Fireside

Indie shows with taste

Fireside is Dan Benjamin's project and it feels like it: opinionated defaults, a genuinely tasteful built-in website, and a focus on indie creators over enterprise. The trade-off is leisurely development pace compared to better-funded competitors — you won't see the AI features newer hosts ship every quarter.

Fireside is a podcast hosting platform founded in 2016 by Dan Benjamin of 5by5 fame, and the product reflects the personality of someone who has been making podcasts since the medium had three listeners. Pricing tiers are Starter at $9/month for one show with up to five episodes a month and 10,000 downloads, Standard at $19/month for unlimited podcasts with 75,000 monthly downloads and unlimited storage, and Professional at $49/month with unlimited downloads, 10 collaborators, exclusive themes, click tracking, and priority support. A 14-day free trial is available. Distribution covers the usual directories. What makes Fireside distinctive is the built-in website. Every show gets a tasteful, responsive site with individual host and guest pages, tag-based browsing, custom pages, a real blog engine, and theme customization, all without needing a separate WordPress site or Squarespace subscription. For shows that want a credible web presence without standing up a separate site, this alone justifies the price. Migration from another host is a one-click import with titles, descriptions, notes, and MP3 files brought over automatically. The trade-offs are about pace and breadth. Fireside is a small team, and feature development moves slower than at venture-funded hosts. There's no built-in AI transcription, automated clip generation, or social posting scheduler, all of which are now standard at competitors. The community is smaller, so there are fewer tutorials and integrations. For indie shows where design matters more than feature count, Fireside is a great fit. For shows that want every new shiny tool, look elsewhere.