Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about Simplecast and Simplecast is a podcast host. So in today's conversation, I want to do a review. I want to do a walkthrough. I want to look at the pros and cons, everything. So here's an overview I want you to pay attention to. So let's first talk about the Simplecast. What is it really? So Simplecast, otherwise known as Adios Ventures, was actually founded in 2013. So when you think about this platform, I want you to think about a podcast management platform that helps the podcasters publish, distribute, and analyze their content. So in terms of analytics, we have a great tool here. And so Simplecast was actually acquired at the beginning of COVID. So they are now part of the Sirius family. So this is really good. And so we love the fact that podcasting is really made simple through Simplecast. They give you all the capabilities that allows you, all the features and capabilities that allow you to really produce, monetize, and actually record your podcasting in real time, but also in a delayed fashion. This is really cool. So in terms of operational flexibility, in terms of operational efficiency, Simplecast is really one of the best tools in the business right now. So think about Simplecast as a podcast hosting, distribution, and management tool. The thing is that you can create, record, edit, or monetize with Simplecast, okay? But it is basically, they will help you a lot with hosting, distribution, and management tool. And in terms of pricing, we love the transparency there as well. I was speaking about the pricing a little while ago. But they have... They have a four to five, and in some cases, six pricing plans aimed at independent creators. And they also have a tool for enterprise and pro podcasters. And so one thing that we also love about Simplecast is that you are constantly, you're constantly engaging with your audience in really, in new ways, they give you all the tools and capabilities that allow you to really monetize your podcast and really grow it over time. So in terms of scalability, Simplecast is really great. So you have an audience by Simplecast. Here you have a high power analytics for an affordable price. You have unlimited storage on all plans. So even if you opt for the basic subscription, there is no limit. So this is kind of cool. With Simplecast, you have a media player. So you have customizable, embeddable, and intelligent media player that really delivers a key audience analytics. And you have one click publishing to whenever you're... To wherever your audience listens. So this is really cool. Okay. By the way, boss, welcome back to the show. It's really a pleasure to have you here. Make yourself comfortable. You are going to enjoy today's conversation. Let me give you some smart moves here as you're thinking about reviewing Simplecast. So if you are thinking about making a move right now, and you want to choose whether or not you should choose Simplecast, you got to look at the pricing. Okay. So Simplecast is one of several platforms out there, and you want to look at how much Simplecast is charging. So we're talking about the pricing plans, but which features are included with each tier. Those should be big considerations for you, whether you are a beginner or you're a pro podcaster. Okay. And even if you are a podcaster with an unlimited budget, you want to make sure that you are getting value for money. Also, you want to look at analytics. Before you actually choose a Simplecast, look at the analytics. Okay. You should be able to monitor and measure your podcast performance, and Simplecast offers that, but you want to really make sure that the level of granularity that you're looking for, how granular you want the data to be, is actually what you see in a Simplecast dashboard. Also, ask yourself, do you have a media player in Simplecast in terms of having an embeddable media player? Because what you want to do is you want to share your content with your listeners beyond the major listening platform, because otherwise, how can you scale? Okay. If you just restrict yourself to the major listening platforms, you will never be able to sort of like broaden your viewership and your audioship, okay? Your listenership. You also want to think about file hosting. So you want to make sure that Simplecast offers the compatible file formats that directly correlate to the quality of audio that you will be able to upload and share with your listeners. Okay. And so you want to look at lossless file formats, for example, because lossless file formats are able to preserve the integrity of your recording over time. And so you also want to look at distribution. So can Simplecast actually help you? Yes, they can. But you want to make sure that they are actually helping you in the specific format of distribution that you are looking for, for your specific podcast, because every podcast is different. Every podcast host is different. So you want to make sure you are really covered there. Also in terms of monetization. So you want to be able to monetize your podcast directly. You want to be able to monetize your podcast directly from your, from your podcast hosting platform. Okay. And Simplecast does allow you to do that, but you want to make sure that you, you are having all your, all the angles covered when you go with the Simplecast. By the way, boss, I want to quickly remind you of today's topic. We are having a conversation about Simplecast. This is a Simplecast podcast host review. