Fireside Review

Fireside is a podcast hosting and analytics program created by and for podcasters. Every Podcast gets a lovely, mobile-friendly website with episode pages, your images, custom pages, redirects, host and guest pages, and more. It’s all pre-installed. One of the industry’s trusted Podcast hosting and download tracking systems, we collect and display vast amounts of data about your special and unique downloads, with IAB compliance coming soon. Every Podcast comes with a free SSL (https) certificate for both subdomains and your custom domain name, ensuring that your website and all of its content are delivered securely to your listeners. No matter where you currently host your Podcast, you can easily import it with just one click. All of your episodes, titles, descriptions, MP3 files and important metadata are imported into Fireside. Your brand is important, and Fireside makes it simple to use your domain to give your listeners a consistent experience. Once you’ve entered your domain name and updated your DNS, you’re done. Your listeners are eager to hear your episode as soon as it becomes available. To deliver your content quickly, we’ve partnered with the fastest CDNs available, as well as our infrastructure.

Fireside can import your existing Podcast from any existing podcast platform or custom RSS feed with just one click without losing subscribers. On the other hand, Fireside can import from any valid podcast RSS feed. Fireside is simple to publish your content to all major distribution services and channels. We can publish your Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, and pretty much any other third-party service! We’re podcasters ourselves, so we understand the value of accurate, real-time download statistics and analytics. Our statistics engine and analytics reporting are at the heart of the product, ensuring that every unique download is accurately tracked and counted. The Fireside dashboard was created with this in mind. It was designed to be quick, simple, and optimized for the podcasting workflow. This permits you to concentrate your efforts where they are most needed. You can import a podcast from your current host into Fireside in a single step for no extra charge. Titles, descriptions, notes, and, of course, MP3 files will all be automatically imported into your Fireside Podcast as new episodes. For all files you upload or import, Fireside will update the metadata from the episode (title, copyright, cover art, etc.) but will not re-encode, up-convert, or down-convert your audio. Fireside was built from the ground up to be a complete podcast hosting solution, complete with a feature-rich, responsive website where your listeners can learn more about your show. All available are individual host and guest pages, tag pages, custom pages and links, a full blogging engine, fully customizable artwork, and much more. Use our dark and light-themed embeddable players to share your episodes on any webpage or publishing tool, from Squarespace to WordPress. It’s all right here: add links with our handy bookmarklet, create custom pages and redirects, share your stats with sponsors, add collaborators, and schedule episodes to publish in the future automatically.

Fireside hosts your MP3 files (Podcast), creates your RSS Feed (how you distribute your Podcast to places like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and others), and makes a beautiful website for you. You don’t need any other platforms to host or distribute your Podcast. The only other tools you’ll need to publish your Podcast are the ones you’ll use to record and edit it. Platforms for monetization and membership, such as Patreon and Supporting Cast, complement Fireside perfectly. Podbean, Soundwise, and other dynamic ad insertion services work independently of Fireside and provide their file hosting. You will want to use Stitcher’s and Google Play’s services directly to get download counts from them, as they have not yet issued Fireside with access to their APIs like Spotify has. We will integrate those platform’s metrics as soon as access is granted. Fireside websites are fully responsive and automatically optimized for mobile devices. They look great on Macs, PCs, and tablets. We’re working on a gallery/discovery section, but in the meantime, check out Very Bad Wizards, a podcast created by one of our customers. On the Features page, you can see screenshots of the administration dashboard and more.