Podbean vs Seriously Simple Podcasting

Podbean is a podcast hosting and publishing service with tools for distribution, audience statistics, monetization, and private or video podcasts. It supports RSS feeds and distribution to major directories. Its iPhone and Android apps cover recording, publishing, statistics, and listening, and episodes can be automatically shared to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, and WordPress. The Basic Free Plan provides 5 hours or 500MB of storage, 100GB of monthly bandwidth, up to three published episodes per day, a 100MB single-file limit, and up to 20 episodes in its RSS feed. Free hosting supports MP3 and M4A files, includes basic statistics, and does not require a credit card to sign up. Paid plans add options such as audio or video publishing, private podcasts, team access, and AI tools for audio optimization, content assistance, transcripts, and podcast creation. The listed Unlimited Audio plan costs $17 a month when billed yearly. Podbean also offers advanced, IAB-certified analytics and monetization features including an Ads Marketplace, dynamic ad insertion, and Apple Podcasts Subscriptions.

Seriously Simple Podcasting is a WordPress plugin for publishing podcast episodes from WordPress when paired with Castos hosting. Publishers can send episodes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and major podcast directories from the WordPress editor, while controlling the podcast RSS feed. A single WordPress site can manage multiple podcasts, each with its own feed. Episode-level statistics show how individual episodes perform. Listed free add-ons include Genesis support, embedded transcripts, player customization, and featured speaker boxes. The plugin is open source, and its page invites issue reports and pull requests. The plugin itself is free; Castos hosting is a separate paid service. Castos plans start at $19 / month, and it offers a 14-day free trial without a credit card. Castos says its hosting stores audio and video on a CDN-powered platform; all plans include triple-redundant backups with cross-site retention and a global content delivery network. Integrations listed by Castos include Zapier, MemberSpace, Shopify, Elementor, Descript, Kit, Paid Memberships Pro, Stripe, PayPal, and MemberPress.