Speaker 1: Perhaps the easiest to understand metric when you're considering podcast growth and comparing episodes to other episodes and podcasts to other podcasts is downloads. But downloads is murky business. Every podcast host kind of counts downloads differently. I know of some hosts that wholesale block countries and continents from counting as downloads. And while we do have organizations like the IAB trying to standardize download counting across the industry, you need hosts to opt in, which means that you could get inconsistent metrics depending on what services you use. Which begs the question, should podcast hosts punish you for having too many downloads? Hey everybody, my name's Joe Casapone. I am the product evangelist here at rss.com. And today we are going to do a head-to-head video with Simplecast and look at their pricing and features and how they measure up. Now, Simplecast has a soft place in my heart because they were officially official my first podcast host for my ill-fated 2012 show. And a lot has changed since then. The service has changed hands, changed owners, and we're going to look at how they've changed since then. So let's get started. Look at exactly who they are targeting, what their feature set includes, and what you're really getting for the price. So let's go ahead and take a look. So here is Simplecast's homepage. The first thing I want to point out is that they power podcasts from the world's most prominent brands. We've got big brands here, Nike, McAfee, US Weekly, lots of enterprise level customers. And that's really important as we look at the price. So let's go ahead and take a look. The features, the monetization, and then the pricing. So if we go to the features page, they really promote the player, like the different types of players they have. They promote the fact that you get a website, which is pretty par for the course for most hosts. And they mention one account, multiple shows, multiple collaborators, sharing with recast, and then they jump right to the API. So the thing that jumps, is that they're not really talking about the features that most podcast hosting platforms talk about. They really didn't mention their analytics. They didn't mention number of episodes you get or some of the podcasting 2.0 features that we love so much here at rss.com. If we go over to the monetization page, now they talk about publish, analyze, and grow. They say that podcast monetization, is limited to the professional and enterprise plans only. So let's keep that in mind. But again, they don't make it super clear what they mean by getting paid, generate income from the world's biggest brands. Okay. Automated monetization, inventory controls. So it looks like it's mostly ads, but they don't really spell it out for you. So with that, let's go to the pricing page and see what we can find here. So they have two plans for, independent podcasters basic starting at $15 a month or 1350. If you pay annually 35 a month or 31 50, if you pay annually and everything necessary to launch a podcast in basic two member seats, unlimited storage and downloads distribution everywhere, basic analytics, customize the show website, manage multiple shows. That's cool. But the thing I want to highlight here is 20,000 downloads included per month. Now I get that. A lot of people will feel, that if you're getting 20,000 downloads per month, you're very lucky, right? You're feeling really good about it, but my show gets more than that. And I don't consider myself a big podcast. My show was getting more than 50,000 downloads per month for a long time, essentially before apple changed the way that they count downloads. And this is really the important part of limiting plans via downloads, right? In October, 2023, I would have been priced out of the essential plan for $35 per month. In January 24, I would have been able to use the essential plan because of a change that apple made. So it really feels like while other hosts limit based on space or hours uploaded pricing based on downloads, doesn't, leave a lot in your control. If there is a host that decides or a platform that decides we're going to download the entire catalog every time somebody subscribes, now they could be increasing your downloads. I don't know, 50%, 75%, 200%. I have over 400 episodes. So pricing this way, and not giving a lot, a lot of leeway in the pricing can be problematic for you really quickly. So if we're looking at the essentials plan, you get a little bit more, you get a couple of extra features and web players, but you're still limited to 50,000 downloads per month. It really feels like they're punishing you for success. If we look at the network and shows the professional and enterprise plans, they don't even give you pricing for this. And, that is really a telling sign to me. And what it says is simple cast is not targeting independent podcasters. They have those plans maybe because they've just been around for a long time and that's who they were targeting, but they are very limiting and they are more expensive, which means that they really want the enterprise clients. Look at the people and the logos that they have on their homepage. So I don't think simple cast wants independent podcasters or is for independent podcasters. And if we compare the pricing to rss.com, you'll see that our podcast networks plan if paid annually is one cent less than simple casts most basic plan. And we don't price based on downloads. We price based on features. So again, if you are a huge company, if you're a Nike, if you're an Adidas, if you're Harvard or Yale and you need these really advanced enterprise features, maybe, maybe simple cast is for you. Maybe they have the thing that you need, but if you are an independent podcaster or you're a podcast network that wants to put out a bunch of shows without getting punished for being a huge company, then, well, if you're having more downloads than rss.com is for you. Thanks so much for watching this video. Again, my name is Joe Casabona. I am the product evangelist here at rss.com. If you have any questions about rss.com or our features, leave a comment below. Make sure to like this video. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you out there. Bye.