🎙️ Castport

Host your own podcast. Pay once. Own it forever. No subscription.

A self-hosted podcast host — upload episodes, get an Apple/Spotify-valid RSS feed, clean public show/episode pages, an embeddable player, and download stats. Everything Transistor charges $19/month ($228/year) for, running on your own $5 VPS (or your desktop), with your audio files never held hostage.

☕ Skip the setup — get the 1-click installer

Don't want to touch a terminal? Grab the packaged installer (Windows desktop app + guided VPS deploy) here:

→ https://whop.com/onetime-suite — one-time purchase, lifetime updates.

Features

• Unlimited shows, unlimited episodes — each show has its own title, description, author, owner email, artwork, iTunes category/subcategory, language, explicit flag, site link, and custom feed slug
• Apple/Spotify-valid RSS at /feed/:showSlug.xml — RSS 2.0 + full itunes:* namespace, content:encoded (CDATA-wrapped HTML rendered from your markdown notes), exact enclosure byte length, permanent GUIDs, valid RFC-2822 pubDate
• Episode uploads — MP3 or M4A, streamed straight to disk (no buffering giant files in memory), markdown show notes with live preview, episode/season numbers, type (full/trailer/bonus), explicit flag, optional per-episode artwork, and a chapters editor (start time + title) that also emits a Podcasting-2.0 podcast:chapters JSON endpoint
• Scheduling — set a future publish date and the episode stays hidden from the feed and public pages until then, no cron job needed
• Clean public pages — show homepage with subscribe buttons (Apple/Spotify/RSS), episode page with player + notes + chapters, proper OG/meta tags — no auth required, no framework payload
• Embeddable player — /embed/:episodeId iframe page with a copyable <iframe> snippet
• Download stats — unique downloads per episode per day, dashboard chart (30-day trend + per-episode totals). IPs are hashed with a rotating daily salt — nothing personal is ever stored
• Real HTTP Range support on audio delivery — required by Apple Podcasts and virtually every podcast app
• 100% local & private — one SQLite file + an audio/artwork folder, no telemetry, no external services

Quick start

npm i
npm run build   # builds the admin UI
npm start       # → http://localhost:5329

• Admin panel: http://localhost:5329/admin (default password admin — change via ADMIN_PASSWORD)
• Public show page: http://localhost:5329/p/:showSlug
• RSS feed: http://localhost:5329/feed/:showSlug.xml

Before submitting your feed to Apple Podcasts or Spotify: set BASE_URL in .env to your real https:// domain. Feeds pointing at localhost will be rejected.

Desktop mode

Run it as a desktop app, or deploy to a $5 VPS when you need it public:

npm run desktop   # Electron window, auto-logged-in, data stored per-user

npm run dist packages a Windows installer (NSIS) via electron-builder.

Docker (VPS deploy)

cp .env.example .env   # set ADMIN_PASSWORD and BASE_URL!
docker compose up -d   # persists SQLite + audio + artwork in a named volume

Point your domain at the box, put Caddy/nginx/Traefik in front for TLS, submit https://yourdomain.com/feed/your-show.xml to Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify for Podcasters. Done.

Castport vs Transistor

	Castport (this)	Transistor
Price	$39 once	$19–$99/mo, forever
Shows	Unlimited	1–unlimited depending on tier
Episodes	Unlimited	Unlimited on paid tiers
Downloads	Unlimited	Metered on lower tiers
Your own domain	✅ Yes, natively	Paid plan only
Audio files	Always yours, on your disk	Hosted on their infra
Download analytics	✅ Yours, in your SQLite	Theirs, on their servers
Podcasting 2.0 chapters	✅ Built in	Limited
Cost over 3 years	$39	$684–$3,564

Tech stack

• Server: Node 20+, Express, better-sqlite3 (WAL) — single process serves API + admin + RSS + public pages + audio
• RSS: fast-xml-parser (RSS 2.0 + itunes + podcast namespaces), marked (markdown → content:encoded HTML)
• Audio: hand-rolled HTTP Range handling, music-metadata for duration probing, multer disk streaming for uploads
• Admin UI: React 18, Vite, Tailwind CSS 4, Framer Motion, Lucide icons
• Public pages: server-rendered plain HTML/CSS — instant load, zero external requests
• Desktop: thin Electron wrapper reusing the exact same server on a free local port
• Storage: one SQLite file + an audio folder + an artwork folder. Back up = copy three things.

Configuration

Env var	Default	Purpose
PORT	5329	Server port
ADMIN_PASSWORD	admin	Admin panel password
DATA_DIR	./data	SQLite db + audio + artwork
BASE_URL	http://localhost:5329	Absolute base URL used in the RSS feed — set this to your real domain before submitting to Apple/Spotify

Development

npm start        # API + public site + feed on :5329
npm run dev      # Vite dev server for the admin UI on :5330 (proxies /api, /audio, /artwork)
npm test         # end-to-end smoke test against a throwaway db + real generated MP3/PNG fixtures

License

MIT © 2026 Ben (bensblueprints)