Ep 90: Top 10 Free Podcasting Tools for Podcasters

00:00:00 Discussing Podcasting Costs and Follow-Up Episode

[00:00:00] Verity: Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of The Lady Girl's Guide to Podcasting with me, Verity. I'm trying something out a little bit new. Is this new? I don't know. I've done this before, but, basically, I am filming for YouTube again.

[00:00:15] Verity: And I go through peaks and troughs, I know, and I will film for YouTube, and I'll do that for a few episodes, and then I'll be like, nope. Not doing a video again. I wanna stick with just audio. But either way, I am filming a few episodes for YouTube. I say filming them for YouTube.

[00:00:29] Verity: It is the podcast. But, hey. If you watch on YouTube, you're not just gonna get the radio the radio forms, the video forms, you know, the wave forms. That's what I mean. You're gonna see my face as well.

[00:00:38] Verity: So that may or may not be a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know. Either way, in today's episode, I wanted to almost do a bit of a follow-up episode for episode 80, which so many of you got in contact with me about to say, oh my gosh, Verity. This is just ridiculous. Because in episode 80, we talked about how much I spend every month every year to run my podcast.

00:01:04 Free Podcasting Tools: 10 Essential Tools You Can Use Without Spending a Penny

[00:01:03] Verity: Now I did say within the podcast episode that this was completely my choice to spend this much money on my podcast. It's my hobby. This is what I wanna spend my money on. Some of you got in touch and were like, oh my god, Verity. That's absolutely insane.

[00:01:18] Verity: How on earth do you or why on earth do you spend so much on your podcast? Others of you got in touch to say, do you know what? You've just made my podcasting budget look really small so thank you very much. Others of you were like, do you know what? It's your podcast.

[00:01:31] Verity: You spent however much you want on it. Completely up to you. But either way, there was a lot of conversation, a lot of you contacting me about the amount of money that I spent on my on my podcast. So I'm glad that it caused a or created the discussion there. But what I wanted to do was create this follow-up episode with 10 podcasting tools that are 100% free for you to use.

[00:01:54] Verity: That's right. Ten tools that I've used either myself or I have friends who use them or I've trialed them whatever. Ten completely free podcasting tools. So let's start off with the first one. So the first one is Enhanced Speech by Adobe.

00:02:12 Enhanced Speech by Adobe: A Free AI Tool for Podcasters

[00:02:11] Verity: I am gonna have every single one of these tools linked down in the show notes or the episode description if you are watching on YouTube or the show notes if you're listening on podcast. But the first one is Enhanced Speech from Adobe. Fantastic, fantastic tool. If you follow me on TikTok, I've recently done a couple of TikTok videos about Enhanced Speech by Adobe. Now this is completely free.

[00:02:34] Verity: You can only use it, though, if your files are up to 30 minutes long. So if your episodes rather are up to 30 minutes long. But in all fairness, you could always split it into multiples and then stitch them together again. Might do so. You know, the the technical people amongst us all will probably say, actually, that's not the best thing to do because the more you process audio anyway.

[00:02:54] Verity: But up to 30 minutes per episode, it will enhance automatically using AI for free for you, which is amazing. Now some of the conversation on TikTok was, well, it's a free tool. It's an AI tool. Is it really that amazing? Do you know what?

[00:03:09] Verity: I don't think it's that bad. I think that it does a pretty good job. I think that for the vast majority of podcasters, if you've recorded something, the audio just isn't a 100% there. If you don't understand the ins and outs or have the time to go through all of these different audio, editing processes, then actually, this is a really, really good tool. Now don't get me wrong.

00:03:32 Top Free Podcasting Tools

[00:03:31] Verity: It's never going to replace high profile level editing, but I think for most podcasters out there, this is a really awesome tool. So that's Enhanced Speech by Adobe. The second one, which we probably all know about by this stage, is Canva. I love Canva. And, yes, you can pay for it like I do.

