Anchor began its life in a way not dissimilar to Clubhouse: an audio sharing tool frequented by Silicon Valley investors and growth hackers. In 2018 it pivoted to providing free podcast hosting, and has remained a popular choice for beginners and those wanting to save money.

Anchor has a well-considered mobile app that makes content production easy, however it’s geared more towards a style of podcasting that doesn’t really offer value or sustainability: a sort of call-in talk show with added music, thanks to Spotify. This offering adds confusion into the market, as it leads people to think that commercial music can be used in podcasts, and that the “podcasts” produced through the Anchor app can be heard on any app (which they can’t).

Anchor is simply a low-friction way to upload content that can be serialised via RSS. Onboarding is simple, and every podcast gets a cute single webpage. In that way, it’s a solid choice for those who use a podcast as a highlights package of a live Zoom call, Crowdcast show, or who are repurposing audio from a YouTube channel, since its lack of features or useful analytics essentially make it a hard-drive with an RSS attachment.

Spotify bought the product in early 2019, and it’s now IAB compliant, so although the metrics are fairly high-level, the numbers themselves should be accurate. It’s important to them since Anchor relies on DAI to make money.

LibSyn is almost literally the first name in podcast hosting. They provide a rock-solid infrastructure and every possible feature you would expect from a mature platform. They have a huge user-base and run regular community events, many of whom are experienced podcasters who rely on LibSyn to run reliably.

LibSyn differs from most hosts in that it provides different RSS feeds for different apps and directories (as it calls them “destinations”) which is perhaps unnecessarily confusing, however when new directories and markets are opened up, LibSyn is almost always first in-line to adopt them.

The company is conservative in its development, often taking multiple years to roll out interface updates. This has meant they’ve fallen behind modern hosts whose designers and developers value user experience, however they offer support via email and they’ve been around for so long and have so many customers, that answers to most questions can probably be found in Facebook groups and Reddit threads.