Their embeddable players are some of the nicest (and smoothest) I've seen and used. You also get detailed stat analysis for anyone who uses it. I also use their Recast app that helps you to create short video clips to promote your podcast on social media. Recast is a public social sharing feature that you or anyone else create short clips of your episodes to share. It’s intuitive and easy to use and I love that this is built-in – no need for third-party apps to create video soundbites. When you’re just getting started, it’s a big plus to have a nicely designed website that doesn’t require a lot of tweaking. They have light and dark themes, or you can customize the color to match your branding, as well as choose different layout options.
To get advanced stats you have to upgrade your plan. Some aspects of the dashboard can be confusing at first, A built-in transcription service would be welcomed. Other hosting services let you host as many different podcasts as you want for one price, while you’ll have to pay for each show on Simplecast.
I host my design podcast on SimpleCast because I like the look & feel of their embedded player. The interface is well designed and I find the Audience Overview offers at-a-glance analytics I need to understand my show’s performance.
We chose Simplecast because they're easy to use and reasonably priced, offered unique social sharing functionality (Recast), and were recommended to us by another podcaster.
We were promised that the new version of the Simplecast platform would eliminate the downsides we saw (limited analytics, etc.) when we first subscribed, and that it would be delivered about a month after we signed on. That initial promise was for delivery in August of 2018. It's now April of 2019, and we STILL don't have the new version (though others do, and all new members have it by default). I've had to reach out to support several times to get updated timelines, and they've always under-promised and missed their own updated deadlines, requiring me to reach out repeatedly. Finally, I've been told that we can be migrated, but it comes with several caveats no one warned us about beforehand (including limited sponsor visibility in the new platform, which we can't reconcile for our sponsors because they've been promised more; removed support for custom CSS on our podcast website via SImplecast; and others). As a marketer for a software company, it baffles me how much misinformation we've been fed about this release -- from the timeline (which is now 8 MONTHS off of what we were first promised) to the migration process and the limitations of the new setup. At this point I have very little trust in the Simplecast team, and thus can't in good conscience recommend them to others. We've invested in this platform and it appears we're stuck with a dud until they get their development roadmap together.
We have a platform for publishing a professional podcast, sharing to popular podcast apps/channels, and housing our shows.
SimpleCast which is now SAM Cast supports streaming in MP3, mp3PRO, Ogg and WM9 (Windows Media 9), which is very positive for me. I can encode audio in multiple bitrates and multiple formats for multiple types of servers simultaneously. It also supports SHOUTcast server.
One of the disavantages is that there is a delay while streaming. I've observed the delay reached around 95 seconds, which is really an abnormal value when we are talking about live broadcasting.
I am able to broadcast live audio from events and live poadcasts, like a real radio broadcaster. Furthermore, it is possible to know in real time how many people are listening to your stream. And I use these to interact with people.
SimpleCast is a simple, straightforward option to get your Podcast published and available to your audience. They offer RSS feeds, solid analytics, and they allow you to easily ensure that your audience never misses an episode.
It would be great if there were more options for customizing your site with Themes. There currently is a default theme with a few options for changing colors and light versus dark. That being said, being able to modify the look of your page in a greater way could help you to differentiate your Podcast even more.
When we kicked off our Podcast, we didn't have many resources or much "know-how" when it came to distribution. Simplecast allowed us to get things up and running without needing to invest more outside of recording our episodes.