Podcast Hosting: How to Get a Home for Your Podcast

If you are here to get my recommendation for podcast hosting services, the list of my favorite web hosting and podcast specific hosting companies is available below.

This article will cover about podcast hosting and how to publish your podcast and make it available on the Internet. If you are interested in starting a podcast, you can read and follow a step-by-step guide from planning to publishing and promoting in the page about podcast tutorial.

Before we get started, it is important that you are aware of several things:

• Podcast hosting platform is exactly the same as the web hosting platform you may have already known. They use exactly the same technology. Again you can read my podcast tutorial to turn your existing audio content (or samples of them) that are available on your web server for people to download via podcast.
• Podcast files are much bigger than textual content in web pages. As such, you need far more disk space and bandwidth transfer to host your podcasts successfully. You may get into trouble if you are in a shared hosting environment as your podcast becomes popular. It may get too much traffic you overuse the resources and risk getting your account disabled.
• Some hosting companies disallow their customers to upload excessive multimedia files, including podcasts for public distribution. This usually is specified in the terms of use. They intend to upgrade the customers to higher hosting package or expensive hosting server dedicated to host multimedia files. So beware of this policy, don’t go just for the lowest price.

With those said, let me start explaining what you need to do in order to publish your podcast. I will also cover alternative ways you can get your podcast online. Some of them are free but other setup are designed for business or more serious podcaster. I will also explain things you should be aware of in podcast hosting services so if you decide that you can’t take my recommendation, you can do your own basic research.

Different podcast hosting options

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Podcasters who are just podcasting for the sake of hobby, for fun, or for other personal reasons may care less about how the podcasts sound and how they will be published.

In this case, perhaps they prefer a free solution, or one that doesn’t cost much. There are free hosting services that allow you to upload your podcast and video files for free. There are also commercial hosting companies that promote usage by giving away certain amount of disk space for free. You have to pay only after you exceed the amount of resources allocated for you.

Podcast hosting uses the same technology as the traditional web hosting, so if you already have a web site hosted anywhere, you can host your podcast there. But make sure that the server can handle the size of the podcasts and bandwidth transfer.

Another option is of course to start a new domain on a new hosting company or server. This method lets you have one site or domain for the podcast. All the files and support files can then be uploaded onto the same server space.

Yet another option is a service packaged specifically for podcaster. In this option, you don’t have to worry about any technical matter. But it has its own limitation though, like using a sub-domain instead of your own domain.

Let’s take a look at each of different options so you get the best from it no matter which one you choose. But first, you should understand the basic steps of publishing your podcast.

Steps to publishing your podcast

This section covers the conventional way to publish a podcast. If you are using a phone-to-podcast service, for instance, you don’t have to worry about these things. While such a service is handy, usually the audio quality is low. If you plan on editing and mixing, you also have to download the file, do the work on your desktop computer before upload it again to the server.

So if you are ready for this step, you should have at least one podcast file ready for publishing. Next you need to do the following to get your podcast online:

1. If you want to host the podcast on a new domain, purchase a domain.
2. Find web hosting and buy certain product or package that suits your need.
3. Start a blog. A free blog service is fine, install and setup one if you want it on your own domain.
4. Publish the podcast in such way so the RSS feed is podcast compatible.

Depends on the podcast hosting you choose, some of these steps are readily available. It is nice to know the entire steps though so you can check to make sure that you already got them in place.

Register a new domain

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Using a free service like Libsyn, your podcast site will look like: yourpodcastshow.libsyn.com. Libsyn.com is the domain and yourpodcastshow is the sub-domain of the main domain.

This doesn’t seems very professional, especially for business podcast. Domains and hosting are cheap so there is no reason why you can’t afford them especially if you want to maintain the branding and professionalism. Sub-domain names are hard to spell out and it is not the most convenient way for telling people where to look at your podcast.

Libsyn gives you the option to keep control over your podcast or blog URL by registering your own domain. They will setup the rest so your podcast and RSS feeds work from that domain.

Free blog service such as Blogger.com offers an option to transfer the generated blog pages to the domain of your choice. This is also a convenient way to get your files on your domain while having the blog software maintenance done by Blogger.com.

A new domain costs less than $10 per year. You can get it free as part of some hosting offers. You can also register a domain at your favorite registrar and then point the domain name to the hosting service you sign up later.

Find or buy web hosting

Web hosting gives you a virtual real estate on the Internet to store your files for access publicly or privately via web browser. A stable server makes your files available 24/7 for anyone to view and listen.

Hosting is cheap, but some of the companies that offer the same package can be very unreliable. You are to research a lot to make sure you sign up with a reputable company with good track record.

What you should notice in a web host offer?

• Storage space. Space is one of the most common things web hosting buyers notice. Basically much more space translate into more value. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Take the average size of your podcast file — or the first podcast if you are just starting — and see how long can you do well without upgrading. It is best if there are options for upgrade if you need it later.
• Bandwidth transfer. Bandwidth is another compelling factor for web hosting buyers. The bigger the number, the more files and the bigger the size of the files that you can transfer to web visitors. Bandwidth is limited, so even if you get one offer that promises unlimited bandwidth, make sure they are able to handle the amount of bandwidth transfer you need.
• Reliability. The reliability of server is important so you don’t lose visitors. Good quality server should be able to provide smoothly running services without many glitches.
• Availability. Uptime is a bit tricky. Some hosting services offer a guarantee but unless you monitor it, you can’t never tell how many minutes or hours the server was down during previous month. Get statistical data if possible or ask around in open forum for web hosting.
• Support. Who are you going to if something goes wrong? Ensuring there is someone who will able to look for the problem for you is very valuable if you stumble upon problems or your site is down.
• Features. If you are running a blog software, you want to make sure that the hosting has the features to support that software. Most web hosting can now handle common and popular web applications, but it is always better to be safe than sorry.

