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Castos · Podcast Distribution
Castos Podcast Submission Services
Your podcast is only as discoverable as the feed behind it. If your show is hosted on Castos — or you're planning to move it there — the difference between a podcast that quietly sits on a website and one that shows up across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio and a dozen smaller apps comes down to how carefully the feed is built, verified and claimed. Our Castos podcast submission services handle exactly that work, end to end, for creators and brands across the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore and India.
The Honest Correction
First, An Honest Correction: Castos Is a Host, Not a Directory
A lot of the "top 50 podcast submission sites" lists floating around the internet put Castos in the same column as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Podchaser. That's not accurate, and we'd rather tell you upfront than sell you something that doesn't exist.
Castos is a podcast hosting and analytics platform, founded by Craig Hewitt and best known for its deep WordPress integration through the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin, its private podcasting feature, and unlimited storage and downloads on its paid plans. There is no "submit your show to Castos" form the way there is on a directory. You don't submit to Castos — you host with Castos, and Castos generates the RSS feed that gets submitted everywhere else.
So when someone searches for "Castos podcast submission," what they almost always need is one of these:
- Their show set up correctly on Castos for the first time
- Their existing show migrated to Castos without breaking subscriber links
- Their Castos-generated feed submitted, verified and claimed across every directory that matters
- Their WordPress site and Castos account talking to each other properly
That's precisely what we deliver. The label stays the same; the work is honest.
Who It's For
Who Our Castos Submission Services Are Built For
WordPress-based brands and publishers
Castos is the strongest WordPress host in the category for a reason. If your content already lives on WordPress, the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin lets episodes publish from your own dashboard. Configured badly, it duplicates feeds and confuses directories. Configured properly, it's genuinely seamless.
Podcasters migrating from another host
Moving from Anchor/Spotify for Creators, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Podbean or Simplecast is where most shows lose listeners — a broken redirect and your entire subscriber base stops receiving episodes.
Businesses running private or internal podcasts
Onboarding programmes, course modules, member-only content, investor updates, sales enablement. Castos handles gated private feeds well, and this is one of the few genuinely differentiated things it does.
Agencies and networks managing multiple shows
One Castos account can run unlimited podcasts. We handle the submission and claim work across your whole roster on white-label terms.
Nine Deliverables
What's Included in Our Castos Podcast Submission Services
Everything from the first account setting to the last verified directory link — delivered as one continuous piece of work, not a form-filling exercise.
Castos Account and Show Configuration
We create or audit your Castos account, set your show title, author, owner email, categories, language, explicit flag, copyright line and description. These fields aren't cosmetic — Apple, Spotify and Amazon each parse them differently, and a mismatch is one of the most common causes of a rejected or misfiled submission.
RSS Feed Engineering and Compliance Audit
We validate the generated feed against Apple's requirements and the wider RSS specification: required iTunes namespace tags, correct enclosure URLs and MIME types, valid pubDate formatting, GUID stability, episode numbering and season tags. We also add relevant Podcasting 2.0 namespace tags — transcript, chapters, person, funding — which the newer indexes and apps read and most competitors ignore entirely.
Artwork and Audio File Compliance
Cover art at 3000x3000 pixels, RGB, under the file size ceiling, with text that stays legible at 55 pixels on a phone. Audio files tagged properly at the ID3 level, with loudness normalised to the -16 LUFS stereo standard that podcast apps expect. Rejections at this stage are avoidable and we avoid them.
Seriously Simple Podcasting and WordPress Integration
Plugin installation, Castos API connection, feed settings, episode post type configuration, player embedding, and — critically — making sure your WordPress site isn't publishing a second competing feed alongside your Castos one. We also set up the rel="alternate" auto-discovery link so RSS readers and crawlers can find your feed from your website.
Directory Submission and Manual Claims
Castos pushes to the major destinations from its dashboard. We handle everything that push doesn't finish — which is more than people expect (full section below).
Migration From Your Current Host With 301 Redirects
Full episode and media transfer, feed redirect at the old host, GUID preservation so apps don't re-download your back catalogue as "new," subscriber retention monitoring for 30 days, and re-verification anywhere the ownership record needs updating.
