Sermon and Podcast Hosting for Churches

Ekkli hosts your Sunday sermon audio, gives every church a public sermon archive and a live page, and can turn your messages into a proper podcast with an RSS feed — with free audio hosting on every plan and long-term storage as you grow. This page covers exactly how the hosting works, including the one detail worth understanding clearly before you rely on it: the six-month free trial's audio storage is a rolling window, not a permanent archive.

If you're the person who hits "record" on Sunday and then has to figure out what happens to that file afterward, this is written for you.

How sermon audio hosting works on the free trial

Every Ekkli church, on the six-month free trial, can upload and publish sermon audio at no cost. There's no separate "media" paywall to unlock before you can put Sunday's message online — recording and publishing audio is part of the free trial from day one, for up to 50 people.

Here's the detail that matters most, and the one we want to be completely upfront about: free-tier audio storage is a rolling 2-hour window, not a fixed archive. In practice, that means roughly the most recent two hours of uploaded audio stay available at any given time — as new sermon audio comes in, the oldest audio ages out to make room. It is not a growing, permanent library of every sermon you've ever preached. If you want this Sunday's message still playable next year, or you're building toward a searchable back-catalogue of teaching, the free trial's rolling window isn't the right tool for that job on its own — long-term storage is a paid-plan feature (below).

What the free trial is good for: getting a recent message online quickly, sharing this week's sermon link with someone who missed the service, and trying the publishing workflow before deciding whether you need long-term storage.

Long-term storage: what paid plans add

Paid plans replace the free trial's rolling window with real, GB-based long-term storage, so audio you publish stays published rather than ageing out. Storage scales with plan:

To put that in perspective: a typical 40-minute sermon as a compressed MP3 usually lands around 30–40 MB, so even Small's 5 GB gives most churches well over a hundred messages of runway, and Ministry's 100 GB comfortably covers years of weekly teaching. Exact file sizes vary with recording quality, so treat that as a rough planning figure, not a guarantee.

Pricing for the plans above is shown at Band A rates; many countries fall into lower pricing bands. See pricing for exact monthly and annual figures, regional pricing, and the 6-month Ministry-plan trial every new church starts on.

Video: import and archive, not just re-upload

Plenty of churches already livestream or record video through YouTube or Vimeo, and re-uploading that content a second time just to have it "in the platform" is wasted effort. Ekkli's video handling is built around that:

• Link normalization. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo link and Ekkli cleans it up and embeds it properly on your site — no hand-formatting embed codes.
• YouTube channel-RSS bulk import. If your church already publishes to a YouTube channel, Ekkli can pull that channel's existing videos in via its RSS feed, instead of re-adding past messages one link at a time.

Your video archive sits alongside your audio archive on the same public sermon page, without duplicating storage or workflow.

The public sermon archive and live pages

Every Ekkli church gets a public /sermons archive page as part of its church website — a browsable list of past messages, whatever mix of hosted audio and imported video your church has published, visible to anyone who visits your site without a login. It's the page you'd link from a text to someone who missed Sunday, or a "Sermons" tab in your site navigation.

Alongside it, a /live page gives your church a consistent, standing link for whatever you're streaming this week, rather than sharing a fresh URL every Sunday.

Both pages are part of the church website that ships free on every plan (subdomain hosting, with a "Powered by Ekkli" footer on the free trial — a custom domain and white-label footer removal are paid-plan features). See the website and member portal page for how the sermon archive fits into the rest of your church's site.

Podcast RSS: turning sermons into a real podcast

Publishing audio on your own site is one thing; showing up automatically in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast apps is another — that step needs a proper RSS feed built to podcast conventions, not just a list of audio links.

Ekkli's podcast RSS feed generation is a paid-plan feature. It produces a feed with iTunes-compatible tags (episode titles, artwork, descriptions, and the metadata directories expect), so once you submit that feed URL, new sermons publish to your listeners automatically as you upload them — no separate podcast-hosting service or manual re-submission per episode.

Because podcast RSS depends on sermons staying reachable over time, it pairs naturally with paid-plan long-term storage rather than the free trial's rolling window — a feed pointing at audio that's about to age out isn't one a listener can trust.

For the fuller picture of what makes a sermon podcast work well — recording habits, publishing rhythm, and what a listener actually expects from a feed — see our full how-to guide on turning sermons into a church podcast.

Building an archive that stays useful

Hosting the audio is only half the job — an archive pays off years later only if it stays organised: grouped by series, tagged by topic, easy to search rather than a flat pile sorted by upload date. That matters most once you're on paid long-term storage, where a growing library becomes a genuine asset for new visitors and members alike. For a full walkthrough of how to structure a sermon archive so it keeps serving people for years, see our sermon archive guide.

Where this fits with the rest of Ekkli

Sermon and podcast hosting sits alongside the rest of your church's Sunday workflow rather than as a separate tool: your church website (see website and member portal) carries the public sermon archive and live page automatically, and your stage view and remote control setup uses the same login. One platform, one login — not a separate podcast host, video embed tool, and website.

Frequently asked questions

Is sermon audio hosting really free?

Yes — uploading and publishing sermon audio is included on every Ekkli plan, including the six-month free trial, at no cost. The free trial's storage is a rolling 2-hour window rather than a permanent archive; long-term storage that keeps audio published indefinitely is a paid-plan feature.

What does "rolling 2-hour storage window" actually mean?

On the free trial, Ekkli keeps roughly the most recent two hours of uploaded sermon audio available at any time. As new audio is added, older audio ages out to make room. It's designed for getting recent content online quickly, not for building a permanent back-catalogue — for that, you'll want a paid plan's GB-based long-term storage.

How much long-term storage do the paid plans include?

Small includes 5 GB, Sunday includes 20 GB, Ministry includes 100 GB, and Network includes 250 GB of long-term media storage, replacing the free trial's rolling window. See pricing for exact monthly and annual costs by plan and region.

Can I use my existing YouTube or Vimeo videos instead of re-uploading?

Yes. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo link and Ekkli normalizes and embeds it on your sermon archive. If your church already publishes to a YouTube channel, Ekkli can bulk-import your existing videos from that channel's RSS feed, so you're not adding past messages one at a time.

Does Ekkli generate a podcast RSS feed I can submit to Apple Podcasts?

Yes, on paid plans. Ekkli generates an RSS feed with iTunes-compatible tags that you can submit to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast directories, so new sermons publish to subscribers automatically as you upload them.

What's the difference between the /sermons page and the /live page?

The /sermons page is your public, browsable archive of past messages — audio and imported video together. The /live page is a standing, consistent link for whatever your church is streaming that week, so you can share one URL every Sunday instead of a new one each time.

This page is maintained by the Ekkli team, who build and host the sermon and podcast infrastructure described above. Questions about migrating an existing sermon archive or podcast feed? Reach out — we're happy to help you plan it out, whether or not you end up on Ekkli.