If you're looking for a podcast website builder, Beamly is one option designed specifically around podcasts and the content businesses that can grow around them.
Why? Your podcast might be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and half a dozen other apps, but where does it actually live? For many independent podcasters, the answer is nowhere.
Listeners can find an episode, press play and disappear again. There's no obvious place to learn more about the show, discover older episodes, join a mailing list or support what you're making.
That's why having your own website can matter.
Does a podcast really need its own website?
Not necessarily. If you're making a podcast for fun and all you want to do is publish episodes, your podcast host and the major listening apps may be all you need.
But a website becomes much more useful if you're trying to build an audience or business around your show.
And instead of sending everybody directly to Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can have one destination containing your episodes, information about the show, useful links, articles, videos and ways for listeners to stay in touch.
It can also give search engines something to find.
A great interview or useful episode may disappear quickly inside a podcast app. An individual episode page, transcript or related article has a much better chance of continuing to attract people through search.
What should a podcast website builder actually do?
At minimum, we'd want a podcast website builder to make four things easy:
publish and organise episodes
make the site look like your show
help people discover your content
avoid creating loads of extra admin
That's where specialist podcast platforms have an advantage over building everything manually.
Beamly can automatically create and update episode pages from your podcast feed, while giving you control over the wider website and its branding. It also includes built-in SEO controls and automatically generated technical elements such as XML sitemaps and structured data.
In other words, you don't need to copy your episode information into a website every time you publish something new.
What is Beamly?
Beamly combines several tools podcasters would otherwise need to piece together separately. You can use it to create a website for an existing podcast, or use Beamly itself to host and distribute your audio or video show.
It also includes options for blogging, video, memberships, private podcasts, digital products, courses and audience analytics. You don't have to move your podcast hosting to use it.
If you're already happy with your current host, Beamly can connect to an existing RSS feed and keep the website updated from there.
That's important because changing your entire podcast setup simply because you want a better website would be a fairly big barrier.
Beamly as a podcast website builder
This is probably the part we'd be most interested in as an independent podcaster.
Beamly gives you podcast-focused templates, your own domain, episode pages, podcast players and visual website editing without requiring coding experience.
New episodes can automatically import information including artwork, show notes, transcripts and timestamps.
You can then build normal website pages around the podcast.
That might include:
About the show
Meet the hosts
Contact
Blog
Support us
Work with us
Live dates
Recommended resources
Or whatever else makes sense for your podcast.
That's much closer to having a proper home for the show than simply having an automatically generated podcast landing page.
Can Beamly host your podcast too?
Yes, Beamly offers audio and video podcast hosting and distribution to podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It currently includes unlimited downloads and storage across its hosting plans.
If you already have a podcast elsewhere, there's no requirement to move it.
And if you do decide to switch hosting, Beamly currently offers free migration support.
What about podcast analytics?
This is another interesting part. Normally you might look at podcast downloads in one dashboard and website traffic somewhere completely different. Beamly brings podcast and website analytics together.
That means you can look at things including podcast downloads, listeners and apps alongside website traffic and the pages people visit. For indie podcasters, that can help answer questions download numbers alone can't.
Are people discovering old episodes through Google? Which pages send people towards your podcast? Are visitors actually doing anything after arriving at your website?
That's potentially much more useful than simply watching one download number move up and down.
Can you make money through Beamly?
This is probably where Beamly becomes more interesting for established shows.
You can sell memberships, subscriptions, private podcast access, gated content and digital products directly through the site.
Beamly currently charges 0% platform transaction fees on those sales, although standard Stripe payment-processing fees still apply.
That could allow a podcast to offer things like:
bonus episodes
ad-free feeds
subscriber-only podcasts
downloadable resources
courses
premium articles or videos
supporter memberships
You don't necessarily need any of those things when you start a podcast.
But having the infrastructure available means your website can grow with the show.
Who is Beamly best suited to?
We think Beamly becomes particularly interesting when your podcast is starting to become more than just a podcast feed.
It's worth considering if you:
want your podcast to have its own professional website
want to publish articles or other content around episodes
care about search visibility
want to understand what listeners do beyond pressing play
publish video as well as audio
want to build memberships or paid content
don't want to maintain several separate pieces of software
It could also make sense for podcast networks or producers managing more than one show.
Who probably doesn't need it?
If you simply want somewhere to upload an episode and distribute it to podcast apps, Beamly may offer more than you actually need.
And that's okay. A website shouldn't become another job that prevents you making the podcast.
We'd look at Beamly when there's a reason to build something around your show: discoverability, community, monetisation, additional content or a more professional presence.
Why we're recommending Beamly
Independent podcasters already have enough jobs. Maintaining a complicated collection of website plugins and disconnected services probably isn't high on anyone's list.
That's what we like about Beamly's approach.
It brings the podcast website builder, hosting, publishing, analytics and monetisation tools into one place, while still allowing you to keep your existing podcast host if you want to.
More importantly, it gives your podcast somewhere of its own. Spotify and Apple Podcasts are fantastic places for people to listen but they don't have to be the entire home of your show.
Try Beamly
Beamly currently offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required so you can build something and decide whether it's actually useful before committing.
Editor's note: Podomedy is a Beamly affiliate but we use the site too and wouldn't recommend anything that isn't in our tech stack. We may earn commission if you become a paying customer after following our affiliate link. This doesn't affect the price you pay or which products we recommend.