All three of our podcasts are hosted on Anchor (by Spotify) which is completely free. We moved over from Substack, who was also highly recommended for beginners.
We have one main need that apparently only Anchor can meet: which is segments of audio. This allows us to fix, correct, update, etc. audio components segment-by-segment. We also have transition snippets that they provide which make everything “pop”.
We looked at others. They all have quirks that we found unacceptable for our needs.
- Some will have limits on storage. Yeah no. Anchor has no storage limit at all.
- Some have limits on monthly # of uploads. Yeah no - we record eight times every month for two of the podcasts. We’re seeing limits of like 2-3, and that’s not a podcast in our opinion. Anchor doesn’t care.
- Some will let you kind of “cheat” the segment audio using ad segments on their paid plan - but that’s not the same thing. With Anchor, the ad segment is a different segment, not part of the segments we upload. It’s semantics, but regardless, Anchor doesn’t charge for either.
- Very few have transition audio snippets where Anchor does.
- Anchor (because it’s supported by Spotify) supports video podcasts natively within the same feed. Others do not unless you pay a boatload and then you run into storage limits.
About the only thing Anchor doesn’t do (and many others don’t either) is a private podcast feed - truly private, meaning it’s not published to iTunes, it’s not even indexed through search engines. You can’t find it AT ALL unless you add the address to your app. That’s the main benefit of self-hosting - you control who sees what and who hears what. But it’s a pain to maintain it.
For us, the main thing we really want and have never found a provider to do (in addition to what Anchor does) is one that lets you bulk edit shownotes. As you migrate from podcast platforms, this becomes a real problem especially if your links change, your handles change, or there’s just text that’s no longer accurate for subscribing. No known provider offers a tool that lets you do a find-and-replace; if we were self-hosted this would be seconds worth of work, so I know it’s possible, but no provider has prioritized it, and that’s sad because we think it’s a game changer.
We think Zencastr could be a big thing in the future as they get more into full podcast provider mode.