According to research, over 144 million Americans aged 12 and above have listened to podcasts. Although they aren’t necessarily loyal listeners, it’s excellent news for podcasters looking to build an audience and monetize their content.
If you’re ready to be heard, you need the best podcast hosting platform with all the features you need to start and promote your new show. One such platform is RedCircle.
RedCircle is a platform for podcasters to scale their message. In addition, the platform empowers show creators with powerful tools designed to help them grow their podcasts and earn money from their content.
In this RedCircle review, we’ll look at who this platform is good for, its functionality and features, its pros and cons, and the efficiency of the platform’s customer support.
RedCircle Summary
Ron’s Thoughts
RedCircle is a powerful podcast hosting platform with a couple of unique features. For starters, users can utilize RedCircle’s robust and expansive ad platform, cross promotions, subscription features, and donations to monetize their podcasts. On top of that, RedCircle is a great choice for brands and agencies as well. The starter plan is free and powerful enough to get acquainted with the platform, but you can also purchase other plans for the full podcast hosting experience.
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Biggest Pro:
Diverse Monetization Streams
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Biggest Con:
Lack of Live Stream Functionality
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Annual Discount:
Yes - Up to 25% Off
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Price:
Starts at $12/Month
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Promotion:
Is RedCircle Worth it?
This platform is perfect for podcasters and brands. It comes with everything creators need to host/distribute content, earn money, and grow their audiences. On the other hand, brands can quickly launch and run successful ad campaigns at scale.
Whether you are a podcaster, brand, or podcasting agency, you’ll find value in using this increasingly popular platform.
Its unique features include a robust ad platform, cross promotions, donations, and subscription features. You can also automate the distribution of your show which makes your work a lot easier.
While there is no shortage of competitors like Firstory, RSS podcast hosting, Libsyn, and many more, RedCircle is one of the top choices among podcast creators for a reason.
RedCircle is definitely worth the investment, and the best part is you can start using it for free. On the Core plan, you get unlimited hosting and distribution, exclusive content, ads, and much more – without investing a single cent of your hard-earned money.
Who is RedCircle Good For?
RedCircle is ideal for anyone who wants to grow their podcast, reach new audiences, and monetize their content.
Used by some of the top brands in different industries, including Ziprecruiter, TalkSpace, SkillShare, and Glossier, this platform offers many features to help brands and agencies plan, launch, and measure their host-read podcast ad campaigns.
This can be done quickly and at scale, making this platform worth the investment.
Here are a few examples of how you can use the platform:
- Podcasters: Host and distribute your podcast and connect directly with advertisers or other podcasters in your niche to help you grow and monetize your show.
- Brands and Agencies: Connect with podcasters to sell your products and services or extend a brand’s reach.
- Listeners: You can sponsor podcasts by donating or subscribing to the show’s exclusive content.
RedCircle Functionality
The first deeper look we’ll be taking as part of this RedCircle review is the platform’s functionality.
1. Ease of Use
This is the most important factor to consider when deciding on the best software tools for your business.
You can sign up as a podcaster, listener, brand, or agency.
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be taken to the dashboard, where you can start setting up your new podcast hosting and distribution of the on-demand audio platform will all the tools for a podcast episode and promotion tools.
You can either start a new podcast or import your existing show. It only takes a few minutes to get started with this advanced platform – create more podcasts with advertising opportunities and monetization options.
After that, you can make use of all the other features on the platform, such as connecting your bank account to start monetizing your content, asking for listener support, etc.
Once your show is uploaded, use the dynamic insertion feature to create points of insertion for audio blocks across all your episodes.
From here, you can also upload and manage your shows, updates, ads, cross-promotion, audio clips, and much more.
2. RedCircle for Podcasters
Finally, there’s an all-in-one platform for podcasters with innovative tools to manage every aspect of a podcast business under one roof.
RedCircle comes with all the tools you require to be heard, grow your audience, and make money from your content.
