4 Castos Features That Make Us Better Than The Rest

When we started Castos, our goal was to support podcasters in any way we can. We wanted to make podcasting as simple and pain-free as possible so you can focus on creating great content and growing your audience.

That goal is still alive today. Over time, we’ve created more Castos features that serve that purpose. In fact, not only do we think we offer the right selection of features for all types of podcasters, we think we do them better than any other podcast host.

Why are we so confident? Because we have stuck to our mission. We have asked podcasters what would make their lives easier and then designed Castos features to meet those needs. Whenever we create a new feature, we make it remarkably easy to set up and use.

In this article, we’re going over the four main Castos features that separate us from other podcast hosting services. If you’re on the fence about using Castos for your podcast, this will help you understand why we are better than the rest.

1. Publish Your Podcast To YouTube

This is one of our favorite Castos features because it exposes you to an entirely new audience, which makes it one of the most impactful tools we offer.

As a content creator, it’s important to make your content available wherever your audience prefers to consume it. Of course you should submit your show to podcast directories, but you should also make it available on one of the largest content platforms in the world: YouTube. 

Publishing your podcast on YouTube lets you tap into a massive audience of consumers. One survey found that 43% of monthly listeners went to YouTube for podcast content in the last year. It’s their “go-to place for entertainment.” They like its search features, social aspect, and recommendation algorithm.

Whereas podcasting is usually a one-way conversation, on YouTube you can engage with your listeners in the comments. You can’t get that kind of feedback on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify). 

The best part about YouTube is its easy monetization system. Enable monetization on your videos and YouTube will start showing ads and sending you money. That’s another revenue stream for show.

The effects of YouTube republishing are quite real. When podcaster Ian Buck published his show, The Nexus, on YouTube, his listenership grew by 50%. That’s why this is one of Castos features we’re so proud of.

The Castos Growth plan includes automatic YouTube republishing. All it takes is one click and we’ll automatically turn every audio file into video files and upload them to your YouTube account. With the Pro plan, you can host video files on your Castos account in addition to your audio files. This lets you host all of your podcast files in one place. You can upload custom episode clips or the full video recording of every episode.

Sadly, other podcast hosts don’t help you with this. You’re forced to turn your audio file into a video and upload it yourself. We think you shouldn’t have to worry about these kinds of tedious tasks. 

Learn more about publishing your podcast on YouTube.

2. Leave Episode Transcriptions To Us

The benefits of podcast transcriptions can’t be overstated. They make your episodes more accessible to your audience, maximize your SEO reach, encourage linking, and make repurposing content easy. All you have to do is post the transcript on your podcast website beneath your show notes.

The only challenge with podcast transcriptions, however, is making them. Transcribing your audio files is excruciatingly tedious. This one task could double or even triple the amount of time you spend on a single episode. And it’s boring!

The alternative is to have someone else do it for you. But hiring someone is expensive for the same reason you don’t want to do it: it’s laborious and boring. 

Yes, you can find someone on Fiverr who will do it for a few dollars, but for such low pay, that person is going to work quickly and make a lot of mistakes. They also probably aren’t a native speaker in your language. 

The best solution: Castos’ automated transcription service!

With Castos, every episode you publish on the Castos platform can be automatically transcribed into a full, word-for-word account of your episode. We’ve partnered with the industry leading text-to-voice technology provider to offer a seamless transcription experience for Castos hosting customers. 

This is a pay-as-you-go feature you can cancel at any time. It only costs $0.10 per minute of audio. A 40 minute episode would only cost $4 to transcribe, which is far cheaper than it would cost to hire someone.

How does it work? Simply navigate to the Integrations section to the available integrations.

Then subscribe to the Transcription feature. This will apply to all of the podcasts/series you have with Castos. Charges will automatically appear on your Castos hosting bill. 

You can even transcribe previous episodes. In the transcription section, you’ll find a list of all episodes that have been transcribed as well as those that haven’t. You can manually trigger transcriptions of untranscribed episodes. 

Learn more about podcast transcriptions and how to create podcast transcripts.

3. Seamlessly Podcast Using WordPress

Your podcast website is a key component of your brand. Yes, it’s important to submit your RSS feed to the top podcast directories, but you also need to publish your show on a platform you own. Your show needs to live somewhere you have total control. 

But what you don’t need is complicated workflow. Uploading a podcast episode to your host and creating a page on your website should be fast and simple. Less time spent on tedious tasks means more time to spend creating great content.

With our WordPress podcast plugin, Seriously Simple Podcasting, you can upload and publish a podcast episode to your Castos hosting account right through your WordPress dashboard (including your podcast-specific RSS feed). 

This creates a new post on your blog with the podcast player embedded at the top. You can then add whatever content you like to the page, like an audio transcription or show notes. 

No other podcast host can offer a simple workflow like this. With mosts hosts, you have to upload each episode to their platform, find the episode’s URL, and then embed it manually on a new WordPress page. 

But with Castos and Seriously Simple Podcasting, you can manage everything from one dashboard. Check out this video that describes all the great features that come packaged in our WordPress plugin.

See how Castos and Seriously Simple Podcasting work together to make managing your show a breeze. Learn more.

Join the community of 20K+ podcasters who use our WordPress plugin by installing Seriously Simple Podcasting today.

4. Never Worry About Upload Limits

As a content creator, you have to be free to produce the best content for your audience and to grow your podcast as quickly as you can. You can’t worry about silly limitations on the type or size of your content.

For instance, you shouldn’t have to trim your episode down because you can only upload 40 minute audio files. A platform like Castos should never limit the creative space you have as a podaster. That’s why we always have unlimited storage and podcasts, and generous download limits on all pricing tiers.

Our goal is to support hosts who have a passion for podcasting. We don’t charge you more for producing more content.

In fact, our tools are some of the only on the market that actually help you produce more content and to grow your listener base as quickly as possible.

Migrating a podcast to Castos is easy, whether you podcast using WordPress or with another hosting provider. Simply enter your current RSS feed during the onboarding process when you sign up for a Castos account and we’ll handle. Learn more.

Castos Features Make Podcasting Easy

As you can see, we design Castos features to make your life simple. We don’t think you should waste your time with complex integrations or complicated workflows. We want to free you from as many tedious technical tasks as possible so you can spend your time, money, and energy producing great content, engaging with your listeners, and growing your podcast.

Check out what Katie Wells, host of the Wellness Mama Podcast, has to say about her favorite Castos features:

“Castos and the Seriously Simple Podcast plugin have made podcasting so much easier for me and our team. We used to have to manage multiple websites and hosting to get the best performance for The Wellness Mama Podcast, but since switching to Castos, everything is managed on the backend of our website which saves so much time and limits potential mistakes. And they migrated over a 100 episodes over from our old platform, all without any downtime. If you run a website built on WordPress, Castos and SSP will make your life so much easier!”

If you think these Castos features make Castos the right podcast host for you, sign up for a free trial. It’s free for 14 days, which gives you plenty of time to migrate your podcast (super simple and fast!) and publish a few episodes.