A few months ago, I was browsing the Church Tech community in search of some good podcasting advice. Missio Dei (MD) has had a YouTube account that was our primary source of content outsourcing, but I had recently realized the glaring problem with this: it’s not very portable. Sure, you can rip the audio from the video and throw it on your phone, but we wanted our content to be more accessible on the go.
I found a thread in the community and was browsing the comments and Buzzsprout came up. I checked out their site, contacted them and they offered a review period for us to try. A huge thanks is in order to Jared, one of the best customer service people out there. Thanks for the review trial and amazing support of your product! So, as we enter the new year, and you start new endeavors, here’s a rundown of Buzzsprout’s service.
A Committment to a Great Experience
When I first contacted Jared from Buzzsprout, I asked him what three qualities they felt were key to a good podcast in experience. He started by saying that, “We have a philosophy that podcasting can be something that anyone can do with just a microphone, recording software, and Buzzsprout.” He went on to list these three qualities:
A stress free publishing experience- One where anyone can upload and promote with very little time commitment.
A quality hosting service- A podcaster should never have to worry if their podcast can be heard at any time.
Great customer support- We see more and more that having someone to answer the simple and hard questions throughout the day just makes things easier.
I’ve spent almost 2 months using Buzzsprout. Let’s see if they’re on par with their expectations.
A Stress Free Publishing Experience
Since this was my first time setting up a podcast ever, I was really hesitant to dive in. What if I didn’t know what terms they were referring to? What if I got to a point and couldn’t go any farther? What if I blew up the internet?
In case you were wondering…Everything went fine. After I created my free account, I followed the steps to have our podcast live on iTunes. Buzzsprout was very helpful with step by step instructions. It took about 36 hours to be listed on iTunes (the site says it can take several weeks). From there I moved to uploading our audio.
The uploading process was very straightforward. Pick a file and edit the sermon info (title, author, date, etc) and let it finish. They’ll send you an email when the upload is complete. You can also import your RSS feed into Buzzsprout, but since we didn’t have one set up, I can’t comment on this process, though, I would imagine it’s just as simple as everything else to set up .
A Quality Hosting Service
During my time with Buzzsprout, I have had no downtime or any issues with streaming our episodes whatsoever. They self report practically no downtime, which is an incredible report. While I’m not able to say for certain that you’ll never experience downtime, I have complete faith that whatever downtime we might face in the future, it will be communicated clearly and resolved quickly. Which brings me to Jared ‘s third point.
Great Customer Support
This one I have a lot to say about. Let me go into a little more detail about my interaction inside the Church Tech Community’s thread. It was quite a long thread, and I was surprised when I saw Buzzsprout ‘s page start to engage with the conversation. And then, Jared himself joined in and started to answer questions!
I’m always impressed when a page responds to someone’s post about them, but for an employee to be proactive in finding and joining a comment thread was over the top. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. So, needless to say, their customer support is what made me want to test drive Buzzsprout.
Throughout the sign up process I had many “dumb” questions that I threw their way. I always received a prompt, personal and practical response to my questions. Their responses didn’t belittle me and always directed me to better information or helped me fix any issue I had. I can’t say enough good things about the service I received. You’ll just have to try it out to see what I mean.
Just a Few Negatives
I can’t really call them negatives per se, but there are always two sides to a coin, so I’ll report on some things I felt could be improved on.
Website design- While I was able to find everything with minimal effort, I felt like the website’s design and layout could use an update/refresh.
Mobile management- This is somewhat related to the first point, but there is no mobile interface to interact with if I needed to edit or add info on the go. As a very mobile church planter, being stuck in a full web page experience on my phone takes too much time for me to navigate.
Batch Uploading- I’m sure the process is much easier by importing an already existing podcast RSS, but since this was my first time ever setting up audio before, all we had was about 30 audio files that needed to be uploaded individually. Granted, I’m sure there are a ton of behind the scenes stuff as far as uploading so much audio all at once, but the current process was very time consuming.
All In All
It’s the start of a brand new year. If you were like MD (with no audio outreach) I highly suggest getting into it, and Buzzsprout is a wonderful, easy way to do that. I highly recommend giving it a try. Buzzsprout has some very clear goals set up, and I’m happy to say they’re fulfilling thier own expectations in every way. Great job!
Do you podcast? What service does your church use? Will you be giving Buzzsprout a try? Hit us up on social media outlets everywhere, or in the comments below with your thoughts!
[image via Microphone Wallpaper modified by Jesse Gruber]
Marc says
I am thinking about using Buzzsprout but I’m worried the basic 64k mono channel audio won’t sound good and I’ll be forced to buy the 128k stereo upgrade for an additional $6 a month. What’s your experience been?
Eric Dye says
Take a listen to our podcast and see what you think: https://churchm.ag/podcast/
I’ve thought about the upgrade, but quite frankly, I don’t see that it matters. If it were a music magazine or something, sure, but ultimately that’s not why people listen to our podcast. I was concerned about the quality at first, too, but I think the quality has been just fine.
Paul Davis says
Thanks for the great review. I find it interesting to read about tech issues from a church perspective. So often I read from the online business community and there are differences between the two.
Couple questions:
1. Has the mobile management improved in the last 20 months?
2. Now that you have had some time on the platform, how is the service?
Eric Dye says
I couldn’t be happier with Buzzsprout and the embedded player is responsive now. They just keep getting better and better. 🙂
Stuart Mackey says
Is there a way to use Buzzsprout without using their player on my site? i.e. Use the PowerPress player, and get the URL for the MP3 from Buzzsprout?
Jesse Gruber says
Hey Stuart, I’m honestly not sure. I don’t know a lot of website backend stuff. It’s all over my head. But what I DO know is BuzzSprout’s team is incredibly helpful and friendly. I have full confidence they’ll be able to try to get done what you need.
Eric Dye says
LOL I replied to Stuart in the WordPress Admin before seeing your comment. 😛
Eric Dye says
Good question. That might work, but I’m not sure about how that might effect analytics. I recommend contacting them, they are an awesome team and would be more than happy to answer your question. 🙂
Stuart Mackey says
Thanks to both of you. I’m actually in Florida and I’ve met the guys from BuzzSprout a couple of times. I’ll reach out to them.