My subscriber count dropped suddenly — will I be auto-downgraded?

No. Benecaster never automatically downgrades your plan based on subscriber count. Your plan only changes when you initiate it.

A sudden drop — more than 80% from your all-time high, or a count falling below 5 — sends you an alert: “We noticed your subscriber count dropped — is everything okay? This could indicate a technical issue with your membership plugin or feed setup.” Both rules only apply on a licence that has previously reported more than 10 paying subscribers, because below that number a real drop and a broken integration look the same. No plan action is taken, nothing is paused, and the email is sent once rather than repeated.

Downgrading yourself: You can move to a lower tier from My Account → Change your plan. What gates it is fitting inside the target plan for 30 continuous days — on every limit it sets, so your paying subscriber count and, where that plan caps them, your active shows and your total listener count including free-tier subscribers. The clock resets if any one of them stops fitting. Benecaster tells you when you’re eligible and the control only appears at that point, so if a drop was genuine and you want to move down because of it, expect to wait out the 30 days rather than downgrade the same week.