How to use any podcast host without worries

The question comes up over and over: “Which podcast host should I use?” Especially starting out it’s quite tempting to go with a free offer, after you probably already spent quite a lot of money for a microphone, a mixer and/or editing software.

Hosters with free plans like SoundCloud or Anchor.fm have a common problem: These startups are venture capital funded and eventually have to find a way to make money in the future. If they don’t, your podcast could be offline from one day to another — since you did not pay for the hosting, they don’t owe you anything.
Another drawback is that advanced features, like detailed statistics, are missing from these services.

It might be ok for you at the beginning not to have fancy stats or full control over your cover art or mp3-files. You want to mainly focus on growing an audience, you probably don’t worry too much about all these technical details. Still, you need the flexibility to walk from your host in the future as soon these requirements come up (or your host shuts down), without starting all over again and losing your existing subscribers.

To still maintain full ownership on your podcast, you only have to own one thing: The domain which is responsible for providing the podcast feed!

When it comes to “owning the podcast feed”, many people think of providing the rss feed via a self-installed WordPress site (e.g. using PowerPress). While this setup provides the greatest flexibility, it’s quite complicated and comes with a lot of responsibilities.

To own your podcast feed this is not necesarry. All you need is to set-up a domain via a domain registration service (e.g. NameCheap).
If you own the domain, you have full control!

You own a domain now, great! So how do you own your podcast feed? The concept is quite simple and you can use any existing podcast feed from your preferred provider (e.g. SoundCloud or any other host). All you have to do is to set up a temporary (302) HTTP redirect from your own domain to your feed. You would submit your own domain to iTunes and to any other podcast directory.

Before:
iTunes ⇨ yourpodcast.yourhost.com/rss
After:
iTunes ⇨ feed.yourdomain.com ⇨ yourpodcast.yourhost.com/rss

By applying this concept, podcast-clients and iTunes will always query your own domain first and follow the redirect you have set to fetch the current podcast feed. Please keep in mind not to use a permanent (301) redirect, which would cause your domain not to be queried anymore in the future.
Some podcast hosts allow you to use your own domain with their service (e.g. libsyn) and you don’t need to use a HTTP-redirect. Instead, you can set a CNAME entry.

Let’s say you are not happy with your podcast host anymore, or, worst case, the podcast host shut down without any further notice. If you would not be in full ownership of your podcast feed, you would have to start all over, losing your existing subscribers.

Since you set up a temporary redirect, and your subscribers still query your domain, all you have to do, is to change that redirect to your new feed. Your audience doesn’t even notice the change.

iTunes ⇨ feed.yourdomain.com ⇨ yourpodcast.yournewhost.com/rss

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