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about pricing here. So as you can see on the screen here, you can see that the Simplecast is really, really straightforward. I mean, we love that a lot when it comes to pricing, because they are transparent and not trying to really sort of confuse you. And you know, they're not really giving you like the whole thing about yes, you know, call us and then we'll talk to you about the price. Now they're giving you a ride straight off the bat. They were telling you, Hey, listen, we have two, two types of pricing. We have essential and we have basic. Okay. So basically the thing is that if you are an independent podcaster, you, you want to go with the essential. I mean, the basic is kind of cool, but the essential is way better. Let's let's, let's dig a little deeper here. So when you talk about the basic, you have unlimited storage and uploads distribution to everywhere that your audience listens, you have customizable podcast website with a custom domain, one additional team member. You have a embeddable media player. You have a request, a request capability for you and your listeners, a secure site and access feed, and you have 20K downloads included per month. So this has 20K, 20K. So if you're, if your listenership is a little sort of like a limited, then 20K is okay. But once it's a, it expands 20K is nothing. You also have email support. So that's for the basic plan and that will cost you 15 bucks per month if prepaid annually. And but if you are actually, uh, if you, I mean 15 bucks a month, if you're on a monthly billing. Um, and your billing, you're paying 1350. So you'll see like 10%. Then you have the essential, the essential plan is actually, uh, they're charging you like a 35 bucks per month if paid monthly. But if you are on an annual billing, you are paying 31 50. So basically here again, you are saving 10%. Okay. And so for essential, you have everything in a basic plus two additional team member permission sets to new web players, mini and show you have custom side page. You have episodes. You have a comparison tool. You have country and state location analytics, unique listener, uh, reports, web player analytics. You have 50 key downloads included per month. So this is really great. Now, if you're interested and you want to go a little further, they have the growth and the professional enterprise plan, but those you have to contact, uh, you have to contact the company. Simplecast to have more like a better idea about this. So this is really possible. I want to talk to you about the pros and cons of a simple cast. And if you are considering on this podcast host, so let's first talk about the pros here. So you have a multiple shows, you have team members and permission levels. You have one click publishing. It's very easy in our view to podcast your, uh, to actually migrate your podcast to simple cast. This is really good. You have intelligent and customizable web player capability. You have easy social media sharing. So this is really fantastic. So if you are an independent podcaster. Or you were a newbie for that matter, you will love this sort of intelligent and customizable web player. You have also the podcast websites that really comes with a simple cast a host. You have sleek and easy to use capabilities. You have private podcasts. So this is really fantastic. Now I want to really detail. I want to really elaborate a little bit on the, some of the other pros here. You have team members and permission levels. So depending on your subscription plan, you are able to invite team members to collaborate with you on simple cast. You're also able to set. Different permission levels and limit access and powers accordingly. And so what we love about the migration is that you are able to like with simple cast, you are able to, uh, like you have a show migration really, really done really fast because simple cast was designed to ensure there is a zero heavy lifted required to move over to simple cast. So you can actually get things done a lot faster. Let's talk quickly about some of the cons here. So simple cast is definitely not perfect. So they have some disadvantages also. So right now they do not support video podcasting and you have lost less file formats are automatically transcoded, which can be a little, a little, it can be a little bumming if you want to think about it, but it is what it is. There are transcoded to MP3 and you have a simple set of features here. I mean, they have to go a little bit more in terms of a sophistication right now. It's a, it's more simplistic and you cannot monetize directly through a simple cast, and this is, uh, another bummer. You have download limits. So the download limits may actually represent a major con for bigger podcasters or shows there are on an accelerated growth trajectory. And it's more expensive when you really think about it because with the most basic subscription beginning at 15 bucks per month, simple cast is not the most affordable option out there. Additionally, if you've got, let's say a more than one show on the go and want to manage them all from simple cast, you will wind up actually with a hefty monthly bill. By the way, boss, I want to quickly, uh, walk up. I want to quickly, uh, remind you of today's topic. We are having a conversation about simple cast this, so this is a simple cast podcast host review. Let's talk about