[00:03:52] Verity: I want to say I pay about £90 a year for it but kind of regardless, Canva is absolutely fantastic. It's got a free version And what I love Canva for is doing all of my episode artwork, my promotional content that I put out on social media. It's just it's brilliant. Brilliant. You can also edit your episodes within Canva.

[00:04:10] Verity: I think there's a lot to Canva that people forget about, but the free version is really, really great if you don't want to be spending any money over it. The 3rd free podcasting tool which I'm going to mention is QuickTime, which I'm actually using at the moment to record this episode. I don't normally use QuickTime, I will admit. But with wanting to do YouTube and talking about free tools and stuff, made sense to use a free tool. So I am recording this for both the audio and the video on QuickTime, and I will be editing in Imovie because why not?

00:04:40 Top Podcasting Tools Recommended by Verity

[00:04:40] Verity: It's a great tool. The third one that I'm going to recommend is GarageBand. I'm a huge fan of GarageBand and I have to say I've been recently wondering to myself why have I moved away from them when I was doing the audio only side of the podcast. But do you know what? I just I love GarageBand.

[00:04:57] Verity: I think it's brilliant. I think it gets a bad rap from time to time because it's a free tool, but, actually, I think it's an amazing tool. I edited and recorded goodness knows how many episodes on there. Even when I was doing recordings over Zencastr or Zoom, like, really back in the day, right at the beginning, I was still editing the audio at least in GarageBand because I just I love it. I think it's great.

[00:05:19] Verity: Free for Mac users. The 5th podcasting tool which I'm going to recommend is Podbean. Now Podbean is a podcast host, so a little bit different to the tools that I have been talking about up to now. So a hosting platform is the place where every single piece of information and all your episodes from your podcast is housed, and then your host will push out the information to the directories, then your podcast will appear in the directories for your listeners and audience to listen to. So Podbean actually offers a free hosting service.

00:05:53 Free Tools for Podcasting: Podbean and Riverside FM

[00:05:53] Verity: They also have paid plans, but if you want to get started with something for absolutely free forever, and I don't just mean like a long trial period, I mean free forever, then Podbean does have a $0 free forever plan, which I think if you're just starting out or you don't want to have a huge podcasting budget or you don't have a huge budget for your podcast, I think that this is a great tool. If you want some free hosting, I would check out Podbean. The next free tool which I'm going to recommend to you is Riverside FM. I love Riverside. You've heard me talk about it a lot on this podcast.

00:06:29 Top Free Podcasting Tools for Recording and Editing

[00:06:29] Verity: I have used it to record and edit multiple multiple episodes at this stage in time, and they also have got a free forever forever plan, which is $0 forever. You can upgrade, and the standard pricing starts from $15 per month. But as I said, they do have a $0 free forever plan. Now obviously, you're not gonna get as many features with the free plan as you would with the other plans. However, they've still got a load of really, really good features.

[00:06:58] Verity: And I would say the biggest limitation of the free plan over the paid for plans is that when you download video, you can only download in a maximum of 7 20 video quality. But if you're not too fussed about the quality of the video, you know, too fussed about it being in 4 k, or if you're not recording video, if you're recording video but you're not putting the video out there and you're just using the audio, actually, it doesn't really make any difference to you, then I think that the free version of Riverside is a really really good option for you. The 7th free podcasting tool that I'm going to recommend is Descript. So Descript and Riverside, very, very similar. You're not gonna need both of them at all, one or the other, because they are both recording and editing software.

00:07:42 Comparison of Descript and Riverside for podcast recording

[00:07:42] Verity: Now I also love Descript. I use Descript, switched over to Riverside. I've actually, over the last few weeks, been dabbling with Descript again. I flick between the 2, to be honest with you, and then also QuickTime GarageBand. It just depends what mood I'm feeling in, what piece of software I want to use at that particular moment in time, what I'm trialing out for content, etcetera.

[00:08:04] Verity: But I have been using Descript in the last couple of weeks, and as ever, I love it. I love it just as much as Riverside, I'll admit. So Descript have got their own free plan. Their paid for plans start from $12 per month. But as I said, they do have a $0 free forever plan.

