You get what you pay for. Realize when you are not paying for the service you have no leverage. Spotify for Podcasters just removed their music plus talk feature. If you were using this feature you have no leverage. What are you going to do NOT, not pay them? See https://podcasters.spotify.com/resources/learn/create/updates-to-spotify-for-podcasters Hobbies cost money, and if $20 a month is too expensive than maybe you have other issues you need to ponder before starting a podcast. I ride a bike in the summer, and pay for a tune up every year. Red Circle has a free option at the bottom of their page, but I if you're serious about starting a podcast why start in something you don't want to put your roots down. The problem with free media hosting is almost all of them say, "Free hosting and when you get big enough we will take part of the money you get for ads." The problem is when the podcaster gets big enough for ads, they move to a host where they can keep ALL the money. This is how you end up with this list: Podshow/Mevio 8/2005 – 4/2014 (116 months – 38.8 million dollars spent) Podango 9/2006 – 12/2008 (27 Months) wildvoice.com 7/2006 – 7/2009 (36 months) mypodcasts.com 2007 – 2011 (estimated 48 months) Audiometric.io 11/ 2012 – 8/2014 (21 months before being purchased by panoply and taken off the market) Opinion Podcasting 11/2015-10/2017  (23 months) Zcat 1/2016 – 1/2019 (36 months) Whooshkaa 6/2016-5/2021 (53 months) Red Circle.com 4/2019 - Libsyn Studio 2/2022 - 12/2023 (10 months) Anchor - Now Spotify which has changed their ads, and features. Moderator Required full disclosure: I am the head of podcaster education at Libsyn and the founder of the School of Podcasting. More on reddit.com

I was going to find a podcast hosting service, but I do not want to have to pay for video podcasts or podcasting 2.0 features. I also wish there... More on old.reddit.com

Yes, there are several places that offer podcast hosting that doesn't cost you money, but you do pay in other ways, such as losing control of your podcast, forfeiting your personal information or the privacy of your audience, being forced to accept ads, and such. You get what you pay for. More on reddit.com

I’m just leaving Acast after a couple years. I’d actually forgotten they had a free plan, and the current offering is pretty good - definitely better than paying for Influencer like I have been. That being said I was never really satisfied with their analytics. They changed the layout about a year ago and it’s needlessly obtuse, plus a lot of figures were tied to their dedicated Acast player app… that no one used, and recently was shut down. Furthermore, the opportunity to monetize never really came up, so don’t put all your eggs in that basket. They were a pretty solid and reliable service over all though, not to cast too negative a light on them. The websites are slick, customer service is great if you need tech support or something answered, and the integrations were handy. I can’t speak for RedCircle but Acast is a decent place to go overall. More on reddit.com