the features here. So if you think about simple cast, what are the features you want to pay attention to? So you have recast what we love about a simple cast. You have the recast feature. Yeah. You have an, an intelligent web player. You have a simple cast, a 2.0 API. So let's quickly talk about that. So when you talk about recast, so recast is simple cast, social media and discovery tool. So it makes it very easy to create snippets of audio accompanied by a visual elements that are perfect for sharing on social media. So your listeners can make recast videos straight from your embeddable media players, but you can also do so straight from your simple cast account. You can choose a specific audio clip. Add an image or cover art, download and use it to promote your new episode, not a problem. And with simple cast, you have an intelligent web player. So this is really good. So there are three types of simple cast web like media player that are available on different plans. You have a standard simple cast audio player. You have the simple cast mini player, and then you have the simple cast show player. So when you think about the, the standard simple cast out of player, this is actually available on all simple cast subscriptions. This is the mobile friendly. It includes a share and subscribe button. You have a, you're the, you have the ability to allow listeners to toggle the playback speed. It really also works best with all forms of recast capabilities. So your audience can click anywhere to create one. And for the simple cast mini player, this is available on the essential plan and above it works well with, for sharing private episodes, because there is no share or subscribe button by default. And you also have the simple cast show player. So this is also available on the essential plan and above this displays all of your published episodes. It's really a dynamic media player. So it automatically updates with your newest episodes. So this is really great. So there is a landscape and a portrait option. And so you can choose which one fits best in your, in your strategy. And so when you think about simple cast, I want you to think about a tool that's best for podcasters obsessed with data and, and analytics. So. If you're on the market for a focused podcasting tool, the values, uh, let's say data and analytics simple cast is really great for you. So we think that it's a great, it's a powerful platform that will trim, that will streamline your distribution and management processes. And also the high power analytics and audience insights are ideal in our view for podcasters looking to really understand their podcast performance. Speaker 1 Let's talk about the setup here. So how do you get started with a simple cast? Well, pretty simple. Okay. Once you have recorded, uh, the way you add a new episode to a simple cast is pretty straightforward. Once you have recorded your podcast episode and you are ready to publish, you basically want to go to your dashboard and click add episode in the top right corner. And as product prompted, you want to fill out your episodes detail, including the title, the title, the slug, the episode type, the season. Okay. And the, the other episode number, and you want to upload the audio file. Also don't forget though, you need to insert the episode summary and notes, and then you want to, you want to upload the episode art and any keywords that you want to tag your episode with. And so this is kind of cool. And so the rest of the, the rest of the process is pretty straightforward. And so you are able to, so when you're done, you just click publish and, uh, you were, you were really ready. One thing I want to say here is that we love the fact that with. Simplecast, you have, uh, a great UX and UI, uh, experience. And so you were able also to distribute your podcast with Simplecast. So once you have set up your podcast on Simplecast, you will need to manually submit your shows RSS feed to each platform that you want to publish to. So once you've been approved, you'll be automatically, you know, able to, uh, distribute your show going forward. You are also able to migrate your podcast to Simplecast. So the thing is that, uh, there are capabilities that are embedded within Simplecast that allow you to do so. You also have a Simplecast analytics. So what we love about, I think I just said that, that if you are an analytics or sort of, uh, sort of a ways that you love everything about the data, you will love Simplecast. And the cool thing is all Simplecast, all Simplecast players have access to analytics through the overview section of the audience page. So here you will find things like, uh, all time total downloads. So this is really cool in terms of analyzing your traffic and also your listenership over time. You can also see downloads today. In the last seven days, the previous seven days and so on and so forth. And you can actually slice and dice the data the way you want it. You have unique listeners for the last seven days. You have downloads by location. You have popular times of day. You have top episodes and listening methods. So you do have a series of capabilities that allow you to know exactly what's really happening and more detailed audience insights can be found on the audience page, which is really in our view available. I mean, it's really valuable for all kinds of subscribers. So, uh, that's, that's really cool. So you have a lot of different types of