[00:08:20] Verity: With that free plan, you do only get 1 hour of remote recording and transcription per month. But if you've got a podcast which have got shorter episodes then that's probably not gonna be a problem for you. I mean, if you are doing 15 minute episodes, you do 4 of those a month, then actually you only need that 1 hour anyway. It probably isn't gonna fit you too well if you are doing hour long episodes. I know you are doing those every single week because you're gonna go over your quota very, very quickly.

00:08:48 Free Podcasting Tools for Shorter Episodes

[00:08:48] Verity: However, I personally think that Descript is a great tool, particularly if you're doing those shorter episodes. Free podcasting tool number 8 is Vidyo, and that is Vidyo spelled y0note0. Vidyo.ai is absolutely fantastic at helping you to create little short clips for social media. You can get up to 60 minutes for free every single month. I just cut out any clips, any video clips, any audio clips that I want to promote on social media for the podcast, put those very short clips, maybe 45 seconds to a minute and a half, something like that, upload that to VideoAI and then add the captions in as opposed to uploading an entire episode and then cutting it down because then you're going to be using up that 60 minutes incredibly quickly.

00:09:36 Top Free Podcasting Tools for Content Creators

[00:09:36] Verity: But if you're just putting up the shortened clips, then you can use video AI probably forever. Never have to pay for it. I probably shouldn't have admitted that. The next free podcasting tool that I am gonna recommend is Buffer. Now I no longer use Buffer, and that's only because I have moved over to Content Studio.

[00:09:55] Verity: I managed to get a lifetime deal for Content Studio, something amazing like $97 for lifetime use. So that's why I'm with Content Studio now. But before I was using Content Studio, I was using Buffer, and I also used Hootsuite. And Hootsuite is my 10th free podcasting tool to mention as well. Now buffer and Hootsuite are very, very similar in the sense that they schedule your social media posts.

[00:10:19] Verity: Their layouts and the way that you use them may differ ever so slightly and really which one you use is going to come down to preference. But both of them have got free plans where you can upload certain amount of content, usually about a week's content or x amount of posts per platform, and you can schedule that out. And I just think that is so useful. So so useful for somebody who doesn't just podcast. I've got a job and then when I'm not working I've got the kids.

00:10:50 Top 10 Free Podcasting Tools

[00:10:49] Verity: I'm a I'm a working mum basically and the podcasting, as much as I love it, it is a side hobby until I turn into the next Joe Rogan or, you know, whoever. I can create all of my social media content. I can upload it to Buffel or Hootsuite. Like I said, was using them in the past. And then it will just put all that information out onto your social media platforms throughout the week, throughout the month, however you want to space your content out, which is just that's brilliant as far as I'm concerned because it's just a time saver.

[00:11:19] Verity: I have done episodes previously how I use tools such as summarize to get a week's worth of content for a load of different social media platforms, and I will make sure that that is linked down in either the show notes or the episode description. Or if you're on YouTube, there'll be, like, a little thing that pops up here. Do click on that to find out about summarise. But those are my 10 free podcasting tools. As I said, when you guys listened to episode 80, and if you haven't, by the way, go back and make sure that you listen to that.

[00:11:52] Verity: If you haven't listened to episode 80, it is it is a good one. But it generated so much conversation with you guys and I was really, really grateful for that conversation because it just shows that we're building a community, a lazy girl podcasting community, which is not exclusive to just females. There are so many people in the lazy girl podcasting community who identify in any way, which, shape or form and I'm not fussy. As long as you are awesome, you are welcome in the lazy girl podcasting community. On that note, I hope that you found something new.

[00:12:20] Verity: I hope that you found a cool tool in here that you haven't tried out before. If you do go and try out one of the tools, let me know in the comments what you think about that tool. If you're listening to the podcast, you can get in touch with me on twitter at veritiesongon. I'd love to know what you think about the different tools that I've recommended. What would be totally awesome is for you to share this episode with any podcasters that you know because you never know.

[00:12:42] Verity: One of these tools might just help blow their podcast up. Otherwise, thank you so much for spending this time with me, and I will see you next Side.