Podcasting is just like blogging, except that you provide audio instead of mere text. This critical difference also highlights one important thing: the choice of web hosting company. Once can easily find a good web hosting plan offered by various data center services today. What a podcaster should bear in mind, however, is that the web host requires of podcasting might be a little more than a regular blog.

So how do you choose the best hosting company for your podcasts? Here are some factors that should be high up in your list when surveying podcast hosting options.

Disk space and bandwidth

This is perhaps the most important thing that you have to look into. As I mentioned above, you will need a LOT of disk space and bandwidth for your podcasting site. Podcasts are audio files (duh) and they eat up a lot of space as compared to text files. More so, when your site becomes popular and a lot of people visit it to listen to the podcasts, you will need a lot of bandwidth to accommodate your visitors.

One more thing that you should consider is how much content you are planning to roll out in the foreseeable future. This will determine just how much disk space and bandwidth you will need to invest in. If you can afford it, go for unlimited options regarding these two factors.

Pricing

No brainer, really. Given the choice, everyone would want the unlimited packages. However, this might mean a pricing plan that is beyond some people’s budgets. What you want to do now is to find the happy medium between price and services offered.

Up time guarantee

What’s worse than having a slow site? A site that is down all the time. Imagine that you are the user. After visiting a podcast site several times, only to see a down time error every time, would you want to come back? Probably not. Make sure that the podcast hosting company that you pick can guarantee you up times as high as 99.9%.

Originally posted on October 26, 2010 @ 12:16 am