Libsyn (www.libsyn.com) is essential if you're going to start podcasting. 

The reality is that hosting audio files is a royal pain in the butt. Even with high-end hosting (like WP-Engine), ensuring that you can have your files served on demand, even when thousands of people are listening and downloading simultaneously, is essential. Libsyn is one of the oldest (if not they first) podcast optimized hosting company out there. I first started using Libsyn back in 2005. 

Libsyn has a few different packages centered around how much content you think you'll be uploading every month. Remember that MP3 files can use high compression, so with a package like their 250mb a month, you could easily do a 30 minute podcast weekly and have room to spare.

Libsyn hosts some of the largest podcasts on the web - including ​nearly every podcaster in the top 10 of every category on iTunes. John Lee Dumas made Libsyn a "household name" with podcasters, as have other marquee podcast hosts. Marc Maron, Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla, the Nerdist, and others are all hosted on Libsyn. You really can't go wrong with them.

My only complaint about Libsyn is that the stats package is ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. I mean seriously - it's truly horrendous. It's gotten better over the years, but it's clear they really don't care about providing detailed stats beyond downloads and geo-location. For deeper insights, you're going to have to use someone else (and I've got recommendations).​

The other podcast host that I recommend highly is Blubrry.com. 

Now, I've never had a problem with Blubrry, and their PowerPress plugin is really quite good and undoubtedly the most featured Podcast plugin you can find.

The real nice thing between Blubrry and WordPress is with the plugin - everything can be seamless in hosting and serving podcasts. The stats package that Blubrry has is WAAAAY better than Libsyn (and honestly I usually use both - I use Blubrry's PowerPress plugin and stat package and then use Libsyn for hosting). ​

I was among the very first to beta test the "Rainmaker Platform" (affiliate link) back in 2014. It's a very unique product that has some rather cool advantages.

Unlike WP Engine, Rainmaker​ is managed hosting. That means, you're not dinking around with the back end of things. It's all handled for you by the team at Copyblogger. You don't have to worry about updates, plugins, keeping things backed up, etc. All of the back end nonsense is done for you.

The key thing with Rainmaker​ is that you can only run Genesis templates (I'm going to get to that in another recommendation in a moment). You're also limited to whatever Copyblogger decides are useful plugins and apps to run. That said, it's got a lot of bells and whistles built in  - like Learning Management Systems, podcasting, analytics, eCommerce (basically Woo Commerce built in with Subscriptions and Memberships added as well). There's a lot to like about this system - because if what you want to do is focus solely on SELLING (particularly if you're considering a membership site), it's hard to beat this platform.

The platform is backed by Copyblogger's Synthesis hosting package - which is actually subleased servers from Rackspace. It's pretty solid. The real downside of working with Copyblogger is you're going to pay a premium first-class price, and get a "United Airlines" level of customer service. It's really crappy. Typically you get an email back from a tech ticket in six hours - which can seem like an eternity when your website is down. That doesn't happen frequently - but it did happen to me several times. I'm fundamentally at odds with Brian Clark's approach on customer service at Copyblogger on all their products, and ultimately, I left Rainmaker for WordPress once again. 

That said, for people who aren't going to tax their server as hard as I do, and don't want to futz with the back end of WordPress - it's pretty much the best inbound marketing platform and it's about 1/10th the cost of something like Hubspot or Marketo... and has a lot of bells and whistles neither of those platforms possess.​

Duda (www.dudamobile.com) is a leading DIY website builder for web professionals and small businesses via its products; DudaMobile, a mobile-only site builder; DudaOne, a responsive website builder and DudaPro, which enables entrepreneurs, designers and agencies of all sizes to create personalized and dynamic web presence solutions without the need to invest in hours of costly development time.

I first started using Duda when I wanted to create mobile websites that looked as good, and were as responsive, as the desktop sites I was creating. It was drag and drop, and very easy to create highly customized mobile apps. I've been using it for over five years now.

The company has partnered with some of the biggest players in the tech industry including GoDaddy, AT&T, Yahoo!, Google, Homestead, OpenTable and DreamHost and expanded into DIY website design among other services. I don't necessarily know about those services - but I do know that their Mobile product is exceptionally useful and reliable.

If you do much film editing and publishing online, then Vimeo Plus (www.vimeo.com) can pay for itself in no time. No waiting in line to have your video converted and published and unlimited HD video uploads. You also get advanced customization to your player and choose what shows at the end of the video (text, a link, previews of more videos or nothing at all). If you embed your videos on a website like a blog, they are also in HD and better yet you can use domain-level privacy to only allow people to view your videos on your website versus on Vimeo.

Plus, unlike YouTube, Vimeo isn't going to spam your videos, suddenly yank the rug out from under you, or suddenly deliver your video content against something shocking. I really believe in "own your empire," and if you're producing video content that you are using for your website - then you have to give up on YouTube and instead focus on a video host that you're paying to host videos. Personally, I like Vimeo better than Wistia - but they're pretty comparable.