Founded in 2015 by Michael Mignano and Nir Zicherman, Anchor was initially launched as a social audio service for short-form content. The platform was updated in 2018 for the making and publishing of podcasts, and in 2019, Anchor was acquired by Spotify for a sweet $150 million. Not too shabby.
Anchor was made on the principle of democratizing audio, believing that everyone should have the option of a free podcast service without upload limits. This podcast host allows you to create an unlimited number of episodes without paying and has built in ad integration to help you earn income from your show. Anchor also offers an episode-builder function, allowing you to record and edit your podcast through their mobile app or desktop website. Their slogan is “Anchor – The easiest way to make a podcast,” and they provide a handful of additional features to aid in podcast creation, not just hosting.
Related reading: the best podcast hosting platforms, free podcast hosting reviews
It’s simple to get started on Anchor, and they provide you a roadmap for doing it. After you’ve made your account, you can create and upload a first episode before deciding on a title, description, and/or art, or go straight to finalizing the details of your show. They also offer the option to import your RSS feed if you’re switching to Anchor from a different hosting service. Currently, podcasts in Anchor currently can’t be private or password protected.
When uploading your cover art, Anchor gives you the option of having the anchor icon in the upper right hand side of your cover art. This can be toggled on and off. If you don’t have cover art already made, Anchor will help you make one; you can upload a background or have one selected for you from Unsplash and add the text of your title on top of it.
Once you’ve uploaded your first episode, Anchor will submit your feed to several listening platforms, which are: Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, and Spotify. It’s important to note that when Anchor submits your show to Apple Podcasts, it’s under Anchor’s own account. If you want to access your Apple Podcasts analytics, you’ll have to do a few extra steps, which include contacting Apple to transfer ownership of the podcast to your Apple account. If you want to distribute your podcast to other platforms (such as Stitcher), you can still manually submit your RSS feed through their site.
Anchor provides a public website to go with your podcast. Episodes can be listened to on this website, and it gives links to other listening platforms (and an external website, if listed on the account). I especially like that one of the provided links is the RSS feed, which is often hard to find as a listener but often needed when a show isn’t coming up in search results.
However, this website is not particularly customizable. You can’t add information about the show beyond its standard description. If you wanted to display crew information, attach a press kit, or link to transcripts, the anchor-provided website is not sufficient.
One thing that sets Anchor apart from most hosting services is that you can download the Anchor App and use it to record and produce your podcast. The interface is surprisingly easy to use. You hit a button to record, and you’re good to go, while a timer keeps track of the length and a simple waveform tells you if it’s picking up sound. You can also add a flag to mark instances in recording you want to go back to for editing later. The mobile app supports a recording time of 120 minutes. You can’t pause while recording your audio directly with Anchor, but you can record multiple segments and edit them together.
I tested out this mobile recording, and I found that the audio quality was best when holding my phone up to the side of my face as if I was on a phone call. Holding it out in front (like one might do when on speakerphone) allowed me to keep an eye on the length and flag moments faster, but the mic picked up more plosives. The audio quality is about what you’d expect for a phone mic – it’s not the best thing out there, but the speaker is clear and the words are discernable.
The Anchor App also supports smartphone mics and bluetooth podcast equipment for recording, though they note that they don’t recommend using headsets to record, “as they are typically for phone calls and might not work well when using Anchor.”
Once you’ve recorded, the clips go into the library, and you can modify the start/end time of them as well as split them up into smaller clips from here. Splitting a clip will introduce two new files into the library (before the split and after the split). You can build an episode right on your phone using the clips you’ve recorded, in addition to transition music and a handful of SFX that Anchor provides. This takes place in an “episode builder” window, where each clip becomes a segment of your show. There is also the option to import audio from outside the app, though depending on what type of mobile phone you have, this can be difficult.
The episode builder (left) and the library (right)
What editing a clip on mobile looks like.
The episode builder is not a DAW. You can’t layer clips, which means putting your own music or SFX under dialogue isn’t an option. You don’t have the ability to modify clip volume, fade in or out of clips, or run noise reduction (though, Anchor does offer some background music you can select to run under segments). Using the Anchor episode builder means you’ve got what you got – but for a phone app, it isn’t bad. You can also save your episode as a draft and come back to it later, so you don’t have to create your entire episode in one sitting.
