The Best Way to Track Your Podcast Guests

The best way to track your podcast guests is the lightest method that still survives the moment you get busy, and that method changes as your show grows.

There is no single right answer. There is only the right answer for where you are right now.

I have recorded more than 700 episodes of Hacks and Hobbies, and I have tracked guests every way on this list, usually because the last way stopped working. This is not a how-to for the whole guest workflow. For that, read how to manage podcast guests. This is a decision guide for one question: where should the tracking actually live.

One disclosure. I built a podcast relationship tool called PodGlue, and it is the last rung on this ladder. I will be honest about every rung below it, including the ones you should stay on.

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The Quick Comparison

Here is the whole ladder in one view. Find the row that sounds like your week.

Method	Best for	Breaks when
Memory and inbox	Your first few episodes	You book a third guest and forget the first
Spreadsheet	A handful of guests, solo	Notes pile up and nothing reminds you to follow up
Notion or Airtable	A builder who likes systems	You stop having time to maintain what you built
Podcast PRM	A real show with relationships to keep	(This is where the ladder ends, not where it breaks)

Now the detail, one rung at a time.

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Rung One: Memory and Your Inbox

Best for: your first two or three episodes.

In the beginning, you do not track guests. You just remember them. The booking is an email thread, the details are in your head, and honestly that is fine. Nobody needs a system for three people.

This breaks fast, and it breaks quietly. You book a fourth guest, then a fifth, and one day a past guest replies to an old thread and you cannot remember what you promised them. The inbox is a river, not a record. Things float past and they are gone.

The day you search your inbox to reconstruct a relationship is the day memory stopped working.

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Rung Two: A Spreadsheet

Best for: a handful of guests, one host, a clear head.

This is where almost everyone goes next, including me. A spreadsheet is free, instant, and yours. Name, date, email, a status column you color-code. For your first few dozen episodes it genuinely works, and anyone who tells you to buy software on day one is selling something.

It breaks the same way mine did. The notes column dies around episode forty. The sheet does not remind you of anything, so the follow-up lives in your head. And the day someone else needs it, you realize the system was never the sheet. It was you.

I wrote the full honest version of this in podcast CRM vs a spreadsheet. If you are on this rung, read that before you climb.

A spreadsheet stores what happened. It does nothing about what happens next.

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Rung Three: A DIY Workspace Like Notion or Airtable

Best for: the builder who likes designing their own systems.

This is the natural next step for people who outgrow a spreadsheet but love to tinker. Notion and Airtable let you build a real guest database: records, relations to episodes, boards, filtered views. It is flexible, close to free for one person, and satisfying to build.

It breaks on time. You are the architect, the builder, and the maintenance crew, all at once. The system works exactly as long as you keep feeding it, and the week you get busy is the week it drifts out of sync with reality. It also has no reminders out of the box, so the follow-up still lives in your head, just behind a nicer interface.

I went deeper on this in Notion for podcast guest management. If you are the building type, that post is for you.

A DIY workspace is only as honest as your discipline.

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Rung Four: A Purpose-Built Podcast PRM

Best for: a real show where the relationships matter more than the records.

PRM means podcast relationship management. The idea is that each guest is not a row with a date. Each guest is a relationship with a history and a next step. If that phrase is new to you, here is what podcast relationship management actually is.

The difference from every rung below is the verbs. A spreadsheet and a Notion page remember. A PRM reminds. It knows what a guest, an episode, and a follow-up are, so you do not have to invent that structure. It tells you when you have gone quiet with someone you liked. And when a producer or VA joins, you hand them a system, not a forty-minute phone call explaining your conventions.

This is the end of the ladder, so I will be plain. The reason to climb here is not features. It is that you have stopped being able to hold your relationships in your head, and they have become too valuable to lose.

A PRM is the spreadsheet plus the part of your brain you keep outsourcing to luck.

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So Which Rung Are You On?

Be honest about your actual week, not your ambition.

If you have three guests, use your inbox and do not overthink it. If you have a dozen and a clear head, a spreadsheet is the right answer. If you love building systems and have the time to maintain one, Notion or Airtable will reward you. And if your guests come easily but the follow-through keeps slipping, that is the rung I built PodGlue for.

The follow-through gap is exactly why PodGlue exists: a home for the people behind your show, every guest in one place, every promise tracked, every follow-up where you can actually see it.

Pick the rung that matches your bottleneck. Not the one with the longest feature list, and not the one you wish you needed yet.

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PodGlue is in beta right now. If the part you keep dropping is the follow-up, come try it at podglue.com/join.

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Junaid Ahmed is the host of Hacks and Hobbies and the founder of PodGlue. He has recorded more than 700 episodes and climbed every rung on this ladder the hard way.