How to Create a Private Podcast Feed for Students, Colleagues, or Fans
How to Create a Private Podcast Feed: At-a-glance
- Private podcasts can be used to teach students, or engage with employees.
- They can also be part of a premium content offering for your existing show, or membership site.
- My top tool for this, right now, is Captivate. You can create a private podcast with them for only $19 a month.
- There are a few other great picks out there though, to suit every need and budget.
- Read on to get the full range of options…
Not every podcast is set up to try and reach millions, thousands, or even hundreds of listeners. Sure, it’s the Joe Rogans and Marc Marons of the world we see mentioned when podcasting is covered in the mainstream media. But, there’s a lot more to the medium than those big hitters.
The question of how to make a private podcast feed seems to come up more and more these days. A private (or members-only) podcast isn’t going to be something that dominates the space – though it might still be part of an overall content offering that does.
There are many reasons why someone might want to create a private podcast feed. For example, an employer can use this strategy to communicate with their team in a more effective and intimate way. An existing and established podcast might also create a private podcast as premium content for their hardcore audience. Organisations, sports teams, and educators can also use private podcasting to great effect.
- Our guide to Podcasting for Remote Teams: Using Audio to Connect, Engage & Inform.
- Just looking to Start a Podcast that’s available to everyone? Check out our ultimate step-by-step guide.
So How Do I Make a Private Podcast Feed?
There are an ever-increasing number of quality options for creating a private podcast feed these days. A huge positive is how simple it has become. Private podcasting capabilities have existed for nearly as long as podcasting itself, but the setups weren’t exactly straightforward.
Here are our favourite options to-date when it comes to creating a private podcast feed for your colleagues, team members, patrons, or students.
A quick heads up that we sometimes use affiliate links to services we recommend. We might earn a commission if you were to sign up through them – though at no extra cost to yourself. Anyway, let’s get to it…
Captivate
Type: Podcast Hosting Platform
Price: From $19 a month
With Captivate, you can create a private podcast feed on their least expensive payment tier of $19. This enables you to have one private feed with up to 150 subscribers. You can increase this to 500 with the $49 plan, and 1000 with the $99 plan!
Read our full Captivate review, or, sign up to Captivate now
Castos
Type: Podcast Hosting Platform
Price: From $19 a month
Castos offers private podcasting on all its payment tiers, which start at $19 (or $190 when billed annually). You can create as many private podcast feeds as you like, you’ll just have a maximum limit on private subscribers for each tier – starting at 100.
Read our full Castos review, or, sign up to Castos now
Memberful
Type: Membership Platform
Price: Start Free (10% transaction fee)
Memberful is a little different than the others mentioned here. It’s designed for someone who wants to sell memberships to their audience. With Memberful, you can create a private podcast feed inside your membership site for your paying customers. Or, you can simply sell access to a private podcast feed. Instead of paying up-front, you can create your membership site for free, and Memberful takes a 10% cut of each sale.
Sign up to Memberful now, or, read about creating a private podcast for your membership site.
Podbean
Type: Podcast Hosting Platform
Price: From $99 a month
Podbean’s main private podcasting feature is available on their $99 tier. However, it’s also worth mentioning that you can sell premium episodes through Podbean from their $14 a month ($108 when billed annually) tier. Obviously, this isn’t an option for folks who want to run a show for their students or colleagues, but it might work well as part of a premium content offering.
Read our full Podbean review, or, sign up to Podbean now
Transistor
Type: Podcast Hosting Platform
Price: From $49 a month
With Transistor, you can create a private podcast feed on their $49 a month ($490 when billed annually) tier. Here, you can have up to 500 private subscribers. Upgrading to their Business tier of $99 a month ($990 when billed annually) gets you 3 private podcast feeds, with up to 1000 subscribers per show.
Read our full Transistior review, or, sign up to Transistor now
Podcast.co
Type: Podcast Hosting Platform
Price: $99 per month
Podcast.co offers a private feed for up to 100 subscribers, included in their Business plan.
Read our full Podcast.co review to find our more about their service, or check out their private podcasting page, right here.
How Do Listeners Subscribe to Private Podcast Feeds?
This can vary slightly, depending on which platform you use, but the principles are the same. For example, we’ve been running an internal company podcast on Transistor for a while now. Here, we can easily add subscribers by entering in their email address, and they’ll get instructions sent through on how to listen through their podcast app of choice. Alternatively, we can send them a shareable link (which we have the ability to expire and generate anew).
We can see our list of subscribers by their email addresses, and it’s easy to remove someone if you need to. You can safelist domains if you want every subscriber to sign up via their company email account. You can even safelist domains for embeddable players so your content can’t just be published somewhere else, either.
Summary: How to Create a Private Podcast
Hopefully, that’s given you a few quality options to weigh up for your own private podcasting adventures. As ever, it’ll depend on your own unique wants, needs, and budget.
In summary, though, Captivate and Castos look to be the most obvious choices for most, at the time of writing. They’re pretty much the lowest cost, and impose the least amount of limits.
Podbean and Memberful look like good options if you’re creating more of an overall membership or premium content platform. Obviously, these may be slightly less suitable for folks teaching classes or communicating with colleagues and teammates.
Transistor are also a superb service in their own right – one of the best podcasting hosting platforms on the market. If you already host with them, then it’ll make a lot of sense to create your private podcast feed on there, too.
Once again, I’ll share our guide to Podcasting for Remote Teams: Using Audio to Connect, Engage & Inform. And if you’re just looking to Start a Podcast that’s available to everyone, then check out our ultimate step-by-step guide.
If you need more tailored help, advice, or guidance, then you can chat to us in weekly live Q&A sessions in Podcraft Academy. You’ll also find all of our courses, resources, and downloadable resources in there. No matter what aspect of podcasting you’re struggling with, you’ll find the help and support you need to keep you moving forwards!
