On November 30, 2023, the “My Podcast Reviews” brand was officially retired and the all new Podgagement launched!
Podgagement builds on the years of success with My Podcast Reviews, and adds loads of improvements and new features all within our new focus:
Engage your audience. Grow your podcast!
A brief history
My Podcast Reviews was launched by Daniel J. Lewis in June 2014 as a first of its kind online service to automatically collect all your global podcast ratings and reviews from Apple Podcasts. Since then, we added support for reviews from Stitcher (RIP) and Podchaser, and comments from Castbox.
Various features were added through the years, but development accelerated in 2020 when the free plan was replaced with a free trial. Recognizing the need to smarten and simplify the calls to action for podcasters to get more ratings and reviews, we launched the LovethePodcast.com feature in September 2020. Then, in April 2021, we launched a similar FollowthePodcast.com feature to make it easier for your audience to—as the name profoundly implies—follow the podcast.
While this was happening on the My Podcast Reviews side, Daniel was starting to rebuild My Podcast Reviews in 2019 on a more modern framework. In the process, he discovered all kinds of new data he could collect from Apple, and thus Podcast Industry Insights was born in late 2019 (originally living on the My Podcast Reviews site).
But My Podcast reviews always had a problem: since ratings and reviews don't affect podcast ranking, the time-saving benefits we provided only mattered to those who knew how to leverage their ratings and reviews and would regularly receive enough to warrant tracking.
As a podcaster himself, Daniel realized the thing nearly all other podcasters enjoy most about podcasting: the engagement.
Thus, the new direction for codename “v2” was born, focusing on podcast engagement, which is the most powerful thing podcasters can build to accomplish their goals.
Now with Podgagement launched, it will bring a whole new set of tools to help podcasters better engage their audiences and grow their podcasts—even if they never receive a single review!
Major new features
On launch, Podgagement offers two feature tiers: Astro and Constellation. (The names and space theme were chosen before Daniel even knew about the Starfield video game!)
The Astro tier carries over all the features from the original My Podcast Reviews service and adds a whole lot of highly requested improvements:
- Embed your reviews on your own site with highly compatible HTML code. (A WordPress plugin is coming later!)
- Tag reviews for better usage, including social posts, integrations, and more.
- Use the enhanced LovethePodcast.com and FollowthePodcast.com pages supporting custom welcome messages and even embeddable videos.
- Quickly see your engagement metrics in an all-new dashboard.
- Look back to see how ratings and reviews have grown over time in a new chart.
- Enjoy automatic light and dark modes.
- Track ratings and reviews from more platforms (coming very soon): Goodpods, Podchaser episode reviews, Amazon/Audible, Podpage, and more.
Then, the Constellation tier includes all these features and adds much more:
- Collect written and recorded feedback from your audience with a new CastFeedback.com page.
- Discover opportunities for networking, crosspromotion, collaboration, and guesting with other podcasts.
- Track your podcast SEO performance in podcast apps (coming soon).
- Bring your podcast download stats into the same dashboard (coming soon, supported with limited providers).
- Monetize your podcast with an optimized and customizable support page (coming soon).
- Make it easier for your audience to share your podcast with their friends (coming soon).
- And much, much, much more coming to this feature tier!
Simpler pricing
We made our price a whole lot easier to understand by letting you pay for only the number of podcasts you want to track. No more triple price jump just to add one more podcast or feeling like you're wasting money because you have a plan that's bigger than you need!
Now, the pricing is a flat $4 per month per podcast for the Astro tier, and $9 per month per podcast for the Constellation tier. And you'll get two months free if you pay yearly (making it effectively $3.33/month and $7.50/month, respectively)!
We also now allow you to create multiple accounts, in case you need to separate your podcasts or want the upgraded features for some and not others.
Bigger things still coming
Having completely rebuilt our service on modern architecture, we have big plans for the future! Not only will we add more features to the existing tiers, but there are also bigger things in space than stars and constellations! 😉
Built by a podcaster for podcasters
Daniel J. Lewis here (well, I've been here this whole time, but now I get to write in first person)! I've been podcasting since 2007 and I've been helping others podcast since 2010. With Podgagement, I'm not a data nerd, or a get-rich-quick developer or marketer, or a business executive; I'm a podcaster first.
With more than 15 years of podcasting experience, I know the ups and downs of podcasting. The penny-pinching, the laughing to the bank, the devastation of haters and negative reviews, the thrills of opportunities, the satisfaction of an episode well done, and the support of a passionate and loyal community. I've been in it as a hobby, and I've been in it as a business.
I originally created My Podcast Reviews because it was a service I wanted to use for my podcasts. Back then, I hired someone else to program My Podcast Reviews for me because I knew almost nothing about web development. But I studied and trained hard, and I built Podgagement entirely myself (at least until now). So my heart—and a lot of very late nights!—is in every line of the approximately 45,000 lines of code (and counting!) behind Podgagement.
I made this for you and me!
So when you or another podcaster shares a feature request, I can put myself in a similar place as a podcaster, and I can imagine how to use that feature and what could be possible. And I get excited about it, too!
Love the logo?
A special thanks, again, to James Kennison from DrawYouAPicture.com and host of That Story Show. I hired James to design the logo because I love his creative thinking. Despite some of my clunky ideas, he came up with something so perfect I probably shouldn't confess how much time I've simply gazed at the logo in admiration!
And in James' brilliance, there's something hidden in the logo, too! It's not as obvious as the exclamation point I put in my own logo for The Audacity to Podcast, but when you see what's hidden in the Podgagement logo, I think you'll also appreciate how perfectly it fits! (Comment with your guesses, or share them with @theDanielJLewis!)
This is only the beginning!
We have so much more planned for Podgagement, and the feedback from our customers inspires us most. When you reach out for support, you can know you're talking with real people who truly care about you and care about our product. Right now, that means you'll be talking directly with Daniel J. Lewis or Steve Mudie.
To all our customers past, present, and future, thank you!
And special thanks to Stephanie Z. and Dave J., who have been with us since our launch nearly 10 years ago!
My biggest thanks is to my Father in Heaven, and my biggest reason on Earth is my own little son.
Now go engage your audience and grow your podcast!