Podcast Hosting Unlimited Bandwidth

Posted by Paul Colligan on Monday, August 14, 2006

Let’s explain this as easily as possible:

Bandwidth costs money. Hosting providers pay for bandwidth. Hosting providers that give away unlimited bandwidth for free won’t be hosting providers for long.

However, … the “buy in bulk” principle applies to bandwidth almost better than anywhere else. If done right, a Podcast that does a terabyte a day can still be financed for a small percentage of 1 ad insertion in the show.

The following Web hosting providers all offer 1000 gigs of transfer (or more) for $10 (or less). I call them the Ten Buck Terabyte list:

I will gladly add to this list any legitimate hosting firm – just comment below. Only requirement – they must offer 1,000 gig of transfer for less than $10.

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Yes, if they have a program, I’ll be using my affiliate links.

  • http://www.jasonvanorden.com Jason Van Orden

    Paul,

    Is it your opinion that Libsyn will go out of business? They have been offering “unlimited bandwidth” for almost two years. I must admit, it is a wonder that they can keep going sometimes.

    Jason

  • http://www.colligan.com colligan

    Are you happy with them / do you think they can keep doing this?

    P

  • http://www.okaytoplay.com Adam

    I recently created a little calculator for figuring out how much bandwidth and storage a podcast actually needs. Its handy for figuring out if and when you’ll actually hit the 1000 gig mark.

    http://okaytoplay.com/podcast-hosting/calc.html

  • http://www.jasonvanorden.com Jason Van Orden

    I only use Libsyn to store the media files for one podcast. So far I’m happy. I’ve not had any major problems.

    As for whether they can keep going…

    I Imagine that at the very least the $5 package is not profitable for them. I really wonder how long they can keep it up. To tell the truth, I think their $5 package is still worth paying $10 for.

    For the first year I was leary about using them because i wondered if they could stay alive. They are still here. So I’ve decided to give them a try. I guess time will tell.

    Jason

  • jonson roth

    Just a guess but natural phenomena usually follows a bell curve. So it’s possible that libsyn podcasts do so as well. So if libsyn pays, say, $2000/mth for their “pipe”, plus overage, and they have 1000 members at $5/mth, that’s $5000/mth gross. But if only a very few podcasts are eating big bandwidth and the total use is still under their gross, they’ve got a profit.

    I’m not sure if they’re a not-for-profit, but if they are, that could explain their ability to hold on at potentially low net revenue levels.

    One possible alternative for big users: Amazon storage, which apparently can handle heavy hits, in case your podcast gets “dugg”. It’ll cost you more than libsyn (and less than regular website hosts) but can libsyn – or other podcast hosts – handle big traffic spikes?

  • http://www.infidelguy.com Reginald V. Finley

    I have over 500 shows and 300 download extras that I wish I could release for free to my listeners. But my bandwidth would easily hit 1,000GB in a few days. There doesn’t seem to be anyone out there that can host my bandwidth needs. I am currently using a subscription model and have been for almost a decade. I am considering re-encoding all of my shows and youtubing them.. and simply ask for donations.. while providing something completely new for my 500 or so gold members.

    Paul? You are the guru.. what do you think?

  • http://www.paulcolligan.com Paul Colligan

    There’s a general cost of doing business. For Podcaster, part of the cost of doing business is bandwidth.

    Now, anyone making any money on their Podcast – there is no reason they can’t put part of that revenue stream into bandwidth.

    Those not making money on their Podcast, no problem, but … someone has to pay for the bandwidth.

    I personally host everything on S3 right now. Yes, I have a bill every month (and it’s more than $5 promised by some unlimited types). But, my show get delivered and I don’t mind at all paying for what makes this all possible.

    Youtubing fine but it really, in the end, promotes YouTube more than it ever promotes your brand.

    Paul

  • http://rajjackson.com Naveen Reddy

    What are the different ways people make money from the internet TV podcast shows?

  • venkat20

    Interesting Information..Interesting sharing..I choosed the Domain Name registration and host plan at low cost in the site http://www.tucktail.com/

  • liliag

    That's such a great idea because I know some people that would really benefit from it. Two friends of mine have a radio show and many people ask them to post the shows online for them to listen later in the day. They thought about it but didn't wanted to invest any money into hosting. Now they can upload all their shows!
    Lilia Gephardt @ Linux dedicated server

  • http://www.facebook.com/ChetCromer Chet Cromer

    I don’t offer 1,000 gig’s of transfer for less than $10, but I do offer 5-10 terabytes for less than $500.

    Our company’s hosted solution is for podcasts that have outgrown anything you can get from a shared server solution like GoDaddy, HostGator, etc. Instead, we build a multi-server management system that allows you to upload a single file, automatically distribute that file to multiple (cheap) servers, and then spread the load of podcast downloads through some innovative DNS solutions. What would cost you $1500 / month from Amazon Cloud services costs you $300 – $400 from us.

    You can read more @

    http://c2itconsulting.net/Products/MirrorandPodcastManagement.aspx.

  • http://www.register-web-domain.in Domain registration

    What
    is the benefit in this podcast hosting ? Now only I am hearing about podcast hosting Thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.joomla-web-developer.com Joomla Development

    Great to hear about Podcast Hosting! I’m happy when reading through your site with up-to-date information! thanks alot and hope that you’ll publish more site that are based on this website.