How to Use Third Party Plugins on Podcast Websites

Podcast Websites is a company that offers software as a service to podcasters. At the core of the technology, they are simply a WordPress website with a lot of built in tools. I don’t recommend this service for most people because you will be forever married to a third party service if you build your website on their platform.

To me it’s better to build a site in which you own all your intellectual property. For that reason, I recommend WordPress and its host of third party, open source software providers.

None-the-less, as we do a lot of client work, I’m forced to learn many different systems.

Here’s how to go around the Podcast Websites service to get at the core technology. You’ll want to do this if your redirects are NOT working, for whatever reason.

Here we access Pretty Links by Going Around Podcast Websites dashboard

First, we want to access third party plugins:

Next, we want to find the plugin that does the job we need to be done. In this example, we are setting up a Pretty Link:

Now their custom dashboard CSS makes it look like a tool which they built. They didn’t we can thank Pretty Links for that. Here we use Pretty Links to set up a functioning redirect.

A Note on Switching Costs

After diving into the Podcast Websites sales funnel and working on technical problems related to a website that utilizes it, I feel it’s extra important to make a note about why I don’t think this is a good solution for those long term focused businesses.

1. Fake Try it for Free offering
   1. As I was experimenting with trying their software, they don’t actually have a try it for free option. They have a pay for it now and if you want to not use it you can cancel your payment plan. This seems a bit dishonest to me.
2. They Lock People In
   1. As you develop your podcast, this software develops your site in a way that will make it very painful to switch away from their service. They blend their third party tools in with the WordPress core technology. Therefore if you ever want to switch it will be technically challenging for your migration team. That means it will cost you a lot to stop using it.
   2. WordPress at it’s core is free Podcasting Websites is $100 a month. Unless I’m missing something, they simply own all your software (your domain too?) and charge you to utilize something that is close to free.*
3. Challenging to Use
   1. The back end is very challenging to navigate and buggy. Though WordPress has similar issues, our team produces hundreds of podcasts a year. Our experience with Podcast Websites is similar to podcasting with Wix, SquareSpace and Shopify. All these content management systems (CMS) are NOT ideal for podcasting.

* – There is value in having packaged software. If they select and configure a collection of open source software, there is value in that. But this could be a single priced option if it were an honest service. For example, $800 to setup email trap software, contact forms and theme design

Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. If someone from Podcast Websites reads this, please let me know if I’m misunderstanding something.