Speaker 1: Now, we've looked at a lot of different hosting companies in our head-to-head videos, but there is one that offers a wide array of options from free, that is $0 a month, up to $99 a month for podcast networks. With such a vast array of offerings, you might be wondering if they have something for everybody. Let's take a look. Hey, everybody, I'm Joe Casabona, the Product Evangelist here at RSS.com, and today I want to look at Podbean. They have a bunch of different plans and some interesting features, so you might be wondering why would I go with Podbean over RSS.com or vice versa. Let's take a closer look. Okay, so you can see they have four different pricing plans, ranging from basic at $0 per month to network at $79 per month if paid annually, or $99 per month if paid monthly. Let's take a quick look at some of these plans. So at the free plan, you get five hours total. So they are basically telling you hard stop, five hours, but they don't seem to have a deletion policy, which means that you can keep those five hours as long as you care to. So you don't have to worry about losing your show after 90 days or something like that. Bandwidth, which is essentially how much space or how much data is sent per month, you get 100 gigs, so that should be pretty good if you have up to five hours max. They also say in an FAQ section that the maximum you can upload per day is three episodes. So they're not really limiting the basic plan as far as episodes go, except for that you have five total hours of space. And then they don't support video podcasts until the unlimited plus plan. So everything else, you do get the app, embedded players, you get your own site, distribution on major platforms, you get basic stats for your free account, you don't get a custom design or domain, no monetization, no advanced podcasting. And there's something I want to point out right here before we get to the other plans, which is remove pod bean branding. I can see branding being available on a free plan, right? Like you're using it for free and you're going to get a little bit of free advertisement, right? That's the Hotmail method of saying like this email was sent from Hotmail.com. But if we take a closer look at this pricing table, you can't get rid of pod bean branding until you get to the network level where you're paying $79 a month. And that in and of itself rubs me the wrong way a little bit. Like you're going to tell me that I can do my own custom domain and get fully custom designs at $29 a month. But if I don't want the pod bean logo on my website, I'm going to have to pay $79 a month. That there seems to be a disconnect for me there between like what a professional podcaster might want. And maybe some are happy to promote their host, right? But everything else that I pay for, I can optionally turn off the service provider's logo, right? That's like that should be part of the entry fee I'm paying. And so I don't need to tell people who I'm using. I'm essentially white labeling your service because I'm paying for it. So if we look at the other paid plans, everything else is unlimited or unmetered up to the network, which is three terabytes monthly. I imagine that this is because with a podcast network, you can have any number of podcasts. It's just, again, it's a little strange that we're seeing like we're basically saying here, we assume you're not going to get so big that we're going to have to cap you. So we're just going to say it's unmetered, right? As opposed to, well, if you're a network, you're probably going to hit our internal not spoken limit. And so we're just going to label it here. It's a little strange to me. At Unlimited Plus, you do get video. You also get video at the network level. You get the full slate of stats, features, designs. And then for monetization, again, at the Unlimited Plus, you get all of the monetization features at Unlimited Audio, which is nine bucks a month or $14 if paid monthly. You get the ads marketplace, Apple podcast subscription integration, which we have at RSS.com as well. You have pod ads for dynamic ads, but you don't have the patron program. You can only get that at the Unlimited level for $39 per month or I'm sorry, $39 per month or $29 if paid annually. Then they have some AI features. This is basically like Descript built into Podbean. And so I have opinions about whether or not I'd want to do that. I just think that I personally think that if I am using a tool for podcast hosting or podcast platform management, I want them to be really focused on that and I'll use a different tool for production. And so I feel conflicted when I see a podcast platform trying to do too many things like this, but it also looks like their transcripts are included in this. So it's $6 a month billed annually or $8 billed monthly for three hours per month of usage. So if you want transcripts from them, you'll also have to pay extra for those. We offer those for free at RSS.com. You only get multiple admins at the network level and then everything else you get at the network level. And again, including that remove Podbean branding, which I just think is a little strange. So looking at their plans, they do offer a lot of stuff. But if you're getting it maximally, we'll say at the podcast network level, then you're paying if you don't want to pay annually, you're paying $100 per month for that, which is just a lot. Now, one feature that seems really cool, though the page looks kind of broken, is their live streaming, right, which is this is something that RSS.com supports in beta. There's no interface in the dashboard, but we do support the live stream tag. So it's cool to see that they do support live stream. However, this is also a little bit confusing. If we scroll down to the limits. And we see like, is there how do I monetize it free to set up? It's totally free to set up your live stream. They're limited to two hours and 200 listeners to start. But you can earn points to increase these limits. I didn't see anything on the pricing page about live stream. So this is probably also in in beta. It's just strange that, again, they're charging $99 a month at the network level, and you need to like earn points. Do you can you buy points? Do points get included? It's just like it seems like a really cool feature that is strangely implemented. So I think that if you're going to use Podbean, there are probably a couple of reasons why why you might want to write. One is the free plan. They have a totally free plan for up to five hours. If you know you're going to have a five hour show that you want to live on forever and ever. Great. Use the free plan over at Podbean. But even if you're a podcast network, you're paying a lot to gain access to all of their features. And so, you know, I'm having a little bit of a hard time, I guess, like if you want unlimited audio, $9 per month if paid annually is very competitive and you do get the advanced analytics and some monetization and things like that. But you'll still be stuck with Podbean's branding. So I guess that's a determination you need to make. Now, again, for comparison's sake, if we look at RSS.com's pricing, unlimited episodes, unlimited audio at the network level, which is $20 a month if paid monthly. You get unlimited podcasts, you get deep analytics and lots of other great features that we have to offer. And again, we do support that live stream tag in beta. If you want to start using it, you could always reach out to support at RSS.com. But that's it for this video. I think that Podbean has an interesting offering. They have a pretty generous free plan. If you know you're not going to hit more than five hours, but there seems to be a disconnect between the free and the network plan and some of the features they have to offer there. So that's my thought and opinion. If you have any questions about that or about RSS.com in general, definitely leave a comment below. Be sure to like this video. My name is Joe Casabona. I'm the RSS.com product evangelist. And thanks so much for watching. Until next time, I'll see you out there. Thanks for watching. RSS.com