Riverside vs Transistor.fm: How I Picked a Podcast Tool for The Founder Room

When I started The Founder Room, I didn’t set out to start a podcast. I wanted a place where African founders could talk honestly about what they’re building, beyond the funding announcements and polished press releases.

From the start, the plan was to host these conversations on the Techloy Community, where founders, operators and readers already gather. But I also wanted them to reach people beyond it, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else people listen. So I decided to turn The Founder Room into a proper podcast, with a new conversation every other Saturday.

That’s when I realised how little I knew about the plumbing.

We had the recordings, but no podcast feed. We were starting from zero. Our interviews happen over remote calls, with founders joining from different cities and on very different internet connections. I also wanted the show to sit comfortably alongside Techloy’s membership on Ghost. Longer term, I wanted room for sponsors and the occasional live special.

Some creators want one tool that handles everything. Others would rather use a specialist for each step. So I did what I’d tell any creator to do before spending money: I researched. For several weeks I compared pricing pages, read reviews and tested what each platform could and couldn’t do. Two names kept coming up: Riverside and Transistor.fm.

On the surface they look like rivals. They aren’t really. One helps you make the show, and the other helps you get it to listeners and earn from it. This review is what that research turned up.

Here’s how the two platforms compare.

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/1. Recording and Editing

The first thing I had to get clear in my head was that these two tools don’t do the same job.

Riverside is built for recording. When you interview someone remotely, it records each person on their own device and then uploads the files. That means if a founder’s Wi-Fi drops mid-sentence, which, if you’ve ever interviewed anyone in Lagos or Nairobi, you know happens, the recording on their end still comes through clean. Paid plans record in up to 4K with studio-quality audio.