Are you looking for the best WordPress plugins for podcasters? WordPress is the most popular blogging platform chosen by top podcasters.
That’s because WordPress makes it super easy to promote your podcast, grow your audience, and increase your podcast revenue.
In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress podcast plugins for beginner and professional podcasters.
How to Start Podcasting with WordPress?
As we mentioned earlier, WordPress is popular among top podcasters such as Tim Ferris, Lewis Howes, Michael Hyatt, etc. That’s mainly because WordPress is easy to use and highly flexible with tons of great templates and thousands of WordPress plugins.
If you’re looking to make your website and start a podcast, then first you will need to get a domain name and WordPress hosting.
We recommend using Bluehost because they are one of the largest hosting companies in the world, and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. On top of that, they’re giving our users 60% off + a free domain.
Once you have signed up for hosting, the next step is to install WordPress. Follow the instructions in our how to start a WordPress blog and you will be up and running in no time.
Now comes the part where you will setup your podcast. To help you with this part, we have created a step by step guide on how to start your own podcast.
After that, take a look at our hand-picked list of the best WordPress plugins for Podcasters.
Best WordPress Podcast Plugins to Grow Your Audience
Unlike other WordPress podcast plugin lists, our goal is to share a comprehensive list of podcast plugins that work with all the best podcast file hosting services such as Podbean, BuzzSprout, Blubrry, Libsyn, etc.
You can use these plugins to not only add a podcast audio player on your site, but also manage podcast episodes, automatically upload episodes to iTunes, easily share affiliate links, track podcast downloads, and more.
With that said, let’s take a look at our best WordPress podcasting plugins.
1. PowerPress
PowerPress is a powerful WordPress podcasting plugin that helps you manage your podcast files in WordPress.
It creates iTunes and Google Play supported RSS feeds for your podcast. It also comes with an easy interface where you can add all the information required to submit your podcast to iTunes.
Adding your podcast episodes to your WordPress site is easy with a beautiful HTML5 player. It also includes integrated subscribe tools to boost your podcast subscribers. Most importantly it comes with helpful community support from thousands of podcasters who already use it.
Best of all, it works with the best podcast hosting services, including Blubrry.
2. Fusebox (aka Smart Podcast Player)
Fusebox is home of the Smart Podccast Player, one of the best podcast player plugin on the market. It automatically displays your podcast episodes with a beautiful mobile-friendly player.
Unlike other podcast player plugins, it offers a better user experience with a well-designed HTML5 player. You can add a mega player that loops through all episodes, or you can add a single episode player.
You can choose your own colors with a light or dark theme. It has built-in social sharing features, download button, speed control, timestamps, and more.
You also get access to the Fusebox Transcript plugin. It allows you to beautifully display podcast notes and transcripts for each episode.
Users can open a transcript in a new tab, download it as PDF, and most importantly you get an SEO boost for your episode pages.
3. Simple Podcast Press
Simple Podcast Press makes it super easy to add a beautiful podcast player to your WordPress website.
Simply add the iTunes URL of your podcast and it automatically creates a page for each episode. It also fetches the metadata, images, and notes and adds them to each page with the player displayed on top.
It offers customizable buttons, clickable timestamps, social sharing buttons, URL shortner, and more. The plugin works with any podcasting service and helps you grow your email list as well.
4. Seriously Simple Podcasting
A lot of beginners just want to start their podcast without purchasing dedicated podcast hosting or a media player. Seriously Simple Podcast player can help you do that. It allows you to manage and upload your podcast episodes directly to your WordPress site.
It generates your podcast feed which is compatible with iTunes, Google Play, and many other services. The plugin also comes with shortcodes and widgets to easily display podcast episodes throughout your website.
5. Smash Balloon YouTube Feeds
Smash Balloon YouTube Feeds allows you to beautifully display YouTube videos on your WordPress website. It is the perfect companion plugin for podcasters who upload their video podcasts to YouTube.
Smash Balloon’s YouTube feed supports live streams as well, which allows podcasters to live stream each episode via YouTube and simultaneously broadcast it on their WordPress website.
The plugin supports multiple styles and layouts. You can choose from the masonry grid, list, or carousel to display your latest video podcast episodes.
6. Podlove Podcast Publisher
Podlove Podcast Publisher is created by Podlove, an online community of users who want to improve podcasting standards. The plugin aims at offering cutting edge solutions for podcasting issues that were not fixed by other available platforms.
Podlove Podcast Publisher makes it easier for you to manage your podcast from your WordPress site. It offers highly compatible podcast feeds with fine-grain control over your feeds. It supports multi-format feeds, different audio and video codecs, enhanced HTML5 player, chapters support, download stats, and customizable templates.
The best part is that you will be part of an active community. They have their own forums where you can ask questions and get help from developers and other users.
