If you’re reading this, that means you know the importance of having a website for your podcast and your brand.
If you don’t know the importance of a podcast website, then let me tell you – it’s important.
I think I’ve just found the Best Website Builder for Podcasts in Podcastpage. It has the majority of features and tools that all podcasters need to best promote and brand their podcasts. Any content creator knows how hard it can be to grow their audience. Websites allow podcasters to efficiently promote and expand their podcast on a centralized, customizable platform. Oh, and there’s no coding needed either.
Even though it’s important to have a podcast website, not all podcasts have one. The biggest barrier of entry has been the extra time and skill it takes to build a website with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, or any other content management system. And they’re not specialized for podcasts either, so their site designs are not optimized for you.
Yes, podcast hosts like Buzzsprout will give you a simple page that lists all your podcast episodes, but that’s not a website and it’s not customizable to show who you are and why people should listen to you.
Podcast Website Advantages
Before I get into my thoughts and details of Podcastpage, I want to briefly discuss the advantages and benefits of having a podcast website.
Most of this will be grabbed from the step-by-step guide How to Start a Podcast, so do read that how-to later to understand how a website fits into the grand podcast journey.
- Control of your Brand: With a podcast website, you’ll be able to control color schemes, design layout, any of the text, putting in show notes, photos and images – you get the idea.
- Feature Only Your Podcast: Don’t get lost in the sea of endless cover art in podcast directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Feature your podcast and only your podcast.
- Get Found with SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Gain new listeners from search engines like Google with an SEO optimized website. People search in Google for podcasts with your targeted topic keywords and your podcast website pops up in search results.
- Direct Relationship with Target Audiences: Website visitors can subscribe to your podcast and a newsletter at the same time on your site. When you post a new episode, you can tell your subscribers to go listen. And now they have a way to contact you. It’s no longer a one-way conversation.
- Podcast Monetization: A website you control will give you the ability to monetize your podcast more easily. Whether you want to sell merchandise or create a members-only area, you’re able to monetize with a site you control.
With all that in mind, let’s see how Podcastpage stacks up to fulfill those podcast website needs.
Connect and Import Podcast to Podcastpage Account
After you sign up for a Podcastpage Account, you’ll be presented with a 2-step setup wizard pop-up.
Step 1 – Add Podcast
The first step is to find your podcast. It seems like you can put the name of your podcast or other keywords and it’ll search directories for your podcast.
If you can’t find it, not to worry. Once you click the link in the same pop-up to add your RSS Feed URL, an input field will appear for you to enter your RSS feed for your podcast hosting company.
Step 2 – Select Website Theme
They currently have 4 themes for you to choose from.
There’s not a huge difference between the four themes. Seems like it’s mainly two layouts with a light and dark option for each, but that’s ok because you’re able to customize the design in the Customize section next.
After you’ve selected a theme, you’ll have the option to Start Customizing, set up your Domain Settings, or View your Site as a Podcastpage site.
A couple tips:
- If you go to Customization here, you’ll be able to view your site there too because any customizations you make will be a Live Preview.
- Do Domain Settings as your last step. Set up and design your site first and then connect the domain name when you’re ready to share it.
They also give you the option to Share your new site, but I feel it’s a bit premature. At this point of the process, you’ve just imported your podcast episodes and selected a theme. But you have no idea what your site actually looks like at this point.
I don’t think I saw the option to share the site through social media from the main dashboard either. They should have it in the Account & Support settings area at the least.
Podcastpage Features
The dashboard is simple and clean. From here, you’ll be able to access all the different features and integrations.
Domains
This section is where you’ll be able to set up your custom domain after you’ve finished designing and filling out your site.
Site Name looks like it’s only for your reference in the sidebar in the My Site list.
You can change the Branded Podcastpage Subdomain to whatever you want to name it. I was able to change it a number of times. That’s actually piquing my interest to see how they’re doing that, while keeping SEO clean without 4-5 redirects if I changed the subdomain 4-5 times. And what happens if someone then tried to register one of my old subdomains, would that be allowed? For most people it doesn’t matter as long as they can keep changing the subdomain for whatever reason.
Custom Domain will require you to create at least one DNS record at your domain registrar or wherever your DNS is managed. If you haven’t added/edited DNS records before, you might want to have someone do it for you. Podcastpage has good documentation too if you want to DIY it.
Podcasts
The Podcasts section is where you’ll be able to manage the list of podcast episodes. You’ll be able to edit the information on episodes from here.
All the episode information is the podcast metadata that Google and other search engines will be looking for SEO. This is something that many of those podcast hosting sites won’t be able to really give you.
One note, BE CAREFUL if you’re going to Edit any episodes’ information because your RSS feed will stop syncing. That makes sense because I believe Podcastpage is just importing the feed and not syncing in both directions. A two-way sync should require an integration with your podcast host.
They do have a Headliner integration to create short video clips with waveforms. You’ll see the Headliner icon down near the bottom of the Edit Episode page. You can share those video on Instagram and other social networks.
Customize
This is where you’ll get to design and customize your website. You’ll have many options to choose how the home page with the list of episodes should look.
I like how the Customize area is designed similar to WordPress. It’s familiar to many people because that’s probably the go-to for most people when creating a website. If you’ve used WordPress before, you’ll pick up Podcastpage quickly.
The design options are plentiful, so you have a lot of control over your designs and customizations.
One other thing I checked was the website on mobile devices, both Android and iPhone. They offer a responsive web design that works really well.
Pages
Create additional web pages in the Pages section. These are more for static pages like the About and Contact Us pages on most sites.
You’ll notice I have a ConvertKit page there. That was automatically when I integrated Podcastpage with ConvertKit, my email service provider for my mailing list, more on that below.