Not only can you publish an episode from your phone, you can also create your whole podcast in the app, including making cover art and submitting your show to directories. And when not actively podcasting, you can also use the app to check your podcasts stats.
This app is unlike anything I’ve seen for other podcasts hosts, and I think it’s great for accessibility. If your laptop can’t run Audacity? No problem! All you need to make a podcast is a smartphone. This is a great tool for beginners who aren’t set on investing in equipment or software, and want to dip their toes into podcasting.
Logging into your account on Anchor’s desktop site gives you the same options as the phone app. You can record directly through the website and build an episode using provided transitions and SFX, though you don’t have the same clip editing abilities. (You cannot trim audio outside of iOS and Android, so you’re limited to splitting it into a new clip and going from there). The maximum amount of recording time on the web is 30 minutes on Google Chrome and 5 minutes on Safari, different from the two hour limit on the mobile app. If this is a problem, Anchor suggests using an alternative program for recording (may I recommend Audacity?)
The podcast creator view on desktop.
What editing a clip on a desktop looks like.
If you upload an audio clip recorded outside of Anchor, you can still add their transitions; imported clips are treated as just another segment. You also don’t need to add anything to what you upload – you can make a single segment your entire episode without any issue. Though it should be noted, if you want to have an Anchor-integrated midroll ad, you’ll have to split your clip where you want that ad to go, making it into two segments (so that you can put a sponsored segment in the middle).
A view of an incorporated sponsored segment in the episode builder.
There is a 250 MB upload limit to each clip imported into Anchor. If your file is larger, you can split it and upload it in segments – the size of your final episode is not limited, and you can have as many clips and segments as you want. Anchor also suggests compressing your clips if they’re too large, using mp3 files instead of wavs.
Clips recorded on a phone are still accessible from the website, and vice versa, as your library is the same across devices. You can also access episode drafts from one device to another, meaning that you can start building an episode on desktop and continue it on your phone.
You’re limited to one podcast feed per account. With different emails, you can have multiple shows, though I wouldn’t recommend this – if you’re planning multiple shows, it would be a good idea to use a hosting service compatible with more than one feed instead of juggling a handful of emails. However, it’s not a violation of Anchor’s terms and conditions to sign up multiple times with different emails. You can do so and even make money as one person running multiple shows.
Unlike most free podcast hosting platforms, Anchor offers unlimited storage for your feed for an unlimited time. You can upload as many episodes as you want in any time frame. Additionally, published episodes can be edited – new segments can be added and individual clips can also be modified.
Anchor also provides a healthy amount of stats: a chart of the number of plays each day (and what episodes they came from), a breakdown of your top episodes, the geographic location (what percentage of listeners are from which country), a pie chart of listening platforms, the gender breakdown of your listeners (sourced from Spotify, and includes Female, Male, Non-binary, and Not Specificed), and the age breakdown of your listeners (also sourced from Spotify). You can see these stats for any date range of your choosing. For a free service, these offerings aren’t bad at all.
If you want to move to a different hosting platform, Anchor makes it easy with a “Redirect URL” at the bottom of the distribution page, where you can paste your new RSS feed in and have your show redirect. If, for example, you want hosting with more specific statistics, you’re not stuck where you started.
For users within the US, Anchor has built in ad integration. You are matched with sponsors (as a new show, your first sponsor is Anchor) to record your own ads for. Anchor helps you with your ad read – when testing ad creation for myself, I was given a script with suggested talking points and a mandatory call to action to read out at the end. Anchor says that “New sponsors are first matched with shows who have a growing audience base and whose ads have performed well in the past — we currently aren’t able to guarantee you a sponsor at all times, and we recommend continuing to grow your show to qualify for new sponsors in the future.” You control where the ads show up in your show by placing them yourself, which means you don’t have to worry about being interrupted mid-sentence.
Anchor takes a 30% cut of revenue generated from sponsorships arranged via Ad Integration. If a sponsor offers a $20CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and you get 1000 impressions, $6 will be deducted for the Anchor fee. Users in the US can also activate Listener Support, which allows you to accept monthly donations from your audience. Anchor takes a 4.5% fee from donations through this feature.
