PRX

PRX is one of the more unusual entities in audio. It started in the early 2000s as a way for public radio stations to swap content and has grown into both a distribution backbone for those stations and a podcast operator in its own right.

The Dovetail platform handles hosting, dynamic ad insertion, and analytics for an editorial-leaning roster that includes Radiotopia and many of the better-known narrative documentary shows in American podcasting. The institutional flavour is the point.

PRX behaves more like a partner than a SaaS vendor. Onboarding involves humans rather than self-serve checkouts, contracts get negotiated rather than agreed to on a pricing page, and the relationship is longer-term than a typical hosting account.

Pricing depends on what you are, what you make, where the funding comes from, and what kind of distribution arrangement makes sense for both sides. That's a feature for documentary teams, public-media producers, and editorially serious independent creators, and a friction point for anyone shopping hosts by spreadsheet.

If your show looks like a podcast version of a magazine feature, with reporting, sound design, and a multi-episode arc, PRX is in the conversation. If it looks like two friends talking about Premier League fixtures over beers, it isn't. The PRX Training programme is also a real resource that other commercial hosts don't really attempt.