Whether you're embarking on your podcasting journey or contemplating a switch from your current podcast hosting platform, choosing the right host for your show can be daunting.
That’s why we opted to create a straightforward comparison to cut through the noise and simplify your decision-making process.
In this blog, we’ll look at how CoHost stacks up to Libsyn in terms of hosting, pricing, analytics, advertising, marketing, support, and more, so you can find the hosting platform that best suits your show’s needs.
What is CoHost?
CoHost is a podcast analytics and audience insights tool that equips brands and agencies with sophisticated tools to boost podcast reach, growth, and revenue.
Created by award-winning podcast agency, Quill, CoHost was launched to solve two important gaps we noticed in the market:
1. Brands don’t know who their podcast listeners are
2. Brands can’t effectively measure the impact of their podcast
CoHost fills this gap by offering a seamless podcast solution that provides agencies and brands with in-depth podcast analytics and audience insights – regardless of their hosting provider – to help brands tell a story that makes a measurable impact.
Key Features:
- B2B Analytics: Company breakdown, listener engagement, individual episode breakdown, and exportable downloads list for lead generation.
- Advanced Audience Demographics: Discover valuable, critical insights about your listeners, including their age, gender, household income, social media consumption/habits, interests, family members, and more.
- Analytics Dashboard: Consumption rate, growth rates, top episode vs. latest episode insights.
- Downloads and Unique Listener Performance Metrics: Downloads over time, episode launch comparison, and episode breakdown data all with segmented downloads or unique listener dashboards.
- Audio Insertion: Pre and post-roll insertion, audio quality, dynamic editing, and streamlined file organization.
- Automatic Transcriptions: In-app AI-powered transcription tool for effortless editing, distribution, boosted SEO, and accessibility.
- Podcast Hosting: Custom media player, multi-show management, collaborative team settings, and one-click publishing capabilities.
- Tracking Links: Consolidate listening app links with the ability to track download sources, individual link analytics, and single tracking links.
- Podcast Website: Automatic, SEO-optimized podcast websites with complete customization and automatic episode and transcript uploads.
Key Benefits:
- IAB-Certified, trustworthy podcast analytics
- Make it easy to measure the ROI of your podcast
- Uncover who’s listening to your podcast and what resonates with them
- Leverage CoHost as a hosting provider or link it to your existing hosting provider
- Save time and resources by having all the management tools and podcast insights you need in one place
If you’re interested in unlocking deeper insights into your podcast audience and ROI, book a demo with our team!
What is Libsyn?
Founded in 2004, Libsyn is an established hosting platform designed for podcast sharing. Offering additional features including distribution tools, storage, bandwidth, syndication creation, and analytics tracking, Libsyn caters to a variety of podcasters' needs.
Key Features:
- Advanced statistics and audience metrics to track your podcast's performance.
- Scheduled publishing and automatic social media sharing for ease of promotion.
- Customizable podcast websites and an embedded player for your website or blog.
- Monetization options, including sponsorship opportunities and a paid subscription model.
Key Benefits:
- Supports audio and video podcasting
- 6 pricing plans to suit all budgets
- Multiple monetization streams.
- Custom iOS and Android apps for your podcast.
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Pricing
CoHost:
With five different plans catered to your show(s)’ unique needs, CoHost has a plan for everyone.
Here’s a brief overview:
Three starter plans:
Lite: Podcast management and basic analytics.
Includes support, standard analytics, and podcast hosting.
Plus: Dive deeper into audience understanding.
Includes everything in Lite, and CoHost's Prefix, plus either Advanced Audience Demographics or B2B Analytics.
Professional: Unlock comprehensive audience insights.
Everything in Plus, along with Advanced Audience Demographics and B2B Analytics.
Two enterprise tiers:
Analytics: Combine audience insights with results metrics.
Everything in Professional, plus account management, quarterly performance reports, and quarterly account reviews.
Insights: Elevate your podcast with data-driven strategies.
Everything in Analytics, plus a brand insights survey, a brand insights study, and a brand lift report.
Contact the team for a custom pricing plan.
Libsyn:
Libsyn has six pricing plans ranging from $5-$150 + enterprise pricing available. The lowest plan starts at three hours of new uploads per month and the highest advertised plan has 55 hours of new storage per month. Their plans are not based on how many downloads your show gets a month, but on how much new content is loaded onto your account monthly.
