Podcasters can now use excellent platforms to attract their audience with continuous technology innovation. Are you an aspiring podcaster who wants to share engaging content with the world? Then, you should have the best podcast hosting platform. This article will discuss two of the top podcasting platforms on the market. We are talking about Buzzsprout and Captivate.
Which one is for you? Find out the answer with this Buzzsprout vs. Captivate review.
Buzzsprout is among the most popular podcast hosting services today. You can use it for hosting and storing your podcast episodes. In addition, you can use the platform’s audience analytics features to improve your monetization and marketing efforts.
The platform started to operate in 2009 and continues to grow until today. Aside from being a great podcast hosting platform, it is a leader in maintaining RSS feeds, secure hosting, and smooth social media integration.
Buzzsprout is loaded with advanced features.
In the podcasting world, having a podcast hosting platform is not enough. You should also have a website where your audience can sample your content. Exactly, Buzzsprout can give you a free website to showcase your podcast episodes. You can boost podcasting credits by sending your audience to this dedicated website.
The website can also redirect users to their most frequently used directories like Apple Podcast and Spotify. Meanwhile, you should remember that the free website is only a basic landing page to get things started. If you want to level up your podcast website, you can prefer dedicated website builders, including Weebly, Wix, and WordPress. Buzzsprout also comes with a dedicated plugin for embedding podcast episodes. You can use the plugin to make posts that promote your podcast episodes.
If you use podcasting as a hobby or professionally, Buzzsprout is best for you. The service can provide you with an affiliate marketplace allowing you to connect with specific affiliate programs.
You can go to the ‘Resources’ section on the dashboard for signing up with an affiliate program. With this, you can collaborate on brands like Allswell, Instacart, and more. Once you’ve got the needed approvals, the platform will add the affiliate link to the suitable link to the episode’s notes. It means that whatever platform users, can access your content. The link is also consistently active and ready to cash in for you.
To increase your listeners, you should ensure that your podcasts are available on search engines. Among the best things you can do is transcribe all your content and boost search engines’ chance of being discovered.
The platform can offer you automatic transcription services. Your episodes can be transcribed since Buzzsprout will send your files to Temi, an automated transcription system. If the process is already completed, you can get an email with the full transcription text.
You can also edit the transcription, and the platform will display it below the description of your episode on the website. Temi is billed at $0.25 per minute. You can also manually select the transcript for your episodes.
The dashboard of Buzzsprout is functional, clean, and provides an easy interface. The platform’s dashboard is the central location where you can access details on essential metrics like listener statistics, download volume, and geographical audience segmentation.
Buzzsprout has a user-friendly and easy-to-understand layout. The statistics are arranged based on the latest episodes first and then the top famous episodes. With the service’s statistics, you can have a comprehensive overview of the performance of your latest episodes. The algorithm of Buzzsprout also measures the number of listeners for every episode in the initial 90 days.
The geographic listener segmentation feature can offer you an idea of where most of your listeners come from. The statistics have a highly granular level for each episode to provide you with deeper insights into the performance of your podcasts.
Buzzsprout can offer you excellent customer support. They have a responsive team for your concerns. They also have a dedicated Facebook group to get advice about promotion and other aspects.
Buzzsprout podcast hosting service has many advantages.
Like other platforms, Buzzsprout also has some disadvantages.
In addition to the features mentioned above, Buzzsprout also has growth and marketing tools. It can help you to promote your content effectively.
The platform can provide you with easy social sharing. Thus, it has tools to share your content to different social media sites. You can generate and copy email links you can use for your promotional campaigns.
Buzzsprout also lets you make user accounts for different team members. It also has a Directories option that displays famous podcast directories you can tap. There are complete instructions to get listed in every directory. The service can offer you better distribution for your content.
Currently, chapter markers are among the standard features for podcasts. This feature is essential to divide longer episodes into segments or chapters dedicated to specific topics. With this option, you can attract more audiences. It can offer listeners better control over the particular segment they want in a particular episode.
One of Buzzsprout’s unique features is visual soundbites. With it, you can choose a short length of audio from your episode and make a short video about it. The video will serve as a trailer and catch the audience’s attention to listen to your podcast for many hours. It is helpful to make promotions on social media easily.
Buzzsprout can offer you the best analytics to give you insights about your podcast performance, episode downloads, apps used, and listener location. It uses the most advanced technology to provide you with exact podcast statistics.
If you want to generate passive income and monetize your podcasts, Buzzsprout can help you. It has an affiliate marketing database that allows you to participate in affiliate programs from your account on the platform.
Buzzsprout will not take middle-man fees and commission from your affiliate earnings. The platform also allows you to accept donations from your audience by including links to tools such as PayPal, Buy Me a Coffee, and Patreon.
Buzzsprout has many pricing plans, which include the following.
Buzzsprout has a free plan where you can access 2-hours of audio uploads monthly. The episodes are hosted for 90 days, and after that, they will be automatically deleted. You can also access advanced user statistics and add an unlimited number of team members.
With this plan, you can access 6 hours of uploads monthly. You can also upload additional content at $3 per hour, a discounted rate.
The plan can provide you with 3 hours of audio uploads monthly. If you post episodes each week, you can host 45-minute episodes weekly. In this plan, you can get the advantage of indefinite hosting. If you pass the content limit, you can select more content at a $4 per hour rate.
The $24 Monthly Plan can provide you with 12 hours of audio uploads monthly. It is a perfect plan for professional audio programs and daily posts. If you need additional bandwidth, you can pay the extra $2 per hour.
Captivate is among the top podcast hosting platforms today. It is also loaded with more innovative features to make your podcasting habit a good experience.
Captivate also comes with excellent features you can rely on for your podcasting needs.
With Captivate, you can get a free website with responsive web templates and a landing page. You can access three fully responsive templates from WordPress.
The price plans of Captivate offer unlimited collaborators and team members. With excellent team collaboration, you can have a successful podcast.
Podcast transcription is a powerful tool. It can help your listeners feel entertained with your episodes.
Captivate allows you to have unlimited podcasts with unlimited episodes.
Captivate also has many advantages.
Captivate considers itself a growth-oriented podcast host. It is equipped with promotional tools that can help you attract more customers to your content. With the marketing tools provided by the platform, you can promote your podcast easily to social media sites and other platforms.
Another unique feature of Captivate is that it offers podcast analytics that is easy to understand. With it, you can have insights into what you need to improve to satisfy your listeners.
Captivate can offer you tutorials, tools, and videos to monetize your content. If you want your podcast to be full-time, you can monetize your content.
Captivate doesn’t come with a free plan. They have a 7-day free trial. The pricing plans of the hosting service include the following:
This plan is about $44 yearly and $49 monthly. It offers 500 private podcast subscribers and 60,000 downloads monthly.
The personal plan is about $19 monthly and $17 yearly. It offers 150 private podcast subscribers and 12,000 monthly downloads.
This plan is about $99 monthly and $90 yearly. It features 1000 private podcast subscribers, 150,000 monthly downloads, network-level analytics, unlocks host client podcasts, network website, custom analytic grouping, and analytics API access.
Our pick is Buzzsprout. Unlike Captivate, it can offer you a free plan. It is also loaded with more advanced features to help you level up your podcasting experience. They also have different pricing plans you can choose from based on your individual needs.
Although both Captivate and Buzzsprout can give you excellent customer support, we choose Buzzsprout because it has more advanced features you can use to have a successful podcast. It is also ideal for both beginners and professionals in podcasting.
