Frequently Asked Questions

Single‑episode podcasts: callers automatically hear your latest episode as soon as they dial in.

Multi‑episode podcasts: callers hear a short menu:

• Press 1 to play the latest episode.
• Press 2 to choose from prior episodes.

At the end of an episode, callers can also choose to play the next or previous episode, or return to the menu.

When multi‑episode support is enabled, callers can browse prior episodes using the keypad menu:

• Press 1–9 to select one of the episodes listed.
• Press # to hear more episodes (next page).
• Press * to go back to the previous page.
• Press 0 to repeat the current list.

After an episode finishes, callers can choose the next episode, the previous episode, or return to the main menu.

Yes—on plans that include Playback Resume, callers can pick up where they left off the next time they call.

When they call back, they’ll be offered a choice to resume or restart the episode.

Important: Playback Resume requires caller ID. If a caller has blocked or anonymous caller ID, we can’t match them to their previous session and resume won’t be available.

All plans come with a 30-day worry-free trial.

If you're unsatisfied for any reason, just cancel your plan before the end of your first month and you won't be charged.

Absolutely! Stripe provides the billing back-end. All your billing information is stored directly with Stripe.

You can cancel your subscription anytime in your account. Once the subscription is canceled, you will not be charged for the next billing cycle. You will continue to have access to your account and callers will still be able to listen to your podcast until your current subscription expires.

Currently, we only offer monthly subscriptions. You can upgrade or cancel your subscription at any time with no further obligation. If you upgrade (or downgrade), it will be retroactively applied to the beginning of your current billing cycle.

Yes. Go to the billing section of your dashboard and update your payment information.

You can cancel your subscription within one month before the end of your first month and you won't be charged.

Otherwise, we don't issue refunds; however, you can cancel at anytime.

If you have added a dedicated local or toll-free number (remember that your first local number is included for free!), your callers will dial that number and can instantly start listening to your podcast (they don't need to type in the six-digit code).

They can also call any of our global call-in numbers, which may be helpful if they live in another country.

Dial-a-Podcast is available in the United States and Canada. Go ahead and sign up and then use any of the global call-in numbers.

Yes, your first local number is included for free. You can also add one or more local or toll-free numbers.

Once you signup, you'll be able to add a number from your management page.

We're currently only offering US and Canadian dedicated numbers.

You can add a dedicated toll-free number for an additional small monthly fee plus an additional per-minute surcharge for all calls to the toll-free number.

Not to worry. Please contact us and we can get a phone number with a local area code pronto, likely at no additional cost to you!

Yes, you have two options: you can either forward to a dedicated phone number or you can use a SIP URI for your podcast, which is:

xxxxxx@dialapodcast.sip.twilio.com

Where xxxxxx is the six-digit code for your podcast.

If you need help setting it up, please contact us and we'd be glad to help!

If you don't have a podcast, then you can upload any audio file (MP3, M4A, FLAC, or WAV) to your Dial-a-Podcast account and your callers will be able to listen to that. Just select Audio File instead of Podcast Feed.

To upload faster, and because the audio will be reduced to telephone-level quality anyway, we suggest you export audio files as:

• Channels: 1 (mono)
• Sample rate: < 16000 Hz
• Quality: < 64 kbps

Yes! When you're setting up your podcast, you have the option to enable Multiepisode support. This will allow your listeners to select one of many episodes (up to the maximum your plan allows).

Yes!

If you have a Podcast Feed: the <pubDate> element of each episode (within each <item> element) is used to determine if the episode should be available to listeners. Episodes with dates in the future will not be made available until that time.

If you upload an Audio File manually, then you have an option to set a future date and your episode will not be made available until that time.

Note that future items do not count against your 10 episodes.

No, we do not recommend including music in your podcast for several reasons:

• Music can be hard to hear over the telephone due to technical constraints of the phone system.
• Music is covered by various copyright laws, including a performance right. You may need a special license to allow the music you play to be broadcast over the phone.

A podcast feed is your published RSS that contains your podcast episodes. Depending on where your podcast is hosted, the URL may look something like one of the following:

• https://podcast.messiahseattle.org/feed.xml
• https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1899126.rss
• https://feeds.redcircle.com/a2a6687f-5947-46ad-94fc-df8e43d96d7d
• https://www.graceauburn.org/service-audio?format=rss

If you need help figuring out what your podcast feed is please contact us, we'd be glad to help you figure it out!

If you are manually uploading please, please note there is a 100 MB limit.

MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG, 3GP, AAC, or WAV files are all acceptable formats/codecs.

Using the MP3 codec, encoding at 128 kbps constant bit rate (CBR) will produce a file that is approximately 1 MB per minute of audio. Thus, a 15-minute audio file would be approximately 15 MB.

You can view a detailed breakdown of your podcast’s performance for both the current and previous billing periods, including:

• Total Minutes – The total number of listener minutes.
• Total Calls – The number of times your podcast was accessed.
• Average Call Length – The average duration of each call.
• Median Call Length – The midpoint duration of all calls.
• Number of Unique Callers – The total number of distinct listeners.

In addition, we provide historical trends in graph form for the past 13 months, allowing you to track long-term listener engagement.

Note: Statistics are available at the podcast level and are not broken down by individual episodes.

If you need additional statistics or custom reporting, please contact us!

Create (first time): Use “Add Audio File” to create a new Audio File podcast and upload your first episode.

Add new episode: Use “Edit” on your existing podcast, then choose “Add New Episode.”

Tip: Don’t create a new Audio File podcast for each episode—just add episodes to your existing podcast.

From your dashboard, click Edit next to your podcast.

Check (or uncheck) Enable multi‑episode, then click Update.

You can turn this on or off at any time.

Yes!

Podcast Feed: we use each episode’s <pubDate> to determine when it should appear. Episodes with a future date won’t be available until that time.

Audio File uploads: you can set a future publish date when you upload an episode, and it won’t be available until then.

The most common reasons are:

• Processing: new uploads and feed updates take a short time to process.
• Future date: the episode has a future publish date (or future <pubDate> in your RSS feed).
• Deleted or invalid: the episode was removed or failed validation.

If you’re unsure, check your dashboard for status or contact us.

Go to your dashboard and click Edit next to your podcast.

Update the Podcast Feed URL field and click Update.

We’ll re‑fetch your feed and refresh your episodes automatically.

Pre‑roll is a short audio clip that plays before each episode (e.g., an announcement or sponsor message).

To set it up, go to the Pre‑roll section of your dashboard, upload a pre‑roll file, and assign it to one or more podcasts.

Plan note: Pre‑roll is only available on certain plans.

Yes, you can setup Authorized Callers from your dashboard. Any callers not on the Authorized Caller list for your podcast will be informed they don't have access.

Note: Make sure you assign your list to one of your podcasts, otherwise it won't be in effect!

If they have caller ID blocking enabled then we cannot verify their number is on the access list. They will receive the following message when they try to access your podcast:

We're sorry, you have caller ID blocking enabled and we cannot verify your number has been granted access to this podcast. Please disable your caller ID block and try again.

Your caller can temporarily disable their caller ID blocking , which can usually be done by adding *67 before the phone number they want to dial.

Alternatively, you can select "Allow anonymous Caller ID" on your Authorized Callers list, which will then allow ANY anonymous callers to be able to listen.