Jeffrey Daniel Frey’s Blog

Got a question this week about podcast hosting specifically for churches and sermons.  This was my response:

Podcasting is all about niche markets, and church or sermon podcasts are definitely one of those.  More than educational institutions want to get their classes out to people, more than TV shows want to drive people to websites and snag more viewers, churches want to get their messages out to their congregation, possible visitors, and ultimately the world.

If you’re a church, and want to do this, what are the options?  There are plenty of podcasting hosting services out there (see this post), but what about those services claiming to be church or sermon podcasting services.  I did a quick check of the services out there, and it turns out that there are benefits to going with a service that is specifically for sermons.

Websites with transcripts, categorized searches, mailing lists, and other tools that specifically help a church or religious organization communicate more effectively are just some of the features that these sermon niche hosting services have.  I also like the feature, if you’re not a podcast savvy place, of the hosting service doing it all for you.  Just get the sermon to them somehow (even snail mailing a tape will do), and they set up your podcast, the rss feed, the transcript, and even links to the scriptures used in the sermon.

Looking at the different services out there, I’d have to say that the top five are probably:

• AltarCast: http://www.altarcast.com/
• SermonCast: http://www.sermoncast.com/
• podpoint: http://podpoint.net/
• PraiseCast: http://www.praisecast.com/podcasts.shtml
• PulpitPodcast: http://www.pulpitpodcast.com/

Though I haven’t done an in depth study of all the sermon podcast services out there, I did quickly compare storage, pricing, and features.  These stood out from rest, relatively in the order I list them.  AltarCast and SermonCast would be my first picks to get a demo of, some client references, and a sandbox to see which one I wanted to do.  If you’ve had any experiences with these, please email me and I’ll write some updated posts on this in the future.

In my opinon, if you are looking to do sermon podcasting, sign up with a sermon specific podcast hosting service.*

*caveat – if you have multiple podcasts at your church, and would like to distribute the administration of these podcasts out to different departments or individuals, the services above are really strictly for sermon casting.  I recommend libsynpro for a multi-podcast organization: http://libsynpro.com, though the price may be prohibitive for a church.  I personally run most all of my podcasts and client’s podcasts through libsyn’s less expensive one podcast offering (http://libsyn.org).

I started researching hosting services for podcasting and found about 85 different hosting services that I would say were established (nice website, many users, answered the phone when I called customer service, etc.). There were about 35 more that you could tell were newbies. I didn’t find an exclusive list, but I found two lists that were helpful:

http://www.okaytoplay.com/podcast-hosting/

http://evhead.com/hodgepodge/podcast-sites-alexa.html

You have to watch what list you’re looking at because a lot of them come from the host themselves who get a neutral domain name, put out a review of everyone, and make themselves look better than they are. The second link that I show is from odeo, but they do an okay job of being fairly neutral.

Based on what I learned from Podcast Academy and the Expo I attended a few weeks ago, I knew to look for things like:

• the ability to use your own domain name
• no ads
• unlimited bandwidth
• statistics
• and other things…

So, I narrowed the list down to 10: Akamai, Big Contact, Genetic Hosting, GoDaddy, Hipcast, Libsyn, Odeo, Ourmedia, podOmatic, and Podshow. After that, I did further investigation of their service offerings, costs, and extra costs / software / etc. that you need in order to really get things done. Some offer ‘free’ hosting, only to find that if you want to do anything serious, you need to pay extra for their client software or premier package (some of which have a very large cost). I’d rather find a place that told you strait out, here’s what we have and do, and this is how much is costs (even if it is a lot).

Thinking about the extras idea above and using the tips collected from all those sessions at the Academy and Expo again, I narrowed my list of 10 down to three. Genetic Hosting integrates Podkive into their offering which is a great archival and management system for podcasts (saw them at the Podcast Expo). They also are very open about their costs. Libsyn appears to do somewhat of the same (archiving), and they have a pretty good attitude/nature overall as a business. They have also just released a pro version that caters more to businesses and schools who are looking to do multiple podcasts under one roof. It looks to have great features and upgraded resources. Akamai is the big dog, they are used by large companies. They have it all, but they know it.

After phone conversations, demos, and playing live with all three companies / products … Libsyn is my pick for the average podcaster. Genetic is too new… they will figure it out in time, but not just yet. Akamai is for companies, large businesses, and those of you that have the cash and want it all.

Find out more: http://libsynpro.com/.

UPDATE 1 (10/13/2006): I should have given you libsyn’s main site link, the link above is for businesses and schools with multiple podcasts. The link to the free area that the beginning podcaster can use is: http://www.libsyn.com.

UPDATE 2 (11/25/2006): I took a tour of libsyn pro recently. I think schools and universities should check it out as a hosting service if they are not into hosting podcasts themselves. It allows an entity to have multiple podcast producers, but keep all the maintenance and stats in one place across all of the podcasts. Also, it would be a good solution if you had multiple podcasts that you are producing and you don’t want the hassle of different accounts for each one.