Speaker 1: What's up Podcaster? It's Ben here from Podcast Pros with a podcast hosting review and today we're talking all about Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout is an awesome podcast hosting solution that may be perfect for you and your show and today we're going to help you figure that out. We're going to break down Buzzsprout based on three categories. The first being features, second being price, and third being ease of use. And if at any point you are sold on Buzzsprout and you want to try them out for yourself, be sure to use the link in the description box or the pinned comment and you'll get yourself a free $20 Amazon gift card for doing so if you sign up for a paid plan. So let's get right into it and start off with features. Buzzsprout does give you a lot to work with. For starters, like most podcast hosts, they provide super easy distribution to all the different podcast directories so it makes it very easy to get listed where people can actually listen to your show. Custom episode publishing as well as the ability to schedule episodes to be released at a later date. They also have a feature called magic mastering and this feature is actually exclusive to Buzzsprout. So what magic mastering does is if you upload an episode up to Buzzsprout and you've paid for the additional magic mastering service, it actually treats the audio, it levels it out, it makes it sound a lot better. This is huge if you're using two different microphones or say it's an online call. It normalizes the audio, it makes it far more friendly on the ear. So this is an extra paid add-on but it does a ton of the editing work for you and there's quite a dramatic difference before and after when you use magic mastering. For podcasters looking to monetize their show, Buzzsprout provides two different solutions. The first is their exclusive affiliate hub. So essentially what they've done is they've reached out to brands that are highly reputable and have great affiliate programs and they've negotiated for even better affiliate opportunities exclusive to Buzzsprout users. So if you are a Buzzsprout user, you get access to this affiliate hub so you can start making money right off the bat through using these offers. They also have the ability to integrate your show with Podcorn which makes it very easy to find sponsorship for your shows. Buzzsprout also allows you to manage your shows and upload content all from your mobile device. Buzzsprout's very much community driven and this is shown through their content and presence on social media from their blog to their YouTube channel. They have a ton of very helpful resources to really guide you through anything that you'd want to do with your podcast. In addition to this, they also have a Facebook group with over 10,000 members that are all Buzzsprout users that are very eager to help you with anything Buzzsprout or podcast related. Buzzsprout also allows you to create audiograms or what they call visual sound bites which are great tools that you can use to promote your show on social media. All of Buzzsprout's plans also give you a podcast website that can act as a mobile app but it's not a true native app meaning it's not one that you could just go download from the app store directly. Buzzsprout also provides automatic episode optimizations that you don't have to worry about choosing the right file type when you're uploading audio to your host. They also offer on-platform transcription and an embeddable podcast player which makes it very easy to embed specific episodes on certain pages on your website. They also give you the ability to put in chapter marks which makes it very easy to highlight specific points within the episode making it very easy for your listeners to jump to the significant points within the episode. One point of note on that one is that not every podcast directory has this feature built in so it'll only work on those that actually allow it to happen. All of Buzzsprout's plans allow for unlimited team members meaning you can have as many people as you want helping you to manage and operate your show. All their plans also come with unlimited storage. What you get more of as you move up the tiers is more upload time per month. Some recent additions to features on Buzzsprout is you now have the ability to import your podcast stats from your previous host so when you're switching over to Buzzsprout you can actually import all those download numbers so that you never lose the downloads that you've worked so hard to achieve. They've also added some dynamic content features in the form of dynamic pre and post rolls for an episode or all of your episodes and what that allows you to do is change either an intro or an outro to your episode to highlight whatever you're trying to promote at that time. This is great for working with sponsors because you can also offer sponsorship on all of your previous episodes in the form of changing the dynamic pre or post roll. So in layman's terms there's a piece before and after an episode and you can change that live without actually changing the physical episode meaning the episode stays the way it was but you can change the beginning or the end to suit whatever need you have at the time. So that was a lot for even me to say so that definitely speaks to how many features Buzzsprout gives you. So obviously they scored very well in this category we gave them an 8 out of 10 and the only reason they didn't score even higher is for a few nitpicky things. The first is that for every paid plan you only get one show meaning that if you do want to have more than one show you are going to have to pay for its own allotment of hours. You can manage it on the same Buzzsprout account but you do have to pay per show per month and the other things we're being nitpicky about is it would be nice to have a private podcast hosting option. A lot of the other hosts out there do offer this and Buzzsprout doesn't and the final thing that we're really nitpicking here is that Magic Mastering is a feature exclusive to Buzzsprout that we love but it is behind a paywall meaning that if you do want to use that for your show and we highly recommend it you do have to pay for that in addition to what you're paying for already to host your show. So that's the reason it didn't score even higher but 8 out of 10 a very very solid score and we are very happy with Buzzsprout's features. Moving on to price all of Buzzsprout's plans are very affordable and you do get a ton for what you're paying for and they even have a completely free option but with that free option they only host your episodes for 90 days but it is a fantastic way to really experiment and get your hands on Buzzsprout and see if you like it before upgrading to a paid plan but even Buzzsprout's paid plans are all very affordable and you do get a ton of value for what you're paying for. What you get more of as you upgrade to the higher tiers is more upload time so depending on how much content you're going to be uploading per month in terms of time will depend on which tier you have to go for. So with all that being said we still think Buzzsprout has fantastic value regardless of which plan you go for so we gave them an 8 out of 10 when it comes to price. Finally moving on to ease of use this is where Buzzsprout really really shines this is their core focus as a business they want to give you everything that you could possibly want as a podcaster but they only give you a feature if they can make it extremely simple and very easy to use and that is a core focus of theirs through and through with everything that they offer and on top of their features being very straightforward and easy to use they also give you a ton of support in the forms of their YouTube channel their blog and the Facebook group with over 10,000 members so it's unlikely that you'll ever have any problems or confusion with using the service but if you ever do there is a ton of support to help you. So for all those reasons we gave them a 10 out of 10 when it comes to ease of use because this is really their core focus as a business. So overall across the three categories Buzzsprout scored a 26 out of a possible 30 points we are massive fans of Buzzsprout and we think it's a fantastic option for you and your show. Like we mentioned in the intro if you are sold on Buzzsprout for yourself and you want to try them out be sure to use the link in the description box or the pinned comment using that will get yourself a free $20 Amazon gift card if you ever end up signing up for a paid plan. Full disclosure that is an affiliate link so if you do ever upgrade to a paid plan we will earn a small commission for you doing so. We thank you for the support in advance and plus you get that free $20 Amazon gift card so it's a pretty sweet deal for everyone. So after watching this we want to hear from you and hear your thoughts. Are you going to host your show with Buzzsprout? Yes or no? Why or why not? Let us know in the comment section down below and if you're still shopping around for other podcast hosting options be sure to watch one of these videos that just popped up. I'll see you in the next one and happy podcasting.