In today's digital landscape, maintaining control over your content is more crucial than ever. When you rely solely on third-party platforms, you're subject to their rules, algorithms, and policies, which can limit your creative freedom and influence. For podcasters, this means your voice could be censored, your content deprioritized, and your audience fragmented across various platforms, making genuine interaction challenging.
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Castopod empowers you to retain complete control over both your content and your audience. By self-hosting your podcast with Castopod, you ensure that your creations remain fully yours—free from the limitations imposed by third-party services. Moreover, Castopod connects you directly with your listeners through the Fediverse, a decentralized network that enables open, censorship-resistant communication.
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The Fediverse is essential for free speech in podcasting because it allows podcasters to interact directly with their audience without relying on centralized platforms that could stifle their voice.
With Castopod, your podcasts are still available on all major platforms—Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, and more—while you maintain full control over your distribution and interaction.
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Ready to reclaim your podcasting freedom?
Castopod is absolutely free to download and use.
Experience the power of self-hosting and the Fediverse today! 🚀
@Castopod As a layperson in most digital tech, let me ask some dumb-sounding questions: For self-hosting my podcast, I need host space (like for my website) but this never comes free because podcasts use a lot of bandwidth.
1. What is the difference between Castopod and the host of my wordpress website?
2. Is Castopod a real *host* (=server space) or just an app which helps with handling/activity pub?
@NatureMC Hosting a podcast with Castopod is exctly the same as hosting a blog with Wordpress.
Castopod is a server application that manages everything you need for your podcasts, plus ActivityPub, plus analytics, plus it is multi-tenant, multi-user, plus many other things. See https://docs.castopod.org for more info.
We also provide hosting services on https://castopod.com if you don't want to manage the hosting yourself. (Exactly as WordPress does.)
@Castopod PS: Your "See https://docs.castopod.org for more info" doesn't help when I wrote: "Unfortunately, your docs are quite PR/tech speak and not easy to understand." 🤫 😉
@NatureMC If you are looking for the cheapest way to host you podcasts, shared hosting might be a good solution. Or you can self host using, for instance, YunoHost, it even runs on a Raspberry Pi.
On the other hand, our hosting offers provide CDN, storage, bandwidth, backup, updates, unlimited podcasts, unlimited users, monitoring... So no, I cannot let you say that they are expensive. That is what is costs.
@NatureMC If the price is what matters the most, go with Spotify for Podcasters, they're 100% free. But free as in free beer, not free as in free speech.
@Castopod Ohohoh. 🙄 Thank you very much for your kind explanations above that comment. I just wanted to describe how most podcast newcomers have to decide when it's not just a hobby and has to be calculated. With success/paying subscribers, this changes.
For me: I just wanted to understand what Castopod is - this I did now thanks to your explanation. (And of course, I compare hosting offers, as everybody does. I did it with my website provider, too).
@Castopod Thank you very much for the quick answer!
Now I understood: Castopod is more an app for the handling (which doesn't help me without hosting space 😉 )
But the biggest problem for podcasters is exactly the server space - in the beginning (nobody pays your work/hardware/software), you take the cheapest, easiest, ergo mostly the big platforms.
For your hosting service: It's very expensive. Even against my quite small European hoster.