Captivate Podcast Hosting Review

[00:00:00] Hey and welcome to episode 59 of the Podcasting Simplified Podcast. My name is Ross and

[00:00:06] today we are going to take a look at captivate the podcast hosting platform that came out

[00:00:14] last year, not too long ago and they're doing some really cool things and they in the

[00:00:19] podcast hosting space to help you get your show out there, help you grow your show,

[00:00:23] help you make money, all kinds of stuff. So if you want to at any time go check it out,

[00:00:28] you sign up for a free trial, you can go to podcastinsights.com slash captivate and that

[00:00:37] will send you over to their page and that is an affiliate link so I do get a commission

[00:00:42] at no extra cost to you if you do use that. So captivate is doing some really cool things

[00:00:47] in the podcasting space and like I said they're one of the newer podcast hosting providers but

[00:00:53] the team behind them has been in the podcasting space for a really long time almost since

[00:00:59] the beginning and they're really help it. They're really focused on helping you grow your

[00:01:04] podcast and want your show to succeed and they have features that help you do that. So we'll

[00:01:09] start with a few of the features beginning with the new show, kind of dashboard and walk

[00:01:16] through. And so when you create a new show, you'll go through a series of eight steps to make

[00:01:21] sure that all the info that's required by the directories like Apple and Spotify are included

[00:01:26] and they also provide some helpful tips along the way to make sure you're doing things correctly

[00:01:32] and make sure you understand what you're doing. So we'll kind of run through these first steps.

[00:01:36] So the first one is show title and subtitle or a short description and they give some little

[00:01:43] tips on naming as you go through next is podcast cover art. And actually when I first tried out

[00:01:50] captive eight, this step you could not skip. You had to upload your cover art but and that was

[00:01:56] one of my complaints is maybe you didn't have that yet quite yet or you know, you just wanted to get

[00:02:02] through the process and then and create that at the end. Well, they changed it and now you can skip

[00:02:08] this step and come back to it later which is really nice. So uploading your podcast cover art

[00:02:13] or step two, step three is the show description is a little bit longer description that shows up

[00:02:19] in the podcast apps and step four is podcast categories where you choose your main category that

[00:02:29] will be used in Apple podcasts and then your second and third categories. And then miscellaneous

[00:02:35] settings are things like is it a season based podcast? Is there explicit language?

[00:02:43] And then you can set the amount of episodes in your feed and then one feature that I haven't seen

[00:02:49] in other hosts is the ability to have your episodes be sorted either newest first or or oldest first and

[00:02:57] you can choose that and then the default in the apps will will read it properly. This was kind of

[00:03:03] cool. And then there's a time zone setting and a default publish time so that when you go to publish

[00:03:08] all that stuff's already set for you and you just kind of don't have to worry about that when

[00:03:14] when going to schedule and publish your episodes. And step six is a donation link which is optional

[00:03:21] so a lot of times it shows up as a support this show link but some apps will actually let you

[00:03:27] customize the name of that link and they let you do that as well. Step seven is author name and email

[00:03:35] and so you know you want to make sure you use an email address that's active and that you

[00:03:41] regularly monitor so that you can get communication. Let's say you submit to Apple they'll send an email

[00:03:47] to that email address so you want to make sure that you you have access to that. And then step

[00:03:53] eight is the RSS feed info and another cool feature here is that you can customize it. It's not just

[00:03:59] a default string of numbers or letters or whatever that a lot of hosts use. So kind of a little thing

[00:04:07] but I like it so you can actually put in the you know a branded feed URL. Next is show settings

[00:04:16] so those are the eight steps to create a podcast now we'll go into some other features that are

[00:04:22] available. So show settings where you customize all the info you just entered plus some other stuff

[00:04:27] like setting up prefixes like that allow you to set up their tracking prefixes so things like

[00:04:34] chartable and pod track or pod corn for advertising those things all use prefixes so they'll

[00:04:43] they'll send the data to them and then over to captivate so that you'll have your

[00:04:50] your analytics basically in two places. And then publishing episodes captivate

[00:04:56] actually allows you to publish in a few different ways which is which is really nice. So there's

[00:05:00] different different workflows. The main way is you upload your audio file and then you enter your

[00:05:05] episode data like your title and your show notes or show description and then you can also skip

[00:05:13] audio upload when you first get started and basically reverse the process so you enter all your

[00:05:19] all your info and then you can upload afterwards. And I actually like to do this because

[00:05:24] I maybe will run an audio file through Alphonic and then while that's happening I'll go and add my

[00:05:32] my title and show notes and stuff so that I can go back and add the audio file after

