Castos, a WordPress-powered podcast hosting provider announced that they have closed an investment round of $756,000. With investments by Automattic, Yoast CEO, and individual investors, Castos will use this additional capital to fuel its advance into the Private Podcasting market.

Castros’ roots in the open source community through their Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin for WordPress along with investment from Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) further strengthens the ability for WordPress users to own their content, the platform that it’s built on, and the control they have over how it is distributed. WordPress with Seriously Simple Podcasting and Castos as the hosting engine means that podcasters can own their content and data, and the ability to manage Private Podcasts right from WordPress just enhances that ability.

Castos’ founder and CEO, Craig Hewitt recounted “We have seen a significant increase in interest from customers with online courses, membership sites, and digital communities wanting to provide content for their employees. We see this as an area of the podcasting market that’s at a tipping point, starting to explode in popularity.”

With Casto’s existing Zapier integration, REST API, and direct integrations with tools like Elementor, Descript, MemberSpace, AdBarker, and Alitu, the company will continue to give podcasters the tools and extensibility they need to harness the power of audio to grow their brand… whether that’s externally with customers, or internally with their teams.

Castos has been, up to this point, a mostly self-funded company, taking only a small investment when joining the TinySeed startup accelerator in 2019. Today, they are a team of 13 located in 4 continents, serving thousands of passionate podcasters all across the world.

“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to put this investment to work in furthering our product offering, continuing to build out our team, and provide podcasters with the solutions they need to better connect with their audiences.” Hewitt said. The majority of the funds will be used to build out their sales and marketing teams, and on designers and developers to accelerate work on their suite of products.