No I don't mean that as in the people behind the shows, but rather the hosting platforms themselves. Also to anyone suffering a real loss, then my heart goes out to you. This post is meant for educational and creator adaptation purposes.

I wanted to make this post mainly because I am actively thinking about moving from my great host to Substack. I use Transistor.fm, and they’re a great company. Reliable host, and not to mention one of the only modern approaching tools.

However this being said they don’t offer anything particularly unique besides unlimited podcasts, which I admit is pretty enticing.

The problem is that the website builder is only slightly better than their competition, and I don’t feel like it does any better than Substack at this point. I also want to make blog posts for each of my interviews as well.

Substack has quickly gained in popularity, and I feel that it is the closest thing we have to an all in one CMS. Meaning written, audio, AND video in one place.

My problem is that even though I’ve been making content for a long long LONG time, the income from it is still pretty small. Not enough to even pay for my website hosting, let alone my podcast hosting. Meaning that all comes out of pocket.

Transistor isn’t cheap either, at $200 a year, that adds up. Recently I moved my ghost cms hosting from Ghost Pro to Magicpages, saving me 75%.

Is Substack a good Podcast Host?

I would say it is decent, but comparing all hosts you gotta realize just how behind most of the podcasting tools are.

Over the last week I have an idea for a post in my head, that I’ll probably get around too here soon. That being “The Echo Chamber of the Podcast World”, as I grow more and more frustrated by the closemindedness of a lot of podcast creators I’ve seen.

It is not just the podcast world, as writers and youtubers can be this way too. However it seems that podcasters in particular have an aversion to the change stronger than the rest. Take for example the adoption of video podcasts. Many in the space don’t believe that they ARE “podcasts”, as they believe in an audio-only purity.

I bring this up because look at Substack. While their team fails to communicate features at all. They added podcasting a few years back, and now video and livestreaming. However an amazing feature that no one seems to know, is that it will automatically cut out your audio from your video/livestream, and turn that into a podcast!

Please note: If you make a livestream on here, there is almost always deadspace as Substack fails to end the stream on time. Sometimes only a couple minutes, but for a couple of mine they were TWENTY MINUTES. Meaning you should check before posting to youtube or podcast feed!

I should also note that the actual starting of a podcast on here is a bit tedious, at least in comparison to how simple other tools have done like Transistor.

Over and over I keep seeing Libsyn or Buzzsprout, which to me are very archaic in their approach. Either in user interface, pricing, or simply how they conduct the business in the creator economy. Perhaps all of the above.

This is why I think that tools like Substack are quickly over-powering the traditional platforms.

This is a good time to shoutout https://www.flightcast.com/ as well. I am not sponsored by them, but they are the first video podcast hosting platform.

What should you do?

I’m not an economist, and I don’t know the income of these tools. They’ll probably be “fine” for a while, but I am saying in the grand scheme of things they are becoming irrelevant.

You should find a host you like, and if that is an old style company like Podbean or Bluberry then more power to you. If you want to not have to pay for simple hosting, then go with one of these newer options.

I’m personally highly considering moving my shows over, and I already created the publications for them at this point. I think my gut is telling me to move, but I’m just not sure if I want to put that much faith into Substack yet.

Edit: I have actually moved over to Substack for my shows, I do not post the videos from substack to youtube. Thus I post the video to substack AND youtube separately, and eventually in batches I update the audio to video on Spotify. Yes it is annoying to upload 2-3 times. However I didn't trust Spotify to do a good job hosting, and I want to take advantage of the Substack notes network.