[00:05:37] it just kind of makes the the process nice and smooth. But another way that is is somewhat unique

[00:05:44] among podcast hosting companies as you can batch upload audio files into a library

[00:05:53] of audio so that you know you can upload five at a time let's say and then when you go to create

[00:05:59] a new episode you just simply select the audio file you need and basically link it to that episode

[00:06:07] and this lets you really kind of like I said batch and get get ahead you can get you know do a

[00:06:13] month or two of episodes all at once and kind of make a nice workflow and if you have other people

[00:06:20] on your team someone can do the audio upload portion while someone else can do the the show notes

[00:06:28] or something so you really have a lot of flexibility with how you publish and they've definitely

[00:06:33] thought this stuff through with you know the needs of different different podcasters and different

[00:06:37] types of podcasts and businesses and things like that next is analytics so you get IAB compliant

[00:06:43] download statistics and a couple different views and graphs you can see downloads over time

[00:06:48] device stats app stats you know all the standard stuff location info and you know right when you

[00:06:54] log in there's a nice display that shows download averages so you can see per day per week per 28 days

[00:07:02] and per 90 days you'll see averages for your entire podcast which is nice just to get a quick

[00:07:09] overview of how things are performing now another cool feature is the embed player and they recently

[00:07:17] added a entire podcast kind of playlist style player but they've always had single episode embed players

[00:07:25] as well so now they have both which is really nice to see and you can customize them with your colors

[00:07:32] so there's a background color a main color and a highlight color you can change all those things

[00:07:38] the player is really nice and modern looks great loads fast and I'm big I think it's one of the the

[00:07:45] better ones you know the top two or three out there definitely a nice a nice embed player what is

[00:07:52] also really cool is that you can customize the player branding so captivate you know the the

[00:07:59] podcast host it will have their logo on the bottom right of the player by default so that that's

[00:08:08] but you can also there's two other settings such as subtle setting which removes the

[00:08:14] captivate words but it shows their logo so it's really small most people wouldn't even notice it

[00:08:20] doesn't mean anything but it's a way to kind of show who you're using but you can also

[00:08:27] be an affiliate for captivate so when you refer people to them you'll make a commission and when

[00:08:33] you can set it up so that when people click that that captivate button on your player

[00:08:38] the your affiliate ID will be added to it so it's all kind of built in in the background

[00:08:43] and kind of helps you make make an income you know um passively while also supporting

[00:08:51] captivate there is a third option where you can turn it off completely and

[00:08:57] it won't be shown at all so they give you all those options on any pricing plan you don't have

[00:09:02] to pay extra to remove branding which a lot of companies like to do so I like I really like that

[00:09:07] that is available now distribution is kind of standard stuff you would expect from a podcast

[00:09:15] hosting platform they help you get into all the top directories apple podcast Spotify Google

[00:09:20] podcast stitcher radio public tune in and of course others so there you know there's a nice kind

[00:09:29] of dashboard that shows you know they changed a green when you've been published two certain

[00:09:34] platforms and they detected for you so nice uh nice setup there and website the website is a

[00:09:41] is a really nice setup here I think there's a ton of options one thing they do that's cool is

[00:09:48] they base the colors of your website and actually the player that I mentioned before on your podcast

[00:09:55] cover art so they kind of help you get started with some of that that branding stuff that maybe

[00:10:02] you're not I don't know not so great at or you know don't have an eye for they'll they'll kind of

[00:10:08] help pick things that have good contrast and of course you can customize all this stuff as much

[00:10:14] as you want but I like that they kind of give you a great head start for for people who need it

[00:10:21] let me see that it's all it's all mobile responsive uh all your episodes are there you can choose if

[00:10:25] you want to show multiple hosts or people involved with the podcast or not on the website you can

[00:10:34] you know have different social media button setup there's lots of lots of flexibility there for the

[00:10:40] built-in captivate website but they also have another option so if you have your own WordPress website

[00:10:49] you can get their plugin called captivate sync and that will automatically publish episodes to

[00:10:54] your WordPress website and it gives you even more publishing and workflow options so you can actually

[00:11:01] upload your podcast episodes from your WordPress dashboard you know you create a you create a post

[00:11:08] and that'll be your your show notes essentially and then you upload your audio file there and it'll

[00:11:15] sync over to your captivate dashboard so that you know you don't have an episode uploaded on your

[00:11:21] website but not on your not on your podcast hosting dashboard or something crazy they keep it all

[00:11:27] all in sync and it just it works really cool so that's that is an option that a big fan of and

[00:11:34] they they just do well next is marketing and this is an area where captivate really stands out with

