I'm not going to put this under the Snake Oil category, but I considered it. Let's just call Hostaway "out of the loop".
Hostaway has recently introduced podcast hosting into their product line. Now, I'm always suspicious when someone mentions "podcast hosting" because the type of file being hosted makes no difference. Hosting an MP3 files is the same as hosting an HTML file. The difference is in the file size.
What makes a podcast host a podcast host is the provision of massive (preferably unlimited) disk space and massive (preferably unlimited) bandwidth. I don't consider any host that doesn't offer these two things to be a podcast host even though there are many out there. Hostaway, however, is really scraping the barrel here.
For the princely sum of $2.95 a month podcasters can either sign up for a podcasting only account, or add "podcast hosting" onto an existing plan. For that fee, podcasters will get 50MB of disk space and 2GB of bandwidth.
I had to check that five times. Yes, 50MB of disk space and 2GB of bandwidth. What the hell good is that?
Our weekly podcast is about 15MB in size. Granted, our show is a little longer than some (45 minutes), but it's not too much. Let's say an average podcast is 10MB just to be nice. With Hostaways "podcast hosting" I can store a grand total of 5 shows of which my listeners can download a total of 200 times. Let's put that in perspective:
Disk Space
1 weekly show (10MB) X 4 weeks in a month = 40MB. I am now almost out of disk space in the first month.
Bandwidth
40MB of shows in a month downloaded 50 times each = 2GB. I am now out of bandwidth with 50 listeners. Even the worst show on the planet is likely to get 50 listeners.
Calling this plan a "podcast hosting" plan is like calling an empty pizza box a "garage".
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