An idea for static pages would be individual host pages so not all the co-hosts and team members are crammed together on one About page.
Blog
You’ll be able to create blog posts here just like with Pages. The text editor offers similar features to WordPress and other blogging platforms.
The main difference between the Pages and Blog sections is that any new blog posts will automatically update to the Blog roll (the URL of domain.com/blog). Pages are single pages that don’t won’t automatically show up anywhere unless you explicitly share it, like in the Menu bar.
Integrations
Podcastpage has a number of Integrations, and they’re going to continue adding on more.
I tested out the ConvertKit integration to allow website visitors to subscribe to my email list. It’s a nice integration as it allows visitors to subscribe to a newsletter while also subscribing to a podcast.
All that was needed to integrate with ConvertKit was to embed some HTML code from ConvertKit’s end. I’m sure the integration is similar with Mailchimp if your email marketing list is managed there.
It’s great to have the Google Analytics integration too so you’re able to see the amount of traffic you receive and how they interact with your page.
I like that I don’t need to do any actual coding with the integrations. The most I have to do is sign on to the platform I want to integrate with, copy an ID number or some code, and paste it in Podcastpage. With WordPress, all these integrations would require installing plugins or some coding knowledge if you’re going to embed code directly into your site.
Documentation
Podcastpage has a good help area in Documentation. It’s getting rarer to see good help sections with smaller companies because they’re focused on product development. There are pros and cons to that though.
The pro to teams focusing on software development is they’ll be able to iterate more as creating good documentation takes time. Even writing quick reviews like this takes a lot of time. Newer features will come out faster.
The con to not having good product documentation is the user experience can be horrible. I don’t think I’ve ever come across any platform where I didn’t go to the Help section at least once. The team could be quickly overwhelmed with customer support issues. They’ll also lose customers for life.
So it’s a balance between continual development and support. I feel if you can offer a good user experience with product and customer support, you’ll have a more engaged audience.
That’s the same with podcasters and listeners. If the podcaster is interacting with listeners, there’s going to be a more loyal audience.
Links and Redirects
The last section of the Dashboard is the ability to add short-links and affiliate links to your website. It allows you to cloak the target URL you want people to go to because affiliate marketing links can get long and messy.
For example, this isn’t a sponsored post, but I did sign up to be a Podcastpage affiliate because I like the product they’re providing and think that it’ll be useful to many people out there. If people clicked on my affiliate link and didn’t purchase, I received nothing.
If people were to sign up for a paid plan through my affiliate link, I would receive a commission, but there’s no extra costs to the person.
The external link I created for the affiliate link is cleaner as: https://daztech.com/podcastpage
Otherwise, the original affiliate link is really long with a bunch of numbers, letters, and special characters. The link is also easier to share as I can just say the URL and it’s easier to remember.
External links are also great if you have other social networks that you promote on. You can create a /youtube link to your YouTube channel if you have one. Using the Google Analytics integration, you should be able to see how many clicks you’re getting of people going to your YouTube page.
Danger Zone
One last mention is for the Danger Zone. That’s what you’d click if you wanted to delete or reset your website.
What’s Missing and Future Plans
As I was digging into the platform, I had a few questions about what they had planned in the future. It’s always something I’m interested in because it helps to see that there’s a roadmap the team is following and that they are looking to grow.
These are the low-hanging fruit that I feel would help podcasters with growing their brand, their audience, and help generate revenue.
eCommerce
I asked about eCommerce functionality because it’s a great way for podcasters to monetize their podcast with merchandise, digital downloads, consultations, one-hour sessions, etc. If you can think of a product or service that you can provide, you’re going to need eCommerce functionality.
Podcastpage told me they have it on their roadmap. For now, they “have some users who use an external embed/iframe from the eCommerce provider.”
That’s where those extra pages can come in. Or you can create an external link to your eCommerce store.
Membership
A Members-only area is a great feature to have to benefit the Podcast and listeners. It allows you to create a community around your podcast and you can interact directly with them. Your audience will be more engaged.
The podcaster can also set up a paywall to create exclusive, special episodes and other content for paying members.
Podcastpage said that the Membership feature is also in the roadmap.
More Themes and Integrations
Those are also all in the pipeline too. They’re going to give you more flexibility in the future to make things easier for podcasters to grow their brand.
Podcastpage Pricing
The pricing for Podcastpage is actually really reasonable for all that you’re getting. Like many products and services, they have three tiers:
- Personal, $8/month – Great for the one podcast shows
- Podcast Network, $18/month For up to 3 websites and multiple team members
- Enterprise, $39/month – For up to 7 websites
Those are monthly rates, but if you pay yearly, you’ll only need to pay for 10 out of 12 months of service. You get 2 months for free.
It’s a good deal as Podcastpage is dedicated to building websites for podcasts. With other website builders and platforms, none are made to showcase podcasts like Podcastpage. See your other website options in this chart below.
For $6.67 a month, Podcastpage is a great deal for a website builder dedicated to podcasts. Bluehost is a web hosting provider that will allow you to install a WordPress site. Bluehost’s web hosting plans start at $3.95 per month, but that goes away the next time you renew.
Final Thoughts on best website builder for podcasts
Podcastpage offers a great website builder and it seems that they’re building out features rather quickly that’ll directly help. I didn’t see anything that wouldn’t be useful for podcasts. Everything there will help podcasters.
If you have a podcast, try out Podcastpage.io (affiliate link) on their 14-day trial.
You don’t need to be tech-savvy either. If you didn’t catch it as you went through the features, there’s no coding that needs to be done at all. There are options to add CSS code if you want to have certain designs, but it works great out-of-the-box already.
