Transistor.fm review: At-a-Glance
- Transistor.fm is one of our favourite media hosting platforms.
- It lets you pay one price and manage one or many podcast feeds.
- The drag-and-drop interface is clear and easy to use.
- Business and professional podcasters can manage the membership of their private podcast feeds.
- Responsive embedded players make sharing your podcast even easier.
- Integrates easily with email newsletter software and social media.
- Pricing is reasonable, but based on number of downloads and subscribers.
- Read on for the full review…
Transistor are one of our favourite media hosting platforms. We recommend them highly in our best media hosts roundup, and we host a fair chunk of our content on there these days. With that in mind, it seemed like a good idea to do a dedicated Transistor.fm review.
If you need a media host (yes, you do need a host for your podcast), Transistor is a great place to start. For the majority of independent podcasters, this could be your podcasts’ forever home.
Notice I said plural, podcasts, and I don’t mean episodes. Transistor lets you have multiple RSS feeds, whether public or private, for one price. Other than that, Transistor is so straightforward that writing a review of this podcast host is harder than using it.
Easy to Start and Use
Transistor has a clear interface where all the steps are nice and big. Whether this is your first time setting up a podcast, or you want better visibility, their interface is welcoming. You can drag and drop your audio and cover art files. The only confusing part about this media host is when you’re thinking, “it can’t be that simple.”
Additionally, there’s plenty of opportunity to try all aspects of this host and see how it works, before you commit financially. The 14-day free trial means that there’s no intimidation.
In the past, I’ve used podcast hosting services where I was grateful for their customer support, because I had to use it to understand the interface. While Transistor has a knowledge base one click away, you might not need it.
Multiple, Public, and Private Podcasts
We all know that once you’ve launched a podcast, you start thinking of more, different kinds of podcasts to make. Transistor.fm will let you set up as many podcasts as you want, for one membership fee. This is great if you want to make podcasts for your business and personal interests. It’s also excellent if you want to have one main podcast, and a second for bonus content.
If you’re podcasting for a business or a private organization, you can level up to the Professional or Business level. This has “enhanced private podcasting.”
It lets you view and manage the email addresses of subscribers to your private RSS feeds. Instead of alienating your team with a company-wide e-mail, a podcast is a more sympathetic communication tool.
Transistor.fm helps you to keep that company podcast private, by allowing you to remove subscribers. So, if someone leaves your organization, you can just find their name on the subscriber list, and remove access.
Transistor.fm makes it easy to transfer ownership too.
Transistor.fm Review: Multiple User Logins
If you have help making your podcast (congratulations!), Transistor doesn’t make you put all your eggs in one basket. You can have multiple user logins on the same account, with different permissions (either as admins or members).
Responsive Embedded Players
Transistor.fm’s players are a bit more useful than others’. By default, the player has three buttons, that only appear when the user hovers their mouse cursor over the player. The buttons’ options are “subscribe,” “share,” and “more info,” which provides the show notes in the embedded player window.
An example of the Transistor podcast player, featuring an episode of the Podcasting Advice show.
A multi-episode player lets you showcase specific episodes. If you have a special montage episode, a trailer, or standout episodes, you can highlight them for new listeners.
Keep in Touch With Your Listeners
Transistor.fm integrates neatly with newsletter and mailing list sites, such as mailchimp, Convertikit, HubSpot, and more. You can connect your account directly to Spotify and Twitter.
Transistor.fm has had an option to post automatically to YouTube. But, they say that new rule changes at YouTube has put this on hold. Their blog includes tutorials on how to use these integrations.
Quite simply, this media host’s interface can save you a lot of extra steps.
Analytics That Go Further
Transistor provides the basic analytics you need: how many downloads over time, and a “best guess” of the subscriber count.
But, you can also integrate your RSS feed with with third-party analytics services. This means if you use a service such as Chartable to see your rankings and reviews in other countries, you can lock that into your dashboard with Transistor.
Transistor.fm Review: Pricing
We have an affiliate link for Transistor.fm, and if you were to sign up via that, then we’d earn a small commission – at no extra cost to yourself.
Transistor.fm is neither the most expensive, nor the least expensive podcast hosting service on the Internet. After your 14-day free trial, pricing works like this:
- Starter: $19/month, or $190 a year ($15.80 a month)
- Professional: $49 a month, or $490 a year ($40.83 a month)
- Business: $99 a month, or $990 a year ($82.50 a month)
You may look at these numbers and say, ‘it’s like getting two months for free.” Considering its features, Transistor.fm is reasonably priced.
However, pricing is based on download and subscriber activity.
- Starter: 15,000 downloads a month
- Professional: 75,000 downloads a month, and one private podcast with up to 500 subscribers
- Business: 200,000 downloads a month, and three private podcasts with up to 1,000 private subscribers.
Again, if you’re an indie podcaster and you’re just starting out, you can stay within that starter pricing tier. It’s unlikely that you’ll suddenly find your podcast went from 250 downloads a month to 250,000. Even if this does happen (again, congratulations), Transistor’s policy is to work with the user, and avoid surprise charges. Their FAQ says, “There’s no ‘automatic shut off;’ we’ll continue to serve audio for your listeners.”
Is There a Downside to Transistor.Fm?
Honestly, I tried to find one. The model of pricing based on downloads (not uncommon) isn’t encouraging: you can’t measure the success of a podcast by download numbers alone. But, big download numbers are a nice problem to have, right? If you’re an independent podcaster and have over 75,000 downloads a month, you can find ways to justify upgrading your tier.
The only downside to this media host is that you might start posting episodes before they’re really ready. It could be too easy to speed through upload without double-checking your work. Just because you can podcast while on auto-pilot doesn’t mean you should. There are many media hosts that we recommend, and it seems like new hosts appear all the time. But, for simplicity, ease of use, and privacy, Transistor.fm stands out as an excellent choice.
Product Rating: 4.8/5
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