership on smart speakers increases over time.

• Transcripts – 6 hosting companies (buzzsprout, Spreaker, Castos, Whooshkaa, Acast, and Podigee) offer in some form transcripts of episodes. This is very useful. Overall we highly recommend having transcripts for the SEO benefits and getting easier discovered in Google. Besides, they create a good monetization opportunity. Most often, transcripts are offered at a rate of $0.1 per minute, which is much lower than most external providers usually charging $1 per minute of transcribed audio.

We were also looking for some negative features or hidden charges. We just found one, that stands out that takes away points in this category:

• File size limit – Pinecast has a max file size of 80MB. To increase the limit to 256MB, you need to pay an extra $15 monthly. 80MB is still a lot, but it is not suitable for very long podcasts, or stereo shows.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of special features:

Social Proof

12. Number of Clients

In this category, we looked at how many people are using different podcast media hostings. This is a proxy benchmark showing how widely adopted all of the services are.

The best approximation is to compare how many podcasting RSS feeds are associated with the media host domain. We need to have in mind that over 56 thousand podcasts are using FeedBurner RSS, and we have no way of knowing which hosting those podcasters are using.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of the number of users (social proof):

Accounts – Price to Quality

13. Free Trial Accounts

Availability of free offer – if you want to grow your show and monetize it effectively, there is no free offer to support growth and quality.

Free accounts are not sustainable solutions if you want to have a long-lasting show. Free accounts hosting usually has very low limits of storage and bandwidth. Additionally, free hosting plans usually come with additional limitations like expiration date attached to episodes, or lack of key functions, like editing and replacing old episodes. So you can’t even indefinitely host a show mini-series on them. 

Those free accounts should be used only as an extension of a trial period.

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of free trial accounts:

14. Best Value Accounts

In our final category, we looked for accounts that are actually usable, and we can recommend it.

My basic recommendation at the start of this review is that if you want to have a podcast that has a chance to grow and monetize, you should deliver around 52 hours of content per year. On top, you should have a competitively priced number of downloads. We want our account to have at least 15.000-20.000 downloads per month. 

Best Podcast Hosting in terms of best value accounts:

Best Podcast Hosting – Final Verdict and Recommendation

Upon reviewing all of the accounts, podcast hostings offer this is our final verdict.

TOP	Podcast Host	Register with this link and get a bonus
1		Buzzsprout is the best solution to host your show. I like them for their transcripts, a Creator’s Program to help with monetization. Get buzzsprout and claim $20 Amazon gift card
2		Castos is rich in features supporting the growth of your show. Register with Castos for a 14 days free trial
3		Transistor offers in-depth analytics in each plan and is the best if you also need private podcasts. Register with Transistor for a 14 days free trial
4		Another awesome, modern, and rich in high-quality features podcast hosting platform. Check Captivate with a 7 days free trial

Top 5 reasons we are recommending those podcast hostings:

1. Very high up to unlimited storage and bandwidth, so we don’t have to worry about those details and can focus on content creation
2. Competitive pricing and friendly pricing and refund policy – you get a lot of storage, bandwidth, and additional features at a reasonable price.
3. High-quality analytics helping to understand the performance of your content and helping you with making the right business decisions.
4. Good support – highly accessible and ready to solve your problems when they arise.
5. Quality players and plugins – great for embedding into your website to increase the growth of your business.

About the Author

Chris Land

I'm the owner and creator of ImprovePodcast.com, the site dedicated to providing actionable solutions for podcast creators. My goal is helping people to develop their podcasts into effective marketing and sales tools.