Podcast hosting
With CoHost, you’ll never have to worry about out-growing our platform because our analytics and insights tool is designed to grow alongside your show. All of our hosting plans come with a robust list of features including tracking links, AI-powered transcriptions, and multi-show management.
Libsyn’s podcast hosting plans are based on how much new content you upload monthly; therefore, increasing your posting frequency will most likely result in an upgraded plan. Their largest advertised plan allows for 55 hours of new storage per month.
Marketing and promotion
CoHost offers numerous marketing and promotion tools to help you overcome the largest pain point in podcasting – audience growth.
Our tracking links show you what sources your podcast downloads are coming from so you can easily optimize marketing campaigns. Plus, users can track individual links and episodes to see what content audiences prefer across platforms.
CoHost’s AI-powered podcast transcriptions create additional content to share across channels. They’re ready within three minutes and guarantee 95%-99% accuracy. You can publish these directly on your site or download them as a Word document and repurpose them with optimized SEO.
Additionally, B2B Analytics and Advanced Audience Demographics allow you to understand your listeners’ preferences, online habits, lifestyle types, and interests, so you can optimize your marketing efforts and cater content to your target audience.
Like CoHost, Libsyn offers embeddable media players and automatic podcast websites to help expand the reach and discoverability of your show. Uniquely, Libsyn offers social media publishing. With this feature, audiences can quickly share your podcast with the world on all major social media platforms.
Analytics
CoHost is above all a podcast analytics and audience insights tool, so our main goal is to equip brands and agencies with the analytics they need to understand who their audience is and the performance of their podcasts – regardless of their current hosting setup.
We provide all users with standard analytics and then offer more advanced features, like B2B Analytics and Advanced Audience Demographics, at our second-tier plan and above.
Libsyn offers two statistics plans: basic and advanced. To have access to critical metrics like downloads per country and downloads per user agent, you’ll need to upgrade to their advanced plan.
Audience Advanced Demographics
Demographic overviews consist of listener information like age, gender, and location; whereas, advanced demographic information reveals more critical details about your listeners including their household income, social media consumption and habits, interests and sub-interests, family members, and more.
CoHost’s Advanced Audience Demographics was created for brands and agencies to help them:
- Verify if podcasts are reaching their desired target audience
- Tailor their content to audience preferences for improved engagement
- Enhance sponsorship sales with comprehensive listener profiles
B2B Analytics
CoHost’s B2B Analytics tells you which companies are listening to your podcast and their characteristics such as industry, size, revenue, and location. By analyzing the characteristics of the companies listening to your podcast, you can better understand your audience, their interests, and their needs, allowing you to create more targeted content in the future.
Users can export this report in various formats, including CSV and PDF to easily connect to your CRM or other marketing tools. By segmenting the list of companies listening to your podcast based on relevant criteria, you can prioritize and target leads more effectively.
With B2B Analytics, brands and agencies can execute more targeted marketing campaigns tailored to specific industries, company sizes, and locations, increasing the likelihood of conversion. This allows you to save time and resources by focusing on the leads that are most likely to convert.
Advertising
Both CoHost and Libsyn allow you to insert pre and post-roll audio into your podcast to monetize with ads and dynamically edit your content.
CoHost’s audio insertion tool makes it easy to organize snippets and dynamically add audio for seamless editing and monetization. Pre and post-roll ad insertion are available at all tiers of CoHost plans.
To participate in Libsyn’s advertising program, a minimum requirement of 20,000 US downloads per month is necessary. Additionally, to offer subscriptions you’ll need to be on a 400 MB monthly plan o higher to request activation.
Support
While neither hosting platform has a telephone helpline or live chat, they both do have an email that is consistently monitored during business hours.
Additionally, both CoHost and Libsyn have extensive knowledge bases that users can reference at any time.
Which hosting platform is right for you?
Choosing between CoHost and Libsyn as your podcast hosting platform depends on your specific needs and priorities.
Libsyn has a variety of dedicated hosting, distribution, and monetization options for podcasters at all six pricing tiers. Their storage limitations are something to consider as your show grows and you start uploading longer and more frequent episodes.
CoHost on the other hand is focused on in-depth, reliable, and relevant podcast analytics and audience insights. If you’re a brand or agency focused on making data-driven decisions, CoHost’s advanced metrics features may be the easier way to get all the insights you need to create a successful show – whatever that looks like to you.
If you want to learn more about CoHost and see the platform in action, get in touch with our team.
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