These include:
- Ad platform
- Cross Promotions
- Subscriptions
- Donations
- Hosting and Distribution
- Customize and Control: RedCircle ensures that you always have full control over your content. You, and only you, decide where and when and the order in which content appears on your show.No tech knowledge is needed – simply use the drag-and-drop feature to add an insertion point in your show by picking a market time and improving your podcast’s performance, including using art distribution tools on RedCircle’s platform.
This way, you can dynamically insert ads, intros, cross promotions, or updates across all your episodes. There are no complicated contracts and no exclusivity. The platform is committed to helping you monetize your content, not locking you in.
- Earn More Money: RedCircle has powerful monetization tools designed to empower you to earn more money from your RedCircle podcast. You can advertise through the ad platform, sell subscriptions to exclusive content, or accept listener donations while podcasting
Choose whichever method appeals to you – or use all of them; you are in full control of your content monetization like other podcast hosts.
- Get Paid Quickly: On RedCircle, you get paid days, not weeks or months. Thanks to Stripe integration, you can receive payments quickly and transfer funds to your bank account in just a few clicks.
3. Robust Monetization Products with RedCircle Ad Platform
You can monetize your platform in many different ways, including:
- Donations: Listeners can sponsor your show, and the platform will take a small 4.5% fee from the payout.
- Subscriptions and Exclusive Content: Get paid for subscriptions to your exclusive content and only pay 12% fees.
- RAP Host-Read Ads: RedCircle will connect you with advertising sponsorships, and the platform keeps 30% of the payout.
- RAP Programmatic Ads: Enable targeted programmatic ads on your show and get 50% of the payout with Redcircle Ad Platform (RAP) with advanced statistics
The premium plans come with full ad category customization. It’s important to note that RedCircle podcast shows must average over 500 weekly downloads to be eligible for RAP (RedCircle Ad Platform).
4. RedCircle Podcast Hosting and Distribution (Free Unlimited Hosting)
RedCircle is designed to be an all-in-one platform to host, distribute, and measure your podcast.
You get unlimited storage on all plans – even the free one. You also get unlimited bandwidth, episodes, and downloads.
Your RedCircle podcast can be distributed on all major apps and directories, including:
- Apple Podcasts
- Google Podcasts
- Spotify
- Stitcher
- YouTube
… and more.
You can manage all your content from one place. You can do so easily if you have multiple podcasts to manage or multiple hosts from one RedCircle account.
You get an RSS feed and support to help submit to Spotify and iTunes as part of the package, and there’s also free importing and redirecting on all the plans.
5. Growth-Focused Platform
RedCircle offers a wide range of features designed to help you grow and scale your podcast business.
- Podcast Stats: Even on the free plan, you get in-depth historical analytics (that never expire) to help you make better-informed decisions for growing your podcast.
- Podcast Webpage: On the premium plans, there are no ads, and you can remove the “Related Shows” link at the bottom of the page.
- Embeddable Players: You get an embeddable episode/show player that you can customize and change from dark to light mode.
- Dynamic Insertion: On the free plan, you get dynamic insertion for RAP ads, but on the premium plans, this feature is unlimited.
- Create Videos for Podcast: The paid plans allow you to generate videos and distribute them to YouTube in just a few clicks.
- Cross Promotion Marketplace: Get the word out about your show by cross-promoting it with other relevant podcasts.
6. Account Management
The free plan comes with only one podcast, but on any of the premium plans, you have unlimited podcasts. You’ll receive advanced, premium, dedicated, or in-app support, depending on the plan you’re on.
Premium plans get instant payouts after podcasting and multiple team seats (customizable), and the Enterprise plan even comes with a dedicated account manager.
You also get in-depth analytics features to help you understand how your podcast is performing so you can make informed decisions for growth podcasting.
- Drive deeper insights and understand your audience.
- Get smarter as you go with built-in analytics.
- Track downloads by device, location, podcast app, and more.
