Podcasting has become very popular in the past several years, and every year the numbers are growing exponentially. If you’re an expert in a particular field or have a unique perspective to share with the world, a podcast is a great way to get your voice out there.
In case you’re not sure- a podcast is basically an internet radio show. It’s usually just audio, but some creators also record a video feed during the conversation to better connect with their listeners.
You can host your podcast without a website, but to truly build a brand and voice, you want to build a website so your listeners can download your episodes and sign up to your email list.
With a website, you get a lot more control and artistic license over your content as a website is your own platform so you truly set the rules. You decide how many ads you want to play on your episodes, how long episodes stay available, and who can listen to them.
Before WordPress, building a podcast on a website was on the tech heavy side of things, but nowadays – it’s straightforward by using either a free or premium WordPress podcst plugin – let’s go over our top picks!
Seriously Simple Podcasting
The Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin is an easy-to-use podcasting tool that allows you to quickly publish your podcasts to your WordPress site. It has simple settings and a lot of advanced features. It’s free if you host your own audio/video files. You can run multiple podcasts from a single site, and each podcast has its own RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication – allows applications to access updates to websites in a computer readable format), and both audio and video podcasts are supported.
You can easily display a single episode, episode list, or an entire playlist on your WordPress site using a shortcode or a widget.
You also get free add-ons that add some pretty great functionality to your podcast. For example, need statistics on your listeners? No problem, just install the statistics add-on.
The Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin also allows you to re-publish your podcast on your Youtube channel or playlist to reach a broader audience.
Price: Free
PowerPress By Blubrry
You can tell that podcasters developed this plugin for podcasters, it has all the core features to get you started quickly and easily. If you’re a beginner, you can use PowerPress’s Simple Mode, so you don’t get overwhelmed, and as your podcast grows – you can switch to Advanced Mode to use all the features this plugin has to offer.
PowerPress is a potent plugin that even offers SEO tools to improve the discovery of your podcast on search engines and in Apple’s Podcasts directory. Using shortcodes, you can create subscribe pages or add a responsive subscribe widget in the sidebar of your pages.
The plugin supports all major podcast directory platforms, such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Tunein, Stitcher, etc.
PowerPress has multi-lingual support and lets you host multiple podcasts on your website.
Price: Free
Podlove Podcast Publisher
Podlove Podcast Publisher is a free plugin that allows you to easily create, manage, and publish your podcasts on your WordPress website. It comes with an enhanced HTML5 player that supports audio and video formats. You also get powerful analytics where you get metrics on how many listeners tuned into an episode or used the web player (instead of downloading).
You can add chapter information to create structured episodes and share links to any part of your podcast, which any quality podcast should include.
The plugin also has a flexible templating system, so you can adjust the style to match your website.
Price: Free
Smart Podcast Player
Smart Podcast Player is a powerful plugin with tons of features, but easy to manage. It allows you to generate leads by capturing listeners’ email addresses and has a beautiful, customizable web audio player with download/share/subscribe buttons. The mobile player (Smart Track player) is built-in, so it looks sharp on any mobile device. You can highlight a specific episode, sound clip, song, or the entire archive, which makes binge-listening easy.
The best feature is a sticky player, which you can place on top or bottom of your website, and is visible at all times. That way, a visitor can’t miss the highlighted episode and is more likely to give it a listen.
You can configure multiple playback speeds, and the player is compatible with all modern browsers. Your listeners can also download podcasts directly from the player itself.
Price: A free option exists, but if you want all features, it’s $8 per month
Libsyn Publisher Hub
Libsyn is a different tool, where media files (audio, video, PDF, text) are hosted on a third-party platform (Libsyn), and your RSS feed is generated on their end. You don’t use the storage and bandwidth resource allocations at your host, but you can still publish new episodes from Libsyn from your WordPress dashboard. Libsyn lets you to publish content right away or at a scheduled time.
Libsyn Publisher Hub is seamlessly integrated with WordPress and offers mobile apps for iOS and Android customized for your show. The plugin also provides an option to connect your podcast to major podcast services such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, etc.
In addition to detailed statistics, Libsyn Publisher Hub has monetization options to offer premium content to your listeners.
Price: Starts at $5 for 50MB monthly storage
Simple Podcast Press
Simple Podcast Press is a perfect plugin if your podcast is already hosted on Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud platforms. All you need to do is enter the URL to your iTunes or SoundCloud podcast. The plugin will automatically generate unique pages for each episode and insert a mobile-friendly player. The pages contain a full description of the episode, including any images in your podcast feed.
Once completed, each time you publish a new episode – the plugin will automatically update your website.
Simple Podcast Press player can also completely replace the PowerPress (by Blubrry) player site-wide and is compatible with other podcasting platforms such as Spreaker, Buzzsprout and Libsyn.
The included video player has additional options to grow your subscriber list via email opt-in boxes and subscribe buttons.
Price: A single site license is $67
That’s our expert pick on the best podcasting plugins for WordPress. Hopefully, this helps you start your podcast and get your voice out there for the world to hear your unique opinions and take!