subscribers, but, uh, particularly the essential and growth plan subscribers. So you have location, web players, you have a device types, and you also have network type. I want to talk to you about the rivals here. So when you think about Simplecast, what are the rivals you should really think about here? So, uh, anchor and Simplecast. Simplecast fundamentally aim to provide podcasters with different things. But if you want to, uh, compare and contrast Simplecast to, uh, anchor, okay. So anchor is really, uh, the market ties in the entire podcasting process in our view here. So from creation to monetization, you think about the, I want you to think about the anchor as in one-stop shop. And so, but when you think about Simplecast, they are great when it comes to hosting, distributing and managing your podcast. Okay. So you don't have. You don't have to create a podcast through a Simplecast. What about Simplecast versus Buzzsprout for instance? Well, basically, uh, Simplecast and Buzzsprout in our view are extremely similar in that they both exist to help you host, promote, and monitor your podcast. And just as with a Simplecast, Buzzsprout gives you a customizable media player, helps you migrate your show easily and distribute your content in one click. And so since the features are fairly similar, if you're choosing between them, it's probably a matter of personal preference. And so the biggest difference though, is the upload limits. So Buzzsprout's most affordable processing plans at 12 to 15 bucks per month comes with a three hour upload limit per month. This could be a serious constraint for podcasters who are, who are likely to upload frequently. What about Simplecast versus SoundCloud? Well, uh, you know, Simplecast was built specifically with podcasters in mind. So by this measure, it will always win out against SoundCloud, which is aimed at all kinds of creators. The specific benefit of using SoundCloud is that is in it, is it basically in itself a social networking platform and discovery tool. So in that sense, it could be a hugely beneficial to your podcast visibility. However, because it's not really built for podcasters, you will run into trouble when trying to migrate your podcast to SoundCloud. For example, the process is not automated. So you, if you want all your previous episodes on SoundCloud, you will have to manually import each one. In addition, with the upload limits starting at three hours, podcasters who produce a lot of content will feel, will actually feel restricted. What about the Simplecast versus Podbean for instance? Well, uh, similar to Anchor, Podbean pitches itself as a one-stop shop for podcasting. Unlike Simplecast, you're able to create, promote, and monetize your show directly from pod, from Podbean. So it is what it is. So what is our verdict here? So is a Simplecast really worth it? Is it, is it really a legit? The answer to those two questions is yes. Simplecast is really worth it. Simplecast is really legit. Okay. So objectively speaking, Simplecast is a very powerful platform. It really lives up to its name and does a simply, uh, the hosting distribution and management of your podcast. Okay. So. All of these insights in our view are also a level above what most other podcast hosting platforms have on offer. So think about Simplecast as the name implies, a tool that allows you to simply cast, simply do your podcast. Okay. And however, when looking at the Simplecast holistically, its functionality, uh, feels a little lackluster when compared to other competitor platforms. While Simplecast is one of the more expensive, uh, platforms when it comes to hosting right now. The features are comparatively limited, especially, uh, in every, everything around monetization. Okay. So if you're looking for, I mean, Simplecast is great when it comes to, uh, detail, detail analytics, when it comes to granularity data, granularity. So if you're looking for in-depth and detailed data, Simplecast definitely has you covered. However, if you are on a, let's say you are on a title budgets or looking for a platform hosting a podcast hosting platform, then we'll do more than simply host and distribute your podcast. You probably a better place, uh, when it comes to, uh, you can, you can look at, uh, other platforms like broadband for instance, or anchor, you know, for that matter. So bottom line here is what you want to think about Simplecast as a tool that is great for podcast hosting, distribution and management tool. So when it comes to a monetization, when it comes to creation, podcast creation, or podcast monetization, Simplecast is not really going to help you that much. Okay. But now as of the, as of the date of this show, you cannot record a podcast with Simplecast. So if you want to host your podcast or Simplecast, you need to record your podcast audio first, then upload the recording to the platform. Okay. And, uh, but Simplecast does publish to all the major listening platforms or whatever else your audience turns into your content. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for your attention. I really appreciate it. In today's conversation. I gave you a quick Simplecast a podcast host review. So let's quickly recap here. So I spoke to you about the overview, the smart moves, the price, the pros, and cons, the feature is the setup the rivals, and finally diverted. Thank you so much. God bless you. I'll see you next time. Until then remember, stay marvelous. Thanks for watching.