Likelihood to Recommend Podbean is the best podcast hosting service I have seen so far outside of hosting your own podcast server. It has many tools built in that make hosting and sharing your podcast simple. If you are technically minded, there is good software based on
WordPress to create a cheap solution for hosting multiple podcasts, but you don't get as many features and you have to do all the work yourself. If you want a solution to quickly and easily get a podcast off the ground and out into the world without having to worry about lots of technical issues, then Podbean is a good way to go.
Read full review I think Substack is better for people who want to set up a personal-facing branded website vs people who just want to post random musings every so often. Monetization is better there than any other collective publishing platform as well as organic reach via email. Substack also allows you to build direct relationships with your readers via emails and own them 100% which is great long-term if you use it to pivot to another site or another form of writing/content creation. Substack would be less helpful for someone wanting to write as a part of a group, not individually, or someone who's unwilling to put their personal brand behind their content. It's less optimized for SEO (which other platforms allow you to do) and can be harder to curate content based on your interests (you really have to go in knowing what you want vs finding it on the fly).
Read full review Pros Good user interface Good sound quality Nice design Desktop version easy to navigate Read full review Because it has a very high Domain Authority ranking relevant backlinks in a published article will help make my store more searchable. Substack is very easy to work in. The toolset they provide may not be as extensive as other platforms but it is certainly enough to create a meaningful, interesting post. Substack is very focused on creating a community of writers that support each other. They run an ongoing email campaign that reinforces their focus on building a community of writers. Read full review Cons The UI looks a bit dated The plugin we use for WordPress was broken for years and we had to manually post, but they've fixed it recently. Read full review editor is on the primitive side - it's wysiwyg, but missing some embed options integrate with google analytics percentage cut that Substack takes can become a burden as your revenue grows. Problems scaling. Read full review Alternatives Considered For a personal podcast, I host on
WordPress with a plugin called Seriously Simple Podcasting. This solution is a bare bones solution, good if you know how to manage a
WordPress website and are able to submit your podcasts manually to different apps and services. If you can afford Podbean I would suggest using it because the
WordPress route takes a lot more time and technical knowledge. Podbean takes so much of the hassle and work away from the process.
Read full review Medium is not so good for running newsletter. I find the mail that a user gets is very easily readable. Also as a creator it's very easy for me to track the analytics and monetise my blogs unlike Medium. Blogger is a very old technology. The kind of integrations and the support for Markdown / different media is very great in Substack.
Read full review Return on Investment I can say that since we have used this tool we have not found any negative aspects or that it has generated us. Read full review I haven’t made any money from it Can be disheartening when you realise you’re putting in maximum effort for minimum audience Read full review ScreenShots