All payment is processed through Stripe. You need to have made at least $10 before cashing out, and there is a $0.25 processing fee to do so. If you leave a balance for more than 90 days, it will be automatically cashed out for you.
Record With Friends is a feature that lets you remotely record your podcast audio with up to five others. Guests can use the Anchor app or go to the Anchor website to join in on the call, which must be initiated via the app. You invite friends from the recording page of the app, which allows you to send them a link to join. Audio is recorded locally, so the quality of the remote guests does not sound like a typical phone call. There is a two hour recording limit when recording with friends, and Anchor recommends not using external podcast microphones when using this feature on the app. Currently there is no option to mute guests or pause recording.
Related reading: detailed breakdown and reviews of podcast microphones, podcast headphones.
I think this is a really helpful feature for new shows that want to have guests on. It can be tricky working out how to record a phone call, and difficult to have a good quality remote recording. While there are certainly better options for having remote guests on your podcast, this is a free and relatively easy way to facilitate remote recording, and I think that’s great.
Anchor allows you to create an episode using music from Spotify, though episodes that do so need to be reviewed and will only be available to Spotify listeners. Music tracks cannot be altered or talked over, and they are shown as separate segments in the episode builder. Additionally, only Spotify Premium users will hear the full-length versions of the songs (Spotify Free users will hear a 30 second preview).
I think this feature might be useful for talk shows that reference or talk about specific songs and want their audience to be able to hear the music without the liscensing issues that usually come with sticking a song into your podcast. However, since including music makes an episode become Spotify exclusive, there are some pretty big downsides to this. Still, it’s a good option to have, and no one is being required to include Spotify Music in their podcasts.
Having used Anchor myself, I can confirm that there’s no surprise fees hidden within Anchor, no special pay-to-play features down the line. It is truly a free hosting platform, monetarily speaking. But there’s that saying – if you’re not paying for something, then you’re the product (the 30% fee Anchor takes on sponsorship deals is perhaps indicative of this).
In 2018 Anchor fell under criticism for a section of their terms and conditions which implied that Anchor might own what you produce on the platform. Mignano tweeted in response, on June 21 2018, “First and foremost, when using Anchor, creators have, and always will, own their content. We’ve made this really explicit so there isn’t any confusion.” The terms and conditions were clarified to indicate a license to distribute (but not own) your content. The “Rights you grant to us” section of these terms now starts with “You retain ownership of your User Content. Using Anchor does not cause you to lose ownership of your content.”
I spoke to Gavin Gaddis, podcast creator and critic, who said, “There’s a little bit in the ToS that gives Anchor permission to use your IP however they want. Functionally it means nothing to small podcasters, but if someone is serious about their creation and intends on going the distance, using Anchor might mean that some day they’ll turn on Spotify and hear an ad that cuts clips of their show in a quirky way to make it sound like the podcast is directly endorsing Anchor, all without having paid that podcast a cent or signed any sort of exclusivity deal. Anchor hasn’t done that and made efforts to clarify their ToS after getting in social media hot water a while back, but that little bit still sits there. Other hosts like Pinecast don’t have anything in their ToS reserving the right to use someone’s podcast IP however they see fit.”
I’d recommend Anchor for those who are just starting out in podcasting. It’s an incredibly accessible service – you get a lot for the low price of completely free. However, as a free platform, it lacks some of the features more serious podcasters might want: multiple feeds, more thorough stats, dynamic ads, and no connection to Spotify (and possible IP use thereof). Users who desire these features should host their podcast elsewhere, but if your priorities for a podcast host are low cost and ease of interface, Anchor will likely work great for you!
The most interesting podcasts draw the listener in. Subscriptions. Binge listeners. This is what you…
The Dissect Podcast had been floating around in the back of my head for a…
NASCAR podcasts really have the possibility to bridge what we may ignorantly think is a…
Welcome to our guide on the best mystery podcasts! If you're a fan of spine-tingling…
The trial is over, the sentence meted out, but the impacts linger. We'd all do…
The best podcast about history will not only teach us about the past, but will…