7. Sermon Manager
Sermon Manager is the best WordPress sermon management plugin for WordPress. Made specifically for churches offering online sermons via their podcasts, this plugin has all the features a religious organization will need.
It comes with full-featured iTunes podcasting support with additional features like speakers, series, topics, books, and service types.
It works with any podcast hosting service and you can use it with your WordPress donations plugin to raise funds.
For detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to how churches can offer online sermons with WordPress.
8. Libsyn Podcasting Plugin
Libsyn is a popular podcast hosting service, and this plugin helps connect your WordPress site to your Libsyn account. It allows you to easily create episodes, save them as drafts, and schedule them in WordPress.
You will be able to directly upload your podcast files to Libsyn from WordPress, which means your podcast media will not take up space on your WordPress hosting server. You can also add files from your WordPress media library.
All your media and podcast feed will remain on Libsyn servers. Even if your website goes down, your podcast subscribers will still be able to download episodes directly into their podcast apps and feed readers.
9. Podcast Importer Secondline
Podcast Importer Secondline is a handy helper tool for podcasters who want to import their podcast into a new WordPress website.
All you need is your existing podcast feed URL. The plugin works with all podcast hosting services, all podcasting tools including PowerPress, and can even import podcasts from iTunes feed URL.
You can select ‘Podcast’ as your post type during the import if you are already using a plugin like PowerPress. You can also import episodes as blog posts and categorize them as podcast.
The plugin is made by SecondLine themes, a WordPress theme shop specializing in WordPress themes for podcasts.
10. As Heard On
As Heard On allows you to display different podcasts where you’ve been interviewed. This helps you feature other podcasters on your site, leverage social proof, and get featured on more podcasts. The plugin makes it easy to add the podcasts you want to showcase. You can add podcast name, host name, thumbnail, episode URL, description, etc.
You will have to find album art for the podcasts you want to display and upload the images manually. After you’ve added a few podcasts, you can display them in a sidebar widget, blog post, or any page on your site.
Bonus Plugins
These plugins are not specific to podcasting, but they would be immensely helpful for any podcaster using WordPress.
11. MonsterInsights
Want to know how people are discovering your podcast website? MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress users. It helps you find out where your users are coming from, what they do, and how much time they are spending on your site.
MonsterInsights also comes with link tracking feature which can help you find out which episodes are downloaded the most. It also comes with an addon for Google Optimize which is a tool to help you conduct content experiments like A/B testing to figure out what works best for your website.
12. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization software on the market. It allows you to convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.
It comes with lightbox popups, floating banners, slide-in popups, countdown timers, and more.
You can connect it to your email marketing service to grow your email list, increase social media following, and grow your social media following.
13. WPForms
User interaction helps you convert more visitors and build a stronger community. WPForms is the best WordPress contact form builder plugin, which allows you to create beautiful forms for your website without writing any code.
You can use it to add a contact form, build surveys forms, accept payments, create email subscription forms, and more. Due to its ease of use and powerful features it is a must have for any podcaster’s toolkit.
There’s also a free version of WPForms available for WPBeginner users. Get WPForms Lite today.
14. Pretty Links
Pretty Links is the best WordPress URL shortener plugin. It allows you to create branded short URLs and easily share them in your podcast episodes, transcripts, and descriptions.
It also allows you to manage all your affiliate links from one dashboard. You can use these shareable URLs in your email campaigns, podcast, social media, or on your website.
15. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
AIOSEO is a leading WordPress SEO plugin used by over 2 million websites.
It helps you optimize your website to rank higher in search engines.
Aside from all the essential on-page SEO tools, it also comes with video sitemap and other helpful tools for podcasters to rank higher in search.
That’s all for now.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress plugins for podcasters. You may also want to see our guide on how to start an email newsletter, and these practical tips on getting more traffic to your website.
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Hi there, can you help me? I’m looking for a plug-in where I can very quickly record *my own* voice reading my blog posts, and readers can then press a “listen” button at the top of each post to hear me read the post.
I don’t want to make it complicated where I have to record audio files elsewhere and then upload them, etc. Just something quick and easy. I hope this makes sense. Is this what your listed plug-ins above do? I am not interested in “official” podcasting persay.
While we don’t have a recommended plugin for that at the moment we will certainly keep a look out for one.
Thanks so much for including Seriously Simple Podcasting in this resource on best podcasting plugins for WordPress. I’m the owner of the plugin, and our integrated podcast hosting platform, and would love to hear from podcasters out there as to their feedback on our tools. We work very hard to make it the easiest to use and most powerful solution in WordPress for all podcasters. If anyone has questions for us we’ll be following in the comments here, just drop us a line.
Hey Craig,
Thanks for stopping by