Private Podcast Feed Setup
Individual subscriber feeds, access rules, membership or LMS integration, and email delivery of feed URLs — for internal comms, paid communities and course content.
Episode-Level Podcast SEO
Keyword-researched episode titles, descriptions written for both listeners and search, transcripts, canonical episode pages on your own site, and podcast schema markup so episodes can surface in Google and in AI answer engines.
Analytics Setup and Reporting
Castos analytics configured, plus Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify for Creators dashboards connected so you can see downloads, completion rates, follower growth and geography in one monthly report.
Manual Claim Work
The Directories One-Click Distribution Doesn't Fully Reach
This is the part worth paying for, and it's the part most people don't know exists. One-click distribution from a host sends your feed to a destination. It does not always complete the relationship. Depending on the platform, one or more of these steps still has to happen by hand:
- Apple Podcasts requires ownership verification through an emailed code sent to the feed's owner email address, and new shows enter a human review queue that can take days.
- Spotify requires claiming the show inside Spotify for Creators to unlock analytics, and video or Q&A features need separate enablement.
- Amazon Music and Audible need an ownership claim before you can edit anything or see performance data.
- iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Deezer each run their own submission or partner flows with individual review timelines.
- Podchaser, Podcast Index, Listen Notes and Podscan index automatically but reward a claimed, completed profile with better placement — and they're increasingly what AI assistants read when someone asks for podcast recommendations.
- Regional platforms — JioSaavn, Gaana and Hubhopper in India; Himalaya and Xiaoyuzhou in Asian markets — sit outside most one-click lists entirely.
Verified, not assumed
We work through the full list, verify each listing actually went live, screenshot the confirmations, and hand you a tracker with the live URL of every placement. Nothing gets marked complete because a dashboard toggle turned green.
Workflow
Our Castos Podcast Submission Process
The same six steps run on every show, whether it's a three-episode launch or a 400-episode migration off a legacy host.
Step 1 — Discovery and fit assessment
We ask what the show is, who it's for, which markets matter, whether it's public or private, and whether Castos is genuinely the right host for you. If a different platform fits better, we'll say so.
Step 2 — Feed and asset audit
Existing feed pulled through validators, artwork and audio checked against spec, metadata gaps documented. You get the audit whether or not you proceed.
Step 3 — Setup or migration
New show built from scratch, or existing show moved across with redirects in place and back catalogue intact.
Step 4 — Submission and claim wave
Directory-by-directory submission, ownership verification, profile completion, artwork and category consistency across every platform.
Step 5 — Verification and reporting
Every listing is opened and checked on a real device. You receive a tracker with live links and screenshots.
Step 6 — Ongoing optimisation (retainer clients)
Episode SEO, transcripts, show notes, new-platform submissions as they launch, and monthly performance reporting.
Typical timeline: 7–10 working days for a new show setup and first submission wave. Migrations run 10–14 days including the redirect monitoring window. Apple and Amazon review queues sit outside our control and we build that into the schedule rather than promising around it.
Transparent Costs
A Clear Note on Castos Costs
We'd rather be straightforward about money than have you discover it later.
Castos hosting is a separate subscription you pay Castos directly. Paid plans start at around $19/month for the entry tier, with mid and higher tiers running to roughly $49 and $99/month for features like video podcasting, advanced analytics and YouTube republishing, and a custom enterprise tier above that. There's a 14-day free trial but no permanent free plan. If you run private podcasting at scale, additional private-subscriber bundles carry their own charge — worth knowing before you scope an internal comms podcast for a large workforce.
Directory listings themselves are free. Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Podchaser and the rest don't charge you to be listed. What you're paying us for is the work around them — the feed engineering, the compliance fixes, the verification chases, the migration that doesn't lose your subscribers, and the ongoing optimisation. Any agency implying you're buying "placement" isn't being straight with you.
Discovery Layer
Podcast SEO After Submission
Getting listed is the floor, not the ceiling. Discovery increasingly happens through search — inside podcast apps, on Google, and now through AI assistants that read transcripts and structured data rather than audio.
