Captivate is yet another great podcasting alternative to Podbean. It is worth noting that Captivate have been in the podcast industry for years. This means that as compared to Podbean, Captivate has a great deal of experience within the industry. The podcast hosting platform hosts thousands of podcasts over the years. Recently, it introduced features such as the ability to set or schedule a publishing time for your show.
Even from their dashboard, Captivate clearly indicates that they have not only carefully considered most podcasting elements, but have also created a very simple interface that makes it easy for you to access relevant podcast tools and features. In fact, Captivate has a great deal of tools that are ready for use instantaneously.
All of Captivate’s hosting plans have the following features:
Furthermore, Captivate has emulated Podbean’s flexibility feature as you can be able to use Captivate on any device. Not only do you get to use Captivate on any platform, you can also change your theme such that it represents your podcast topics. As much as the theme customization is limited to changing the color only, you can still be able to reach your target audience and create a profound impression before they even listen to the actual podcast.
As if this is not enough, you will find that Captivate beats Podbean with regards to the outlay of the website features. Captivate has a great looking website as well as a great looking podcast player that is easily integrated in other podcast hosting platforms as well. What’s more, Captivate can be able to direct you where you want through their in-built CTAs (Call To Action) feature. Even better and much like Buzzsprout and Podbean, Captivate has no limits as to the members which can be hosted on your podcasts.
Some of Captivate’s unique features that make it preferable to Podbean include:
- Batch uploading
- Scheduled podcasts
- WordPress integration
- Customized plugins
- Advanced smart UI features
- Sponsorship Kit PDF
Where Captivate Excels over Podbean
The sponsorship kit PDF is a recent inclusion of Captivate’s features which enables you to highlight recent episodes and find out the download numbers from the episodes. Whether you are a novice user or an experienced podcaster, you probably know that the more analytic metrics you have regarding your podcast episodes, the more likely you are to improve your podcast quality and delivery.
In addition, I would also say that the new podcast workflow adopted by Captivate allows for creativity and is much better than the previous workflow. The previous workflow made it hard for you to efficiently publish your podcast episodes, an element that created a great uproar among podcast listeners on the internet. Fortunately, Captivate has been able to fix this flaw, which also speaks volumes with regards to their customer support service and response propensity. Captivate takes the feedback from their users seriously and acts upon this information to deliver high quality podcast hosting services.
With regards to the pricing, you will find that Captivate is much pricier than Podbean. In fact, you will find that their lowest pricing tier starts at $19 per month for up to 12 thousand downloads. Even with the highly priced podcast hosting package, this is a high number of downloads, which typically works for more than 97% of all podcasters in the industry.
Another feature that makes Captivate a suitable alternative for Podbean, possibly even a better alternative, is the fact that it does not limit the core features provided to its users. This is regardless of the current plan that you are subscribed to. This feature is not common not only to Podbean, but also in most of the top-rated podcasting platforms as well.
Podbean vs Captivate Pricing
Podbean has cheaper pricing plans and a free-tier plan that allows you storage space of 5 hours per month. The cheapest plan of Podbean is $9 per month, almost half that of Captivate. On the other hand, Captivate’s plan are more expensive with the lowest one costing $17 per month.
Below is a snapshot of Captivate’s pricing packages. You can also see more on their website here.
Below is a snapshot of Podbean’s pricing:
You can also read more of Podbean’s plans here or our review of podbean here.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]