Building the Perfect Website
Simplecast has been popular among podcasters for years, and was acquired by Sirius XM, which reinforced its position as a hosting platform with reliable distribution, advanced stats, and multi-show support. Thousands of podcasters use it for publishing and analytics.
Every Simplecast plan includes a mini-site. You can access it through the "Customize your Simplecast site" option in the dashboard. The site shows your podcast name, description, and episodes.
Here is the catch: Simplecast offers exactly one template. You can toggle between light and dark color modes, and change one accent color. That is the full extent of design customization. You cannot edit the text on the site designer itself, as it pulls content from your podcast settings. You can add external links to the navigation bar, connect Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, and that covers the feature set.
What the Simplecast mini-site cannot do
The mini-site is fine as a basic episode directory. It gives your show a web address and lets people listen. But it is too stripped down to serve as a real website.
You cannot add custom pages, which means no about page you design yourself, no contact page, no resources page, no sponsor page. There is no blog, so you cannot publish articles to attract search traffic. The single template means your site looks identical to every other Simplecast site, just with different colors.
There is also no way to customize the audio player beyond what Simplecast provides. No sticky player, no soundbites, no social sharing from the player, no download buttons. Each episode does get its own page, which is helpful for SEO, but without the ability to add rich content like show notes, transcripts, images, and supplementary text, those pages stay thin.
For any show that wants its website to do more than list episodes, the Simplecast mini-site is a placeholder, not a solution. For a sense of what is possible, check out these podcast website examples from shows that moved beyond basic host pages.
What Beamly adds for Simplecast users
Beamly connects to Simplecast through RSS and imports all your episodes automatically. Future episodes sync as you publish them, so the process is hands-off once connected.
The design experience is completely different. Beamly gives you a visual drag-and-drop builder, multiple templates to start from, and full control over colors, fonts, layouts, and section structure. You can create unlimited custom pages and a full blog section, which opens up real search traffic opportunities.
The audio player is a major upgrade. You can fully customize its appearance, add social sharing, speed control, and download buttons, or enable a sticky player that keeps playing as visitors browse your site. Beamly also supports episode timestamps, which let listeners jump to specific segments.
Beyond the visual layer, Beamly handles podcast review imports from Apple Podcasts and Podchaser, subscribe buttons for all major directories, guest intake forms, contact forms, listener voice messages, and integrations with marketing tools. You can connect your custom domain so visitors go to "mypodcast.com" instead of a Simplecast subdomain.
Membership sales, paywalled content, and digital products are all built in, with 0% Beamly transaction fees.
How to connect Simplecast to Beamly
- Sign up for a free Beamly trial and start a new site.
- Search for your Simplecast show or paste the RSS feed URL.
- Choose a template and publish your first version.
- Customize the design, player, pages, and navigation.
- Connect your custom domain and keep publishing in Simplecast.
Your site stays synced automatically as new episodes are released.
