Best ShoutCast Hosting
Shoutcast is an internet broadcasting tool for audio streaming. It's well known as internet radio station which is used to broadcast audio contents to internet audience. Shoutcast uses mp3 (MPEG Layer 3) technology for audio delivery and NSV for audio/video delivery. The shoutcast hosting service is provided in various plans including shared and dedicated server hosting.
Unlike all traditional hosting service, shoutcast highly relies on server uptime and powerful network support. In order to make sure your radio station is always online, you must know about your listeners so you can pick up the right service plan. For example if you just want to play with the service to send out your broadcasts to friends, you can get an affordable shared shoutcast hosting where everything is pre-configured and you just use the service. However please bear in mind you have to accept various restrictions such as number of audience, broadcasts and voice quality etc… If you want to get full control over your shoutcast server, you need either VPS or dedicated hosting solution.
Best dedicated server for shoutcast
For quality and affordable shoutcast hosting, look no further than bluehost dedicated server plans. Bluehost is by far your best choice for dedicated server choice based its server configurations, networking, customer support and price. Please note if you sign up today you can get 50% discount for the first month, means the cost for starter server plan is only $74.95/mo! You can't find better price with all the server advantages like the following:
- Dual core Xeon Processor
- 3 MB cache & 4 GB RAM
- 2 x 500 GB HDD & 5 TB BW /month
- Free Domain Name
- 3 Dedicated IPs
- CentOS 6.4 (64-bit)
- KVM Virtualization
Check bluehost dedicated server plans http://www.bluehost.com
Bluehost Shoutcast Radio Hosting Core features
Bluehost is the best shoutcast hosting choice because of its leading features in server setup, network and support. Bluehost has been offering leading web hosting service with over 10 years development experience. Their team has been optimizing their server kernels and networking to meet up the modern requirements. Just from 2 years before, they finally setup their own tier 4 datacenters with more than required upstream bandwidth and power supplies.
- Server Specs. Bluehost servers are 100% newly produced DELL brands. You have choice over 3 server plans with different hardware specifications. Their people have deeply optimized the server system based their long experience in web hosting industry. The popular project BETTERLINUX is actually developed by bluehost, it's recognized the best linux optimizer till present.
- Networking. Bluehost operates 3 world class datacenters in Utah. All datacenters are setup by themselves and all meet up with the modernized internet requirements and environment requirements. It's 100% wind power supply with UPS backup. All datacenters are setup via internal cloud/CDN so if there's a server failure, the second server will take over the work so your application will always be online. The bluehost dedicated server is KVM virtualized on Openstak platform. It's extremely helpful for shoutcast service that requires 100% uptime.
- Support. Since it's dedicated server, bluehost will provide support for server configuration and monitoring. You will need to configure your shotcast server by yourself. Their support is knowlegeable and professional in touble shooting most problems.
- Price. Bluehost is offering 50% discount for the first month service. Comparing all other leading server providers with several hundreds dollars per month, the bluehost service is pretty affordable for most people. Online radio station comes high rate resource consumption. If you need to add more resources to your server such as disk space, bandwidth, port abilities etc, you can expect the lowest price from bluehost!
Check out bluehost server advantages here: http://www.bluehost.com
Shoutcast Hosting FAQs
What is Shoutcast?
Shoutcast is a streaming server which allows radio stations to effectively broadcast audio online.
Is it easy to use shoutcast?
Yes. There're many free software like Winamp to broadcast for shoutcast server setup. You can also consider using tools such as Simplecast and SAM Broadcaster, these are more professional and 100% shoutcast compatible tools.
What's Audio DJ?
Auto DJ enables you to upload and play music directly from servers when no DJ is connected. There's also API to give remote users the ability to start and stop the Auto DJ server.
How can I start a successful radio station?
You have to be expertise with your topic to catch the caution of your audience. You also need a stable and powerful shoutcast hosting service to ensure its availability.
How much should I pay for shoutcast hosting?
It completely depends your requirements. The lowest cost service is several bucks per month and hundreds of dollars for dedicated hosting. You must evaluate your plan carefully.
Are there other radio servers apart from shoutcast?
Yes there're multiple choice beyond shoutcast. Icecast Servers and VosCast are both popular choice by people.