Move your podcast to a new host in 4 easy steps…
Sometimes it’s time for a change. Maybe your podcast host doesn’t have the features you need, they are raising their prices, or they are closing their doors.
If you’re ever looking to move to a new podcast provider, then Buzzsprout’s new podcast import tool has you covered. Now when you start a new podcast on Buzzsprout you’ll see a new page asking if you already have a podcast.
If you already have a podcast on another host it super easy to move your podcast to Buzzsprout — most podcasters can make the switch in about 15 minutes.
This post will walk through the process of moving to Buzzsprout and answer most of the frequently asked questions around switching to a new podcast host.
Step 1: Find your podcast in iTunes
When you first signup for Buzzsprout you’ll see a page that asks if you already have a podcast.
Once you click I Already Have a Podcast, Buzzsprout will let you search through iTunes to find your podcast.
Quickly search for your podcast then click on your podcast name. Buzzsprout will copy a few episodes into Buzzsprout so that you can see how everything will look inside of Buzzsprout.
This doesn’t effect your existing podcast — we’re just copying in a few episodes to show you how much easier podcasting will be in Buzzsprout. We haven’t committed to anything yet.
Buzzsprout will find your podcast, copy your podcast artwork, podcast details, and then bring in a few episodes. This process typically takes about 1–2 minutes.
Once this process is completed you’ll see a summary of everything that was copied from your former podcast.
Click See Your Podcast in Buzzsprout and you’ll see your episodes that we just copied in. If they aren’t already, Buzzsprout will make sure your episodes are in the correct format and correctly tagged with ID3 tags for podcasts.
Step 2: Upgrade Your Account
If you like what you see you can upgrade your account to any of Buzzsprout’s paid plans. They start at just $12/month and if you’re on a paid plan, we’ll import all of your existing episodes for free.
We’ve had some churches bring over 8-years of episodes for free. And since Buzzsprout doesn’t charge for storage, all your episodes are always available.
Just click Upgrade Your Account and select a plan to finish this step.
Step 3: Copy Remaining Episodes
Once you’ve upgraded your account you can copy in all your remaining episodes for free
Just follow the on screen steps to copy the remaining episodes into your Buzzsprout account. This will take a few minutes, but you should see all the episodes queue up and start processing.
Step 4: Redirect Your Old Feed
Redirecting your feed is one of the most important parts of moving your podcast to a new host.
When you were with your old host iTunes and your listeners subscribed to your RSS feed — they knew where to find you on the web.
Even if people were listening in their own podcast apps, the app itself was saving the address to your old host.
Think of it as your former address. If you decide to move you have to tell everybody where to forward your mail, and you tell all your friends and family where you moved. This is essentially what we’re doing when we redirect your RSS feed.
This is the part where we setup up a forwarding address for your podcast.
Once your episodes are in Buzzsprout you’ll able to redirect your podcast feed from your old host. Here are instructions on how to move from Blubrry, Libsyn, Podbean, or SoundCloud. If you’re on Feedburner, then you can just update your Feedburner Source Feed.
Once your 301 redirect is in place you can test the redirect to ensure that everything is in place.
Welcome to Buzzsprout!
That’s it! 4 easy steps to move your podcast to a new host.
With the redirect in place all of your listeners and podcast listings will follow you over to Buzzsprout. Typically we recommend that you keep the redirect in place for at least 2-weeks before deleting your old podcast host account.
Hope this helped! If you have any questions during your import process shoot an email to our support team and we’re happy to walk you through the entire process.
Originally published at http://www.buzzsprout.com/blog/transfer-podcast-new-host on January 9, 2017.