We build that layer for you:
- Episode titles written around what people actually search, not internal shorthand
- Full transcripts published on canonical episode pages, which gives search engines and AI models something to index
- PodcastEpisode and PodcastSeries schema on your website
- Show notes with timestamps, guest bios and outbound references
- Internal linking between episode pages and related service or blog content
- Consistent NAP-style metadata — identical show name, description and artwork across every platform, so aggregators resolve you as one entity rather than several
E-E-A-T
Why Brands Choose SEOServiceinIndia
Four reasons that hold up when you check them — platform experience, feed-level expertise, multi-market coverage and plain-spoken honesty about what your show does and doesn't need.
Experience with the actual platforms
Our team has set up, migrated and submitted shows across Castos, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Transistor, Captivate and Spotify for Creators. We know which directories stall, which review queues run long, and which errors cause silent failures rather than visible ones.
Expertise in feeds, not just forms
Most submission services fill in forms. When a feed breaks — a malformed date, a changed GUID, a mixed-content HTTPS error — you need someone who can read the XML and fix it. We can.
Authoritativeness across markets
We work with clients in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore and India, which means we handle time-zone-appropriate review windows, regional directory requirements and language and category tagging for multi-market shows.
Trustworthiness by default
We tell you Castos is a host rather than a directory. We tell you the listings are free. We tell you when a platform is dead and not worth chasing. We give you verified live URLs rather than a completion checkbox. If your show doesn't need something, we don't bill for it.
Packages
Castos Podcast Submission Packages
Three ways to work with us, depending on where your show is today:
Starter — Ideal for a first show
Castos account setup, feed configuration and validation, artwork and audio compliance check, submission to the core directories, ownership verification, and a completion report with live links.
Growth — For established shows and migrations
Everything in Starter, plus host migration with 301 redirects and GUID preservation, WordPress and Seriously Simple Podcasting integration, extended directory and regional platform submission, episode SEO for a set number of episodes, transcripts and schema markup, and monthly reporting.
Enterprise — For networks, agencies and private podcasting programmes
Multi-show setup, private feed architecture with membership or LMS integration, white-label delivery, dedicated account management, custom analytics reporting and quarterly strategy reviews.
Exact pricing is quoted after a short audit — the work varies enormously between a clean three-episode launch and a 400-episode migration off a legacy host.
Not in the way the phrase suggests. Castos is a podcast hosting platform rather than a directory, so there's no public submission form. You host your show on Castos, Castos generates your RSS feed, and that feed is what gets submitted to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and the rest. Our service covers that whole chain.
No. Castos has a 14-day free trial but no permanent free tier. Paid plans start at roughly $19 per month and scale up based on features like video podcasting, advanced analytics, YouTube republishing and private subscriber volume. That subscription is paid directly to Castos and is separate from our service fee.
Not if the migration is done correctly. The subscriber base follows the redirect, not the host. We set a 301 redirect at your old host, preserve episode GUIDs so apps don't re-download your archive as new episodes, and monitor download figures for 30 days afterwards to confirm the transfer held.
A new show setup and first submission wave usually takes 7 to 10 working days. Migrations run closer to 10 to 14 days including the redirect monitoring window. Apple Podcasts and Amazon operate their own review queues, which can add several days beyond our control.
No. Castos works perfectly well as a standalone host. The WordPress integration through the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin is a strong advantage if your site already runs on WordPress, but it's optional rather than required.
No, and nobody legitimately can. Listings on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Podchaser and the other major platforms are free. Our fee covers the setup, feed engineering, compliance fixes, verification chasing and ongoing optimisation around those listings.
Yes. Private feeds are one of Castos's genuine strengths. We configure individual subscriber feeds, set access rules, connect them to your membership platform or LMS, and handle feed delivery to your users.
We work with podcasters and brands globally, with the majority of our clients in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore and India. All work is delivered remotely with reporting and calls scheduled to your time zone.
Free Feed Audit
Ready to Get Your Podcast Listed Properly?
Send us your show name and your current feed URL, or just tell us you're starting from zero. We'll run a free feed and setup audit, tell you honestly what needs doing, and quote only for what your show actually requires. No lock-in, no inflated directory counts, no invented placements.
Talk to our podcast distribution team today and get your show live where your audience already listens.