[00:11:40] unique features that aren't found on other podcast hosting platforms and so the first one is a

[00:11:47] single subscription link and this gives you a link that you can share and it basically is a

[00:11:56] minimal website that shows your podcast title the artwork and it has buttons for different podcast

[00:12:05] directories so on mine the one I set up it has Apple podcasts Spotify Google podcasts overcast

[00:12:12] pocketcats and RSS feed on there so makes it easy for people just to you know go do that link and

[00:12:20] then choose the directory that they want next is a calls to action feature where you can add a link

[00:12:27] to anywhere that you want to you know stuff you're offering or to your website whatever to

[00:12:32] to directories and these will show up on your embed player so they give you the ability to add two

[00:12:42] different calls to actions and you can change what they call the label which is the text that people

[00:12:48] see so you can you can customize those as much as you want you know if you send people to an email

[00:12:54] sign up for something to download or give away whatever you want to do you can you know it's all

[00:13:00] it's all customizable and then another unique feature is the sponsor kit which is one of captivates

[00:13:05] newest features and you just enter your audience avatar so you know a little bit about who your audience

[00:13:12] is and it will automatically create a PDF with your latest your last three episodes some download stats

[00:13:21] social media info and contact info all the stuff that's ain't already in your captivate dashboard

[00:13:29] they'll put it together in a great looking PDF that has you know kind of some branded colors to it

[00:13:35] and nice to column format and so this is something that you can give to potential advertisers

[00:13:42] to give them info about your show and you don't have to go create this on your own or hire a

[00:13:48] graphic designer or go into canva and spend you know three hours making this and also when you

[00:13:54] when you generate it the stats are updated live so you don't have to go edit a file every time

[00:13:59] you want to do something like this so it's really cool that this is just a one click thing and

[00:14:05] you get a great looking kind of one sheet about your podcast to help help you promote it or

[00:14:13] you know land those those sponsorship deals and of course more features there's a team you can add

[00:14:19] unlimited amount of team members and there are several different team options different roles

[00:14:26] that you can do so there's editor producer show manager host and brand partner and you can

[00:14:34] you can choose to add this person whoever you know each person to a single podcast or all of them

[00:14:40] and they're the dashboard makes it really easy to do and depending on the access level chew you choose

[00:14:46] they'll have a different abilities to edit and change settings depending on what the role is

[00:14:53] and what they need so for instance you know you as the account owner of course get access to everything

[00:15:00] you can manage billing and marketing and create new shows stuff like that but for instance a

[00:15:07] brand partner only gets access to share episodes and view analytics so you know maybe you're

[00:15:14] working with an advertiser and you want to give them just give them full access to those things

[00:15:21] you can a producer and an editor can publish episodes manage episodes and manage your media library

[00:15:30] and nothing else so different in they can't see analytics for instance so there's different different

[00:15:37] options and flexibility depending on what they need access to so really cool they have a nice

[00:15:43] table that shows everything that that those different levels can do and also one other thing there's

[00:15:52] a lot tons of features and just little little things that just add to the entire platform but all the

[00:15:58] team members info automatically gets sent to pod chaser which is the IMDB of podcasts so you know

[00:16:05] you'll get there if you have a host the host info will get sent to pod chaser and kind of help grow

[00:16:15] grow your exposure now pricing for captivate in let me see on every plan you can host an unlimited

[00:16:22] amount of podcasts and you get access to all the features they don't limit that by by price

[00:16:29] they basically price it by downloads per month and so it starts out at $19 US per month for

[00:16:38] $12,000 downloads and they actually raised this it used to be $10,000 downloads but they managed

[00:16:47] to do some behind the scenes kind of server tweaks and save themselves money which meant that

[00:16:52] they passed that on to you and me the the customer which is awesome shows that they really care about

[00:16:58] you know their their customers and potential customers most people don't even know that happened

[00:17:05] but it did and other plans are $49 a month for 60,000 downloads and $99 a month for

[00:17:14] 150,000 downloads per month and if you need more than that you can always contact them

[00:17:20] and you know work with them for customized pricing as well so definitely recommend captivate

[00:17:26] I am actively using it right now with one of my podcasts and I think it's great so definitely

[00:17:35] check it out so again you can go to podcastinsights.com slash captivate to sign up for a free trial

[00:17:43] and definitely give it a shot I think it's definitely one to take a look at and especially if you

[00:17:49] need multiple shows they're all included in one price so that is there's not a lot of hosts

[00:17:56] that that offer that and it's a great great way to experiment try new things or you know have

[00:18:01] a have a network whatever you want to do thanks for listening and we will see you in the next episode