aca.st website review

About 1.1 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.8 s faster on a phone.

13 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.9 s.

Your mobile performance score is 32. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 6.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 4.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (website-files.com, Google CDN and Hotjar and others), adding 3.0 MB and 3.0 s of main-thread time.

website-files.com costs a phone 761 ms of main-thread work and 795 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Google CDN costs a phone 595 ms of main-thread work and 1.1 MB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Hotjar costs a phone 506 ms of main-thread work and 246 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 483 ms of main-thread work and 345 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

20 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (392 KiB).

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 328 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

The page has 2,327 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

7 images could be 198 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

About 88 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

Polyfills for old browsers add 21 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

15 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

11 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

The page becomes fully interactive after 30.2 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 7.5 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 7.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “The all-in-one platform to grow and monetize your podcast a…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.7 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.3 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.8 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors wait 244 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 144 ms to 213 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.6 s to 2.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 2.3 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.5 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

2 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Your homepage downloads 20.8 MB in 159 requests on a phone: media 12.8 MB (3), other files 4.2 MB (44) and scripts 2.3 MB (33). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example 67b8461033bd0fe70b72191f_Everything Iconic.jpg at 500 px wide, shown at 80 px. Resized copies would save about 48 KiB.

1 image (62 KiB) is JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 5.88 g of CO₂e: 705.8 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 text element doesn't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 28 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one banner landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

10 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

2 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

There are 6 <h1> headlines (“Turn your podcast into influence and”, “income” and “Your professional podcast suite”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

Structured data found (Organization) but with 1 problem, for example “Organization: url is not an absolute URL ("/en")”.

The homepage links to 71 pages on aca.st and 25 external pages.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

/en, /en-ca, /sv, /en-au, /en-gb and /fr and 4 others all use the title “Acast: The Best Podcast Monetization Platform”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/en-ca, /sv, /en-au, /en-gb, /fr and /de and 3 others use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 20 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Cannot read properties of null (reading 'addEventListener')”.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

Opening https://aca.st goes through 3 redirects before the homepage loads.

2 links go through two or more redirects, for example https://open.acast.com/.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

acast.com's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 379 words of visible text.

aca.st has no DMARC record, so nothing tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF or DKIM. Gmail and Yahoo require DMARC from bulk senders.

We found no DKIM key on the selectors the big email providers use. If you send through one of them, turning on DKIM signing improves delivery.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, LinkedIn Insight and Meta Pixel and 1 more (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (OneTrust) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 13 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 34 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.