Not sure if you need a WordPress podcast host or not?
If you’re starting a podcast, you’re probably researching microphones, scripts, guests, and more. But there’s another important consideration that you’ll need to make right at the beginning – where you’re going to host your podcast files.
If you want to keep things simple (and keep your costs down), you might plan to just host your podcast files on your existing WordPress site hosting.
There are some great plugins that make that easy, such as the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin.
However, while that approach will kind of work, it’s not ideal, especially once your podcast starts growing.
In this post, we’ll dig into podcast hosting for WordPress users, including answering the question of whether you need a dedicated WordPress podcast host or if you can just use your existing hosting.
Then, we’ll introduce you to a simple solution that lets you benefit from dedicated podcast hosting while still doing everything from your WordPress dashboard.
This is the actual solution that we use here at WP Mayor to power The WP Mayor Podcast, so we’re putting our money where our mouth is. Here’s an example of what it looks like:
Side note – if you haven’t subscribed to the WP Mayor Podcast yet, make sure to do so!
So – do you need a WordPress podcast host? Let’s answer the question!
Can You Really Use Your WordPress Site to Host Your Podcast?
At a basic technical level, you absolutely can host your podcast using your WordPress site and your existing WordPress hosting.
While this is a bit of an oversimplification, a podcast is basically just a bunch of audio files in an RSS feed, which WordPress is more than capable of handling (with the right podcast plugin).
What’s more, a lot of WordPress hosts advertise unlimited bandwidth and storage, which seems like a match made in heaven because hosting and serving up all those audio files is both storage and bandwidth-intensive.
However, this is one of those situations where just because you technically can do something, that doesn’t mean you should do something.
Let’s break down two of the biggest misconceptions of self-hosting your own podcast…
My Host Offers Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth
If you’re using one of the many “unlimited” shared hosting providers, your host probably advertises that you have “unlimited bandwidth” or “unmetered bandwidth”, along with unlimited storage.
Given that your podcasts will eat up a lot of bandwidth when people download them and those audio files will take up a lot of storage space, you might be thinking that you hit the jackpot and you’ll be able to power your entire podcast using those unlimited
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This article was written by Colin Newcomer and originally published on WP Mayor.