Is Podbean Worth It In 2021?

After weeks of research prior to starting our comedy podcast last year, Podbean was the final choice. We decided to try it out for a month, which led to us to commit to a full year with the popular podcast hosting platform.

Podbean is an absolute pleasure to use in 2021. It has been worth every penny, and then some. The ease of use, mass-platform distribution, convenient dashboard and overall professional customization capabilities have made Podbean a clear winner. Podbean is the best podcast hosting platform in 2021.

Podbean has continued to update and improve upon itself in our time using it. In all honesty, every problem we initially had with the host has been updated into pleasure. That sounds strange, but it’s true! Podbean has made it easy and convenient to grow and evolve our podcast without ever worrying about the complicated things that Podbean makes simple.

Is Podbean The Best Podcast Hosting Platform in 2021?

Let’s take a look at what we love within Podbean!

The Best Podbean Features

Podbean is packed full of features. We find that some of them are significantly more useful than others. So in order to cut the fat, here’s what we love the most with our decision to use Podbean permanently. These are the features that would’ve quickly convinced me to choose Podbean.

Ridiculously Easy Podcast Publishing: Both the Episode upload management as well as the distribution service selections are simple and fast. See the full list below, but Podbean makes it easy to upload your podcast, description and art then submit it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Beyond in 5 minutes or less. The ease of use is amazing.
Website Builder Along With The Hosting: Hosting with Podbean comes with an official Podcast Website included. This is super useful for link-sharing, professionalism and Google ranking. It’s actually a huge money-saver too, as it avoids having to go host a website with another service. Plus, they allow you to connect any custom domain you’d like.
Unlimited Hosting Capability: Podbean has no limits on downloads, episodes, recording time, files, art, etc. You’re free to make your show how you want to make it, which was a huge plus for us!
The Podcast Analytics: Podbean makes decently detailed analytics very easy to look at. Even if you’re not a very analytical person, the stats are simple to understand and use to see the growth of your show.
Fast and Convenient Podcast Advertising Opportunity: This is a cool one! Podbean offers two options: PodAds and Ad Marketplace, to give creators the simplified ability to connect their show to advertisers and earn revenue through ads. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you want to know more about the interesting Podbean advertising options: CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
Social Media Sharing: Simple but crucial. Podbean makes it seamless to share our show to all of our social media channels as soon as a new episode drops. You can even schedule it! This saves time and effort, which helps us grow our show.

The Problems With Podbean

Although we really do love Podbean, every nice thing comes with it’s flaws. Now, just because this section exists, does not mean we have actual problems with Podbean as a whole. Remember, we chose them over all other competition out there, because they’re pros far outweigh their cons.

The Flaws:

The Accuracy of Their Metrics: Podbean’s metrics are verified by IAB TECH LAB, so we don’t think these numbers are fabricated. Though we do believe the numbers oftentimes don’t properly reflect certain podcast streaming channels. It comes down to the difference between streaming, downloading and offline listening. Podbean doesn’t really separate this metric, so it makes things a bit complicated. Plus, certain services that use the Podbean feed aren’t properly able to send that information back to Podbean. Thus, depending on where your audience is listening to you, your statistics may be missing out on some serious numbers.
File Replacement Issues: This one is a very understandable issue. But basically: if you replace your podcast audio file after your episode has been published, your metrics will be reset to zero. This makes it very inconvenient if you realize something needs to change in an episode, or you need to add an element onto the tail end of an episode.
Ugly Website Templates: Of course, this one is subjective. Though we found that the basic templates that Podbean offers for your included website aren’t the sleekest. They’re a bit dated, and a bit too blog-looking. You can work it out to look pretty decent if you put some time in, but the UI of the custom sites just isn’t as modern-looking as a lot of website-building competitors.
The Right To Delete: For most, this one is a non-issue. But in Podbean’s Terms of Service, it’s stated that they’re allowed to delete episodes if something promotes them too. Whether that’s tremendous hate, backlash, etc. I think it would take a pretty drastic situation to cause this, but it is something to consider, as certain other podcast hosting platforms specifically mention that they wave this right.

The Podcast App Distribution Options

Podbean’s wide options for podcast distribution was one of the first things that got us interested.
Here’s the official list of Distribution Options:

Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Podbean’s Official App
Spotify
Amazon Music
Audible
Pandora
Tunein + Alexa
iHeartRadio
PlayerFM
Listen Notes

Then, technically these too. There’s a very easy link to attach your Podbean feed to them, though you do have to leave the Dashboard for these:

Stitcher
Podcast Addict
Deezer

And with Podbean’s official list selected, these distribution options are included automatically:

Overcast
Pocket Cast
Castro
Castbox

The Detailed Analytics

Podbean offers very detailed analytics and statistics, which is great!

We most often use the obvious stuff: Episode downloads, month over month comparisons, audience locations, download sources, etc.

But Podbean’s detailed statistics offer many more interesting tidbits of information.

Some of the more interesting analytic offerings are:

User Retention
Downloads By Time of Day
Daily Listeners
User Interactions

We added this aspect to the problems section too. But I’d say it’s a little of both. What Podbean offers is great, there’s just certain other analytics that we’d like to see in an ideal world.

Things Like: Listen Time, More Detailed Averages, Time Stamp Drop-offs, New vs Old Listeners, etc.

The Dashboard Convenience

The Podbean Dashboard got a major update in early 2020, and it was a game-changer! It wasn’t bad before that, but now it’s incredible. The UI is beautiful to look at, and the feature convenience is great too

Once you get into your actual podcast dashboard, things are broken up into 5 sections. Dashboard, Episodes, Distribution, Statistics and Settings. Each section has sub-sections that make it very clear where to go to do everything you may need to do. It’s incredibly user-friendly, even to those that have never managed a podcast before.

The elements we most commonly use in the Podbean dashboard are the Episodes List section, the Statistics, and the embeddable player.

Pro Tip: Podbean let’s you very easily replace information, media and podcast files themselves under Episodes > Episode List > Specific Episode Title

The Consistency As a Whole: Is Podbean Worth It

In conclusion, I’d like to say that the biggest reason for choosing Podbean for us, has been the overall consistency. Podbean has been reliable every week of the last year, with literally zero issues. Episodes are always scheduled and released perfectly, without any unexpected hiccups. Whenever we’ve needed to quickly change or fix something, Podbean makes it easy to do so. It’s just one of those things that are so convenient, that you almost overlook it. But if you’ve ever had to deal with a bad hosting service, you know how noticeable it is when things go wrong. Well, in short, Podbean goes right. We have nothing but great things to say about hosting our podcast with Podbean. We will continue to use Podbean, and we recommend it for any other podcasters out there as well: experienced and inexperienced!