Free Podcast Host: PodBean
This is the second, and long overdue, review of free podcast hosting solutions. The last time I reviewed MyPodcast.com. This time I’m taking a look at PodBean.com.
It’s been so long since I signed up at PodBean that I couldn’t remember my username or password. However, PodBean sent me an e-mail oh so long ago that had that information in there. Nice.
PodBean seems to be running an implementation of WordPress MU, the MU stands for Multiple Users. When you sign up your username is your subdomain. The one that I chose was MyThoughts. That’s part of why I didn’t remember what my username was. You would probably choose the name of your podcast as your username, or some derivative thereof.
Design
PodBean has multiple themes to choose from, all of them fairly basic. There are many widgets that you can use for the sidebar including the uber flexible Text widget that will allow you to include things like Twitter streams, or a Facebook badge should you choose to add those.
Media Handling
Upload of all files, for the free service, is handled through the File Manager where you can upload files as large as 30MB. This is the location where you would upload your podcast audio or video file. This is also where you’d upload any images that you’d like to include in your posts. The podcast files were easy to include in the posts after they were uploaded through the File Manager.
Quotas
The free PodBean service is limited to 100MB of upload capacity and 5GB of transfer per month. This is adequate for a new podcast considering you’ll have zero listeners to begin with, except you. There is an upgrade available that brings the quotas up to 1GB of upload capacity and 100GB of transfer per month for $1.99 a month. Not a bad upgrade for the money and gives you a lot more headroom in the capacity so you don’t have to archive old shows to make room for new ones.
Posting Podcasts
So, how easy was it to post podcasts? Extremely easy, especially for anyone that is familiar with WordPress, MU or otherwise. You can add categories, tags, images, podcast media, text and then publish your podcast. Very simple. Comparing PodBean to the last free service that I reviewed, MyPodcast, I’d consider PodBean a large step up in terms of customize-ability and ease of use when making posts. While I didn’t have a problem making posts with either, being familiar with WordPress made the PodBean experience to my liking.
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