7. RedCircle for Brands and Agencies
Dynamic storytelling reaches your audience at a time that matters most, and RedCircle is the smartest way for brands and agencies to buy podcast ads for multiple podcasts
The platform is built for scale, and you can simply sign up and start browsing podcasts to find and access thousands of networks, and independent creators, all of which are carefully vetted by the platform’s experts, unlike Apple podcasts or other listening apps
You’ll be able to choose the right balance of formats for your ads to make your ad spend go even further.
- Make Every Second Count: Launch a campaign in just days as opposed to weeks. Distribute your ads across all podcast episodes in order to increase your reach and get your product in front of more people. The platform also makes it easy for you to test your message against audiences and shows, and you only pay when it is delivered.
- Spend Smarter: RedCircle has tools that will help you better understand attribution and conversion. You’ll be able to track your budgets across shows and make adjustments according to performance. Optimize your campaigns through A/B testing to find the best-performing messages, fine print, ad formats, and show placements.
Control Your Message: Customize your message using the podcast’s unique voice as a way to build trust and develop powerful endorsements with the RedCircle ad platform and promote as a podcast host with complete control.
Set your budget and campaign dates, and review ad reads. Provide feedback to creators, all in one convenient place where YOU have full control over customization and campaign management.
RedCircle Pros and Cons
This platform has its own pros and cons like any other software, and this RedCircle review wouldn’t be complete without this section. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the pros and cons of RedCircle.
Pros:
- Pricing for All Budgets: One of the best things about RedCircle is that it’s priced to suit all types of budgets, and you can choose the plan that works for you (starting from free).
- Diverse Monetization Streams: Leverage your show as a reliable revenue stream by choosing one or all monetization methods, including podcast subscriptions, donations, advertising, etc.
- Straightforward Interface: Ease of use is the platform’s main selling point, thanks to the straightforward and intuitive dashboard.
Cons:
- No Live Stream: You cannot live stream using this platform.
- No Video Podcasts: RedCircle does not support video podcasts.
Pricing
On RedCircle, there are no contracts, no commitments, and you can cancel anytime. The platform not only has a free plan with all the standard features for individual podcasters, but it also offers a 7-day free trial to test the premium features on the Growth plan and Pro plan.
Here is what each plan entails:
- Core Plan: Free
- Unlimited Hosting & Distribution
- Subscriptions & Exclusive Content
- Donations
- RAP Programmatic Ads
- RAP Host-Read Ads
- Dynamic Insertion for RAP Ads
- Standard Analytics
- Growth Plan: $9/month
- Everything in Core Plan, plus:
- Unlimited Podcasts
- Cross Promotions Marketplace
- Unlimited Dynamic Insertion
- Instant Payouts
- Generate Video for Episodes
- Ad-Free Podcast Webpages
- Advanced Analytics
- Pro Plan: $30/month
- Everything in Growth Plan, plus:
- 5 Customizable Team Seats
- Generate Video w/ one-click distribution to YouTube
- In-App Support for independent creators
- Premium Analytics
- Enterprise Plan: Contact support for a quote
- Everything in Pro Plan, plus:
- Unlimited Customizable Team Seats
- Dedicated Account Manager
- The most comprehensive analytics for growth, revenue, and dynamic insertion (includes performance for all Dynamic Insertion you create like your own ads!)
Product Support
Get help when you need it with this unique platform. You can count on the platform’s top-notch reliability, and support is always available to help you along the way.
RedCircle offers support in a number of ways, including:
- Phone
- Live Chat Support
- Help Center
For urgent issues, the technical support team typically responds within minutes, not days.
From starting your first podcast to growing your audience, monetizing your content, and more – the platform offers you everything you need to learn how to make the most of your show.
Is RedCircle Legit?
That’s about it for this RedCircle review. So, is it any good?
RedCircle is a powerful solution for listeners, podcasters, brands, and agencies looking for an all-in-one platform to cater to all their podcasting, monetization, brand message, dynamic advert insertions, and other advertising needs.
It comes with a range of impressive tools that will help you to be heard and grow your podcast while keeping up with all the latest best practices for running a successful show.
If you’re ready to test out this software for yourself, sign up for a free trial on RedCircle right now.