Podiant used to offer professional-grade podcast hosting for free. The company will cease offering free plans and is switching to hosting plans that cost money. Podcasters who currently have their podcast hosted on Podiant will need to switch to a paid plan. Podiant explains the need for change this way:

Most of our users – the vast, vast majority – use Podiant completely free of charge, and don’t subscribe to our Patreon. That’s fine, except Podiant is not a large company with millions of dollars of investment behind it, and we don’t want to make money off your content or by selling banner ads. Podiant was designed to give a voice to those who might now have one, built on the belief that the community would support our efforts.

Over the past week, we’ve seen a huge influx of traffic that we’re struggling – and often failing – to keep up with. Storage and bandwidth aren’t a problem; we just can’t afford the computing power right now to handle all the feed requests.

Podiant is going to offer two new plans: Professional and Community. The Professional plan is $12.99 a month. More information about that plan will be released “in the coming days”. Podcasters who were already on the $15 or $30 plans will be able to migrate to the new Professional plan (which offers exactly the same features that the other paid plans did).

If you are using Podiant for free hosting, or are on the old $5 a month plan, things are going to change. Users on either of those two plans will have to do one of three things:

• Upgrade to the Professional plan. (Podiant has a discount code available).
• Apply for a space in the Community. (Fill in a short form. Podiant will assess your application and if your show meets the criteria, you’ll get free hosting.)
• Transfer your podcast to another host (via the “cancel subscription” link – which Podiant will add in the next few days.)

Podiant explains the Community criteria on their blog. The key point is: “Basically all we’re looking to know is whether your podcast serves a community that isn’t already being served well. It doesn’t have to be a lofty goal, but if your show is you and a buddy discussing football or the latest Marvel movies, you probably won’t be eligible. Sorry.”

If you do not want to, or cannot, upgrade to the new Podiant plans, you have 90 days (from the point where the changes go live) to find a new host, should your Community application be denied.