Speaker 1: So far, in our head-to-head videos, we've looked at comparisons between pricing, features, what you get, limitations on plans. But what happens when there are a bunch of bad reviews for a pretty expensive host? Let's take a look. Hey, everybody. My name's Joe Casabona. I am the product evangelist here at RSS.com. And happily, we have not had to comment much on customer service. Most of the services in our space offer great customer service, RSS.com included. But today, we're going to look at Spreaker. And Spreaker has a long, somewhat sordid history, and they're owned by iHeartRadio now. iHeartRadio, of course, has their own suite of shows, very high-level enterprise shows, lots of dynamic ads in those shows. And so in looking at Spreaker, we're going to evaluate when an independent podcaster might want to use them and who they're really targeting. Much like Simplecast, I think we're going to find that independent podcasters aren't really their target audience. Let's start by looking at pricing. So they do have a free plan where you can make money with ads, unlimited episodes. You can upload to iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, no credit card required. You get one podcast and six months of statistics. So I think if I'm going to editorialize here a little bit, six months of statistics and then making money with ads, that would tell me that they're really selling based on CPM or cost per milli, which that pricing doesn't necessarily benefit small independent podcasters. If you're only getting a few thousand downloads, then you're probably looking at less than $50 per ad spot. So you can maybe look at their free plan the same way that you might look at monetization with YouTube, where you really need the audience to make appreciable money. Then their plans go up from there. They have Broadcaster, Anchorman, and Publisher starting at $20 a month for Broadcaster. You get make money with ads and subscriptions, unlimited episodes, private podcasts, in-app support, the Supporters Club tool, which they don't really define here in the pricing table at least, and I'm not really seeing it here on the page either, but that's okay. And then Anchorman, you get customizable player colors and collaboration features. That's $30 more. And I should also mention that you get unlimited podcasts at the Broadcaster level. At the Anchorman level, you get unlimited collaborators. And at the Publisher level, which is $250 a month, you can directly sell and manage your own ads and you get full two years worth of statistics. Again, this is a little bit strange to me that they're cutting their statistics off at a specific point. If you have a five-year-old show, it seems weird to me that you wouldn't be able to see the statistics dating back five years. Now, when we evaluated this initially for our Best Hosting Platforms blog post, there was also the ability to do live shows. This was something that we felt was a pretty unique offering at the time, but they seem to have, if not gotten rid of it, they have deprioritized it because they don't mention that anywhere here. They talk about their ad exchange and the ability to monetize, build a community, and then they do say like trusted podcast analytics. But again, if we're talking about two years max for $250, I question how much of the analytics they're really making available to you. With all of that in mind, who is Spreaker for? I really think Spreaker is for these big shows. They promote a lot of true crime and podcast network shows. And again, iHeartRadio is in and of itself a podcast network. And I wouldn't necessarily say that Spreaker is for independent podcasters. They have great starting features. They have what looks like a pretty good free plan. If you're going to test the waters or do a limited run, maybe you would want to explore Spreaker. But the other thing that I kind of teased and mentioned was the bad customer service. So let's take a look at that. Now if we look at comparison, they have 24 reviews and they are at 3.5, which not bad in and of itself. But if we look at the top rated Spreaker alternatives that are listed here, Podbean, Libsyn, and Buzzsprout, these two have similar reviews. Buzzsprout has way more. Those all rank higher between 4.5 and 4.7. And you're always going to have bad reviews from upset customers. But if we look at some of the reviews here, we have a happy customer here. Then the second review, service is awful, no tech support, difficult time getting in touch with tech support, Spreaker is bad business, I was able to podcast for 10 years until they deleted my podcast without notifying me first, great for a short series, great audio quality. But if we kind of scroll down to some of the bad reviews that are here, product is fine, support is far from fine. They hold podcasts hostage when you're trying to leave. Now I'll recognize that this is from November 2020, so this was before the iHeart acquisition. But reading reviews like this, even if they're few and far between, tend to give me pause, especially when they have a plan that is $250 a month. So my considerations here for if you want to go with Spreaker are, do you want to have a free plan that's monetized essentially by them? Or are you looking for something more feature-rich that is more affordable? I do not think that Spreaker, much like Simplecast, is for independent podcasters. They really appear to be for large podcasts or podcast networks that are looking to leverage CPM for ads monetization. Just for comparison's sake, again, our plans start at $4.99 a month, go up to $14.99 a month if you pay annually for podcast networks. And you do get a lot of the features that Spreaker offers, including monetization opportunities for high-traffic shows. And again, we have the high-traffic show here via dynamic ad insertion. That's really who Spreaker is targeting, is those high-traffic shows, because that's how they sell their ads. If you want to sell your own ads, you have to pay $250 per month for it. So I think that if you want somebody to handle all the ad sales for you, maybe Spreaker is the right way to go. But if you are an independent podcaster looking to put out a great show, monetize your own way, get access to advanced analytics for the entire life of your podcast, RSS.com is the way to go. 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 our features and anything we do here, be sure to leave them in the comments. Like this video, subscribe to the channel, and thanks so much for watching.