Good/Bad ISP's for Podcasters

[tymcode]

Shopping ISP's for a podcast is time-consuming, and switching providers is a hassle. It's time we centralized the discuission and learned from each other's mistakes and good experiences.

When I started shopping I was only looking at price and disk space. I realized that transfer is much more important. It can kill a podcast when your ISP's maximum transfer limit is reached.

The transfer limits vary widely -- ValueWeb (http://www.valueweb.com/) for example allows 10GB/month. It sounds like a lot until you do the math -- a typical 20MB 'cast can only be downloaded 500 times. PowWeb (http://www.powweb.com/) lists their limits by the day -- 5GB/day, or about 7500 downloads a month, which is pretty good as long as the show doesn't turn into a Top Pick.

But I've heard of ISP's with no transfer limits, which sounds ideal. Does anyone have any recommendations?

And then there's quality of service....
Adam's told us about .Mac's edge servers being configured in such a way that Doppler Radio can't download (soon to be fixed, I imagine), and when a new Dawn and Drew comes out they get slammed and you only get half of a download. We're all interested in those little gotchas because they can become so important....

Anyone have good or bad reports for their ISP?

--Mike Jennings

[allthewhile]

It would be nice if someone hacked up a script to allow you to post a link to an mp3 on your site until it's been downloaded a certain amount of times, and then dynamically append the link to point towards the coral cache of it. That way you can regulate your bandwidth and allow a certain amount of downloads, but then have a safety net in place.

I'll post this suggestion elsewhere as an idea.

[Anonymous]

Jo Ann and I have been hosting our podcast with Liberated Syndication, http://libsyn.com/, and we're very pleased with the ease of use and the responsiveness of their support. The pricing was really good too.

Make sure to read the forums for extra details on the whole storage archival process.It's a little confusing at first because I don't think anyone else has an offer like it.

Here's an example. At the low end for $5/mo., you can add 100MB of new content every month and there's NO charge for bandwidth used. The storage aggregates over time. Each month you get to start fresh with a 100MB budget to spend. Your old content is accessable as long as your account is active. It's a really sweat deal and truly is a podcast friendly model.

I'm not associated with them in any way other than being a happy customer. :)

Hope that helps,
Stacy
http://joannandstacyshow.libsyn.com/

[Anonymous]

As you all probably know, Insomnia Radio is sponsored by Libsyn. But that in no way means I'm paid to flaunt their awesomeness here or elsewhere.

I do it because they have an inexpensive, quality hosting model...

I can't recommend them enough. With the account I use, $10/month gets you 250MB of storage per month and unlimited bandwidth. Paying for bandwidth at this stage in the game is foolish and totally unnecessary. My show transfers over 300GB/month...paying for that is ludicrous...

My advice is that whatever hosting solution you decide on, consider the possibility for growth and ease of use. Libsyn incorporates a blog into their service as well, and if used from the beginning, is an all in one solution...

Again, I know I'm affiliated with them, but if that arrangement were to expire, I would still happily fork over my $10 a month...

They do have over 100 podcasters using their service, which by itself speaks volumes...

Ok, rant over!
Peace;
Jason

[ToasterBoy]

Check out

hostbaby.com

I use them for my band and The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd sites. They have some pretty great, pre-existing PHP features. They are $20 a month (or $200 for a year). No bandwidth issues and 500MB of space.

They were started mostly for bands, but they are pretty cool.

Grant
"Dr. Grant"

[daxxon]

I recently signed up for an account at dreamhost.com which offers 120 gb a month datatraffic and 2400mb storage space for only 7.95 a month...

[radioclash]

Well I tend to hear of the good and the bad...

Bad: Fasthosts in the UK (Scotland) - why? Well they ban ALL MP3s so definitely very bad for podcasting, and very strange...friend's sites fell foul of that hosting MP3s for others temporarily. Exit site...

Good: Well I'm using my Zen (http://www.zen.co.uk) ISP space and it's very good, bit like a .Mac situation as it comes with my b/band, might consider upgrading to them because alas you can't run scripts or tracking on that server. Unlimited bandwidth at the moment. I'm paying £25 a month for b/band so it's part of that (yes it's more expensive than others but it's fast and uncapped. And has 1Gb free webspace :-) )

OK-ish but flakey: Valuehosts (http://www.valuehost.co.uk/) - I run my board and used to run my podcasts off this but only has 30Gb a month limit and flakey as you get a lot of incompletes. It's a very good package - 10 databases, PHP, loads of email addresses, all the usual stuff. Only recommend this for small startup casts or sites only. 700Mb space, £5.45 a month for 12 months.

The main reason I am with them is they are a Russian firm and seem to have a laissez-faire attitude to what's on their servers... :wink: Certainly if you have content that skirts the law or is RIAA-unfriendly you might want to think about how and where your site is hosted.

And seperate your MP3s from your site on different servers...

I'd be interested in hearing of good cheap packages that include several MySQL databases, PHP, decent amount of space and multiple domains facility that are totally rock solid for donwloading, have a generous bandwidth, and most importantly pretty relaxed about what's on their servers (unlike Fasthosts) but I'm not sure that exists... :(

Unless like friends of mine you hire space on a porn server!

[radioclash]

It would be nice if someone hacked up a script to allow you to post a link to an mp3 on your site until it's been downloaded a certain amount of times, and then dynamically append the link to point towards the coral cache of it. That way you can regulate your bandwidth and allow a certain amount of downloads, but then have a safety net in place.

I'll post this suggestion elsewhere as an idea.

There are scripts that will do that already from a website perspective, it's called 'load balancing' and although it tends to be between 2 servers say in a Telehouse/Network server farm, I think there are scripts out there that will do same for different webservers on the internet.

Classic situation - people go to the site and get served different links each time, halving the bandwidth between several sites...I don't think you could accurately monitor amount of downloads by script without doing something fancy with the logs; but certainly if you estimate how many clicks it would be you can click count then substitute something else in place.