May 06, 2026

Captivate launches Apple Podcasts video

4 minutes

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Podcast hosting company Captivate has unveiled its Apple Podcasts video support. Their pricing model is a flat $12/month add-on for up to 1,000 video plays. Additional bandwidth costs are charged over that number. Captivate isn't yet supporting the alternate enclosure.

Podnews has published a quick price comparison page for video podcast hosting. What's notable is that different companies are charging in very different ways.

It's emerged that all podcasters wanting to submit video to Apple Podcasts will need to manually get an API key from Apple (docs from Captivate, Podigee or Buzzsprout) and then submit an approval request to Apple Podcasts to enable their podcast in video - and it can take up to two weeks for Apple Podcasts to approve this request. We don't know of any publishers or shows that have been disallowed, however, and there is a suggestion that this is a technical quality check to help the platform with scaling growth. However, neither Spotify nor YouTube charges for bandwidth, and both those companies don't have a pre-publishing approval process.

Captivate launched their Apple Podcasts video streaming feature with a special edition of In & Around Podcasting - however, surprisingly, that episode is not yet in video on Apple Podcasts. We bet it's in Apple's approval queue...

What effect does adding video on Apple Podcasts have on your show's consumption? According to this case study from Transistor and Primary Technology from Stephen Robles... it doubles your plays in Apple Podcasts; and has no effect on your YouTube audience. There are downsides, though - no chapters, no read-along transcripts, and - worse of all - no video at all for users who are paid subscribers. Ouch.

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