Best Podcast Hosting Services for Non-Profit Organizations

If you’re a non-profit, not for profit, or charitable organization then chances are you’re hyper focused on the bottom line. Every penny counts in nonprofit budgeting, and podcasting is no exception. The costs of podcasting can add up quickly, with physical equipment, software service subscriptions and editing fees. Of course, that’s all before you upload your content to a hosting service, and send it out to podcast land! Affectionately known as Podland.

So what are the best podcast hosting services for nonprofit organizations? Here’s a quick round up. Some are services with which I have personally experience, some were positively recommended by clients of NJV Media who manage their own podcast.

Top Recommendations: Podcast Hosting Services for NonProfits

Buzzsprout

At $12/month, if you’re a nonprofit starting off in the podcast world, Buzzsprout is probably the best hosting service you can use. At the time of writing this, I use Buzzsprout for all of my podcasts. I need to move them over to Squarespace, but haven’t had time to go through the tedious process (see below). So there’s on Buzzsprout for now, which means I pay for every podcast I manage. It generates a website automatically, in branded colors that I can adjust, and looks awesome. Great for SEO value. Buzzsprout offers beautiful, embeddable audio players for bringing your content onto your main website. It even has tools for included 5 minutes of dynamic (meaning changeable) content before and after your main episode content, tools for generating social media friendly podcast content, transcript options, and so much more.

I highly recommend Buzzsprout for any nonprofit interested in podcasting. You can stop reading now!

Squarespace

If your nonprofit already has a website, and I’m betting you probably do, then Squarespace isn’t for you. But if you’re a small nonprofit, perhaps just starting up, and you want a full service solution, Squarespace is great. You might have noticed my site is a Squarespace site, and I love it. As far as “WYSIWYG” or “What You See Is What You Get” editors go, Squarespace is my favorite. Love the integrations, love the customizations that are possible if you learn some code.

But what about podcasts? Squarespace is built for podcasting from the ground up, its one of the ways they differentiated themselves early on. Lots of independent creators use Squarespace because it can host a website, podcast, shop, and take donations all at once. Squarespace has a built in RSS generator, meaning you can generate an RSS feed for every Squarespace blog you create. That feed can be uploaded (manually, unfortunately) to podcast platforms, which will take it from there. Every time you make a new blog post, the RSS feed will update with a corresponding new episode.

Now, I’ll be frank. The setup process here is tedious. The functionality hasn’t really been updated much, so it’ll say that you’re creating an RSS for Apple podcast. Don’t be put off, you can use that same RSS for any podcast platform. Unlike Buzzsprout, though, you will have to manually submit your RSS feed, once, to every platform you want it on. That includes all the big ones—Apple, Spotify, TuneIn, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon, Stitcher, and Google.

Have more than one podcast? Use a single Squarespace account to create multiple blogs on your site, and each can be its own podcast title! Despite the tedious setup, Buzzsprout certainly can’t match this benefit!

Other Contendors

Acast

Acast has been around for a while, and they pride themselves on having the best podcast analytics in the industry. If having that type of information is super valuable to you, then Acast is a great way to go. But honestly, between you and me, I’m not sure they’re really doing anything different than Buzzsprout, which looks nicer to boot.

Simplecast

Simplecast is a fairly basic podcast hosting service. With subscriptions starting at $15/month it’s affordable, but slightly more than my top pick, Buzzsprout. The automatically generated webpage isn’t as nicely designed as Buzzsprout either, and it certainly doesn’t offer the versatility of a Squarespace site.