Free hosting and community site such as ourmedia.org offers free space for your podcast files. The drawback is, you can’t use that service for hosting files that don’t use Creative Commons license. The whole idea in using this site is sharing and building community.

Free hosting has no uptime guarantee, so if reliability is utmost important don’t host your files with them. Support is minimal too simply because it’s free.

Personally recommended podcast hosting services

Technology is supposed to make things easier. Although you may find it daunting at first, it may become a fun process later as much of them are automated by server-side software.

One of the most frustrating things every web publishers and podcasters try to avoid is server downtime. If you sign up with low standard web hosting company, this problem may appear every so often. Even though the server is up, they are not providing the kind of service that you expect.

Imagine a lot of server issues and lack of technical support, which might cause headaches, lost revenue and sleep. You can avoid all of these and save money if you only do business with the hosting company who knows what they do.

Below is my personally recommended podcast hosting services. I have very good experience with them. And over the years I have tested ample of them with mixed satisfaction.

Libsyn

Libsyn or Liberated Syndication is a hosting service designed for podcasters in mind. The company offers different package of hosting products, all measured by monthly storage quota.

The bandwidth transfer is not metered. It means that as long as your podcast files are still in the limit, they don’t charge you more even if your podcast show is so popular and gets many downloads. As a podcaster, you just free yourself from one concern about bandwidth consumption as your podcast gets more popular.

This podcast hosting service has all the elements you need in one easy to access place. You get a custom look and design for your blog, although it is quite limited. It also includes the feature to generate podcast feed.

Libsyn also offers good stats so you have an idea of how many listeners are subscribing and consuming your podcast. This is important as a feedback mechanism about how well you do with your podcast.

The guy at Libsyn have done a great job at providing a good hosting. Their prices are hard to beat. There are some downtime but those should be acceptable for most small business and personal or hobbyist podcasts.

They also have a pro system that promises 99.99% service level guarantee.

Professional hosting services

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Business podcasters or publishers who are seriously into podcasting should consider this option. If your podcast is a critical part of your business strategy, you should plan for scalability up front. And this is exactly what this kind of podcast hosting offers.

You may be amazed that such hosting service usually is very affordable. With a little bit of work to set things up, you can get a really professional look at every part of your podcast site.

With free blog software such as WordPress, you can get a business grade blogging platform with customized look and feel of your own choice. WordPress is also very easy to install and use, with a strong community of support.

For web hosting I strongly recommend Hostgator. I use it to host many of my web sites and blogs. The company hosts hundreds of thousands of sites. They are dependable, professional and offer good support and service guarantee.

Their prices are hard to beat and now they also host unlimited domains for one single account. Bandwidth ceiling should not be your concern because with the amount of bandwidth offered you have a lot of room to grow. Upgrade is very easy, if you need that.

The drawback of using this type of hosting is that you have to install and manage your own account. This is not hard to do, and most of the time, they run on their own.

Virtual private server or dedicated server hosting

For very popular podcast or company web sites, sharing server resources may not be an option, not to mention that it probably is not possible due to the load of the site.

The solution to this problem is virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server. In dedicated server hosting, you rent a server on one company who provides you with the physical space and network connection. Virtual private server is a stripped down version of a dedicated server. The server is actually shared with others but with much less accounts as in shared hosting. Each account also has its own installation of operating system (OS). Multiple OSes on one server is possible due to virtualization. You are also guaranteed with certain level of server resources and access to administrator level.

VPS is suitable for site owners who want more control on their server within a lower budget.

For VPS and dedicated server, I would recommend KnownHost.

Start a blog

Image credit: Glutnix.

While there are many ways you can publish and manage podcast show and episode pages, generate podcast-compatible RSS feed and organize your podcast files, using a blog software gives many benefits.

First and foremost, it gives an integrated solution to site specific operations, including publishing your podcast.

It will also save you time. If registering a domain and buying hosting is a one-time process — at least until you switch host or the domain expire, managing podcast files and posting episode notes are a repetitive task as part of podcast publishing.

Even if you hire someone to do that for you, using a blog, you can just click a few mouse button and get a podcast published.

A blog provides consistency for the whole site. You can have a uniform side and navigation bar just by modifying a file. The organization of files in the archives and by dates are automatically done for you too. Imagine doing it using a static web page where you must modify each and every file to get the same thing done by the software itself.

Most hosting service now provides one-click installation of popular blog software. Many excellent blogware, such as the one used for this site, is free. If you want to learn how to effectively use a blog for your business and publishing, visit my other site on small business blogging.

Publish podcast and create podcast-compatible RSS feed

This step is key to podcast publishing. Podcasts are just like any other media files. What makes them different is the podcast feed that allows subscribers to get notified when new episodes are available, and reference to the location, size and type of file in that episode.

As part of the publishing process, you create and update your RSS feed so your listeners will get notified when subscribing to the feed. This may sounds complicated but rely it isn’t.

Using a blog, you can tell it the location to the podcast file and choose different options such as iTunes tags etc, hit publish and get the feed automatically formatted with the right data.

The podcast software page has a list of software that helps you generate RSS feed manually, if you think a blog is not for you — although I really can’t find a reason why it isn’t.

Finally, for ideas on how to podcasts for marketing your business, visit marketing with podcasts page.