If you are thinking about joining the podcast world, this article is for you! There are many different podcast hosting platforms and it can be difficult to decide which one to go with. Good news! We have created an article of what we consider is the best hosting for Podcast in the market.
How does it work?
Blubrry was created in the 2.000 by a team of podcasters with the idea to offer podcast hosting services to the companies or particulars. The experience of the creators has gained over the years and that has made them one of the best hosting for podcast platforms around.
But…how does it work? If you are not very familiar with the “podcast world” don’t worry Blubrry has a free podcast hosting trial where you can learn all the details for starting your business.
First you need to decide what kind of format you are going to use… It could be audio, video or electronic book. Then you should choose what software or tools you’re going to need to create the media format you chose. Once you create your first episode then you can start using Blubrry.
Having a website where you can publish your podcast is primordial, luckily, Blubrry provides a free WordPress site as part of their podcast media hosting. You have to setup syndication for your podcast and this is possible with the PowerPress plugin for WordPress.
Where do I start?
The first thing you should do is to think about what content do you want to talk about, how is your niche going to be, what are your goals, as well as the design of the company, logos and branding for your channel. Once you know that, then you can start building your own website on WordPress with Blubrry.
One thing that makes Blubrry so popular and why we think that’s one of the best hosting for podcast, is that their proprietary PowerPress podcasting plugin offers an optimized podcast website, though you can also choose to use a podcast website builder like Podcastpage to easily create a site for your podcast. However, if you don’t feel like using WordPress that’s fine too!
Once you create an account you will see this Dashboard where you can start uploading your content and more.
Podcast media hosting
Blubrry’s Podcast Media Hosting uses the delivery network (CDN) which is designed to handle spikes in downloads and delivery the performance by serving podcast media closest to where the request occurred. When podcasts are hosted by Blubrry, download spikes will not affect your website, don’t worry as your audience will be able to download all your episodes as fast as their internet connection allows. This is why is one of the best hosting for podcast.
There are some requirements for hosting as you can see in their website:
- HTTP/1.1 compliant – Required for most applications including iTunes
- Byte serving and byte-range request – Required by iTunes and many other portable devices and smartphones
- World-class content delivery network – Guarantees fast delivery of media to your audience
- Audio/video content types – Critical for serving media to portable devices such as iPhone and Android
- All valid HTTP methods supported – All types of HTTP requests (e.g. HEAD, GET, etc.) must be supported to guarantee media delivery to portable devices and software such as Tunes.
- Default HTTP protocol – FTP (ftp://) and other non-HTTP protocols limit what applications and devices can download your media. Media should be served using the default (http://) protocol.
Stadistics and analytics
When you click ‘Podcast Statistics’ from the dashboard you can measure the views and success of your podcast very easily.
There are a few ways that you can measure your audience: By web traffic, by audience survey, and media downloads.
What does this mean? You will be able to see the history of your podcast episodes and choose by year, month or even day. You can also see the devices, platforms, countries, states, and more…
Measuring web traffic is a great way to determine how users interact with the written content you post on your website.
Prices for hosting your podcast
Blubrry has different prices for hosting, and also an offer of a free trial for 30 days.
The Standard Plan only costs 12$ and includes all of this:
- 100MB of monthly storage
- Free file migration
- Essential Themes and Plugins
- Blubrry Subdomain
- Standard Statistics Included
- Phone/Email Tech Support
- Unlimited Downloads
- Custom embedded player
- Free WordPress Site
The Advanced Plan costs 20$ monthly and includes:
- Starts @ 250MB of Storage
- Advanced Statistics
- Domain Mapping Included
- Phone/Email Tech Support
- Unlimited Downloads
- Custom Embedded Player
- Free WordPress Site
- Additional Themes and Plugins
- DNS Management
- Free File Migration
- Upgrade Storage at Any Time
Joining Blubrry platform for hosting your podcast is such a good idea and we hope we could help you to consider it. If you are still confused about the content you are going to publish, there is a Blubrry library where you can find thousands of podcasts for some inspiration and it has many different categories such as Arts, Bussiness, History, Kids&Family, Lifestyle, Religion…etc
Anyways, if you’re convinced enough you should know that having a studio for recording your podcast is a must, so don’t forget to read our last article about how to set up the best podcast studio.
