It appears that Anchor isn’t the only “free” podcast host in town. I was recently introduced to a company called Red Circle who claims you can “Get free hosting with unlimited storage and uploads. For us, the cost of podcast hosting is very small. We believe that for you, it should be zero.” While free hosting is always alluring, what else does Red Circle offer?
Something refreshing about Red Circle is that they offer the ability to host all your shows under the same account. There are paid services that cannot seem to get this right. Having one login and the ability to manage all your shows from one dashboard is certainly welcome.
Red Circle creates an RSS feed for each of your hosted shows (which some of us podcasters may or may not like). I personally like to control my own RSS feed and simply grab the media file’s link in order to add it to my feed. For up-and-coming podcasters that don’t want to have a website, dishing out Red Circle’s generated RSS feed URL will save them time, energy and effort.
I cannot find any information about IAB certified statistics, so I am going to assume they are not a certified media host. Typically, one of the many prices of free services is the lack of quality statistics. But you get what you invest; therefore, you cannot expect a free service to eat the cost of IAB certification when they are not backed by another company who is willing to foot the bill.
One thing the cost of free does not seem to be negatively impacting is Red Circle’s customer support. On their website Red Circle boasts that you can “Count on our top-notch reliability and support, we’re always available to help you along the way. For urgent issues, our technical support team typically responds within minutes, not days.” That is quite the claim, and from the digging I have done, it appears to be legit. While perusing Reddit, I found several instances of people praising Red Circle for their customer service. Also, Red Circle representatives were joining the conversation amongst the unwashed masses on Reddit. The fact that they would have the awareness to engage in that forum should earn them a medal.
It appears advertising is the business model Red Circle has landed on for monetization. While it is a tried and true method, we will have to see if they are able to make enough money via revenue splits.
Having only started in 2019, Red Circle has yet to prove they can stand the test of time. It will be interesting to see if they get acquired or can show significant gains in the podcasting market in the next several years. Regardless, Red Circle offers free media hosting which should delight any podcaster wanting to start a show without paying a media host.
Find out more about Red Circle by heading to their website at https://redcircle.com/.
