Buzzsprout is arguably the friendliest podcast host on the market. The onboarding is famously gentle, the dashboard explains everything in plain English, and features like Magic Mastering and automatic episode optimization have earned it a devoted following among first-time podcasters. There is a reason so many "how to start a podcast" guides point straight at it.
But Buzzsprout meters your show by upload hours: $12/month buys 3 hours of new audio a month, $18 buys 6, $24 buys 12 — and the free tier deletes your episodes after 90 days. Under the hood, podcast hosting is file storage plus an RSS feed, and that is a job your own $5 VPS can do. Castport is a $39 pay-once, self-hosted podcast host — here is the honest comparison.
What Buzzsprout does well
Buzzsprout has earned its reputation, and we will not pretend otherwise:
- The easiest onboarding in podcasting — genuinely beginner-proof, with guides for every directory submission.
- Magic Mastering — automatic loudness normalization and audio polish, an add-on nothing self-hosted matches out of the box.
- Solid, IAB-certified analytics that advertisers recognize.
- Dynamic ad insertion and affiliate marketplace options when you want to monetize.
- Their servers carry your bandwidth — a viral episode is their scaling problem, not yours.
If you are launching your first show and want a company holding your hand through Apple and Spotify submission, Buzzsprout is a genuinely good choice.
Where the subscription model hurts
The meter never stops. $12–24/month is $144–288 every year, forever, and the pricing is tied to upload hours — publish more, pay more. Over three years a modest weekly show on the $18 tier costs $648. And the free tier is a trap for archival purposes: episodes are deleted after 90 days, which tells you who really owns the shelf your show sits on. Your audio lives on their infrastructure, your feed is served from their domain, and your analytics live in their dashboard.
That last part is the deeper cost. Migrating podcast hosts mid-show is a nervous operation — 301 redirects on the feed, hoping every subscribed app follows. The subscription model works precisely because leaving is scary. With a self-hosted feed on your own domain, that lock-in simply never forms: the feed URL is yours on day one and stays yours forever.
Castport: the pay-once alternative
Castport is a $39, one-time purchase. Host your own podcast: Apple/Spotify-valid RSS, player, stats — on your $5 VPS. Castport generates an Apple/Spotify-valid RSS feed the hard-won way — byte-exact enclosure lengths, permanent GUIDs, probed durations, real HTTP Range support — plus clean public show pages, an embeddable player, Podcasting 2.0 chapters, and privacy-safe download stats (IPs hashed with a rotating daily salt). One SQLite file and two folders; back up your entire podcast by copying three things.
The source code is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/castport — free to build and run yourself, forever. Buying the packaged version on Whop gets you the signed installer, 1-click setup and updates. Either way, there is no account, no telemetry and no renewal date.
Head to head
| Castport | Buzzsprout | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $12–24/mo by upload hours |
| Cost over 3 years | $39 | ~$432–864 |
| Where your data lives | Your machine / your server | Audio & feed on their servers |
| Usage limits | None — unlimited use | Upload hours metered; free tier deletes episodes after 90 days |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Who should stay with Buzzsprout
Stay with Buzzsprout if you want zero server responsibility — self-hosting means your box carries the download bandwidth, and a genuinely huge show may outgrow a $5 VPS. Stay if Magic Mastering, IAB-certified stats or dynamic ad insertion are part of how you produce or monetize. Those are real services, not just storage.
Switch if your show is the common case: a modest, steady audience, episodes you want online forever, and a monthly bill you resent. Castport gives you unlimited shows, unlimited episodes and unlimited archive depth for $39 once — no upload-hours math ever again.
Making the switch
Step 1 — Buy once on Whop. One-time $39 for the packaged installer (Windows desktop app + guided VPS deploy) with lifetime updates.
Step 2 — Deploy and point your domain. docker compose up on a $5 VPS, put Caddy or nginx in front for TLS, and set BASE_URL to your real https:// domain.
Step 3 — Upload and submit. Upload your first episode, then submit /feed/your-show.xml to Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify for Podcasters. Done.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/castport, always. $39 buys the packaged installer, guided deploy and lifetime updates.
Will Apple and Spotify actually accept the feed?
That's the part we sweated: exact enclosure byte counts (not estimates), permanent GUIDs, real probed audio durations, and proper HTTP Range support on audio — the exact details that get naive feeds rejected. Set BASE_URL to your real domain first; localhost feeds are rejected.
Who pays for the bandwidth?
You do — that's the honest trade-off of self-hosting. A $5 VPS comfortably serves a typical indie show; a genuinely huge audience is where Transistor's managed CDN infrastructure earns its monthly fee.
The bottom line
Subscriptions make sense when a service does ongoing work for you — hosting, syncing, multi-region infrastructure, human labor. They make much less sense when the work happens on your own hardware and the monthly bill is just a toll booth. Castport is our bet that for this job, most people are better served owning the tool: $39 once, pays for itself in 2.1 months against Transistor Starter — or under a month against Growth. Over 3 years you keep $645–3,525.
Castport is part of OneTimeSuite — 56 desktop and self-hosted apps built on the same principle: your hardware does the work, so you should not pay rent on it. Every app is a one-time purchase with MIT-licensed source on GitHub, no accounts and no telemetry. Want everything at once? OneTimeSuite Complete bundles the whole suite for a single flat $997.
Try Castport — $39, one time
Signed installer on Whop, or build it free from the MIT source. Your call.
Related comparisons: Transistor alternative — or browse the whole pay-once suite.