Built-in Membership

Benecaster’s built-in membership system lets you sell Stripe-powered subscription tiers directly through your WordPress site — no separate membership plugin required. Subscribers sign up on your site, pay through Stripe, and receive a private RSS feed URL immediately. You manage everything from the Benecaster admin.

What’s Included

Subscription tiers — define as many tiers as you need (Gold, Silver, Founding Member, whatever fits your show) with monthly and annual pricing.
Annual discount badge — set an annual price below 12× the monthly rate and Benecaster computes and displays the discount automatically (“Save 27%” or “2 months free”).
Stripe integration — direct Stripe API keys; revenue goes straight from subscriber to your Stripe account with no Benecaster intermediary.
Test mode — test the entire purchase flow with Stripe’s test environment before going live. See Payment Test Mode.
Subscriber self-service — subscribers can update their payment method, view billing history, and cancel from the subscriber account page.
Billing emails — default templates for subscription receipt, upcoming renewal reminder, payment failure, and cancellation confirmation.
Feed token management — same token system used by all Benecaster bridges; billing-period changes preserve the subscriber’s feed URL.

Prerequisites

Before Built-in Membership becomes available, three conditions must be met:

Stripe keys — enter test or live keys in Settings → Membership → Payments.
At least one active tier — create a tier in Benecaster → Memberships → Tiers before connecting the bridge.
Paid plan — Built-in Membership is not available on the free Launch plan. Any paid plan (Starter and above) is sufficient.

The bridge picker shows a prompt with specific links to the missing requirements until all three are satisfied.

Setting up Tiers

Go to Benecaster → Memberships → Tiers and click Add Tier.

Each tier has:

Field	Notes
Name	Displayed to subscribers (e.g., “Gold”, “Premium”, “Founding Member”)
Slug	Auto-generated from the name; immutable after creation. Changing this would break existing feed URLs — Benecaster does not allow it.
Monthly price	Leave blank to offer annual-only.
Annual price	Leave blank to offer monthly-only. Set below 12× monthly to unlock the discount badge.
Free trial (days)	Number of days before the first charge. Range 0–730 (Stripe’s maximum). Default 0 (no trial). Subscribers can add their payment method during trial and are not charged until the trial ends.
Description	Optional. Shown on the subscription page next to the tier card.
Active	Inactive tiers don’t appear to new subscribers but existing subscribers retain access.

The tier slug appears in feed URLs and is referenced in Benecaster’s analytics — choose a slug you’ll be comfortable with permanently.

Connecting the Bridge

Once a tier exists and Stripe keys are configured, go to Benecaster → Settings → Subscription and select Built-in Membership from the bridge picker. Benecaster begins managing subscriptions directly from this point.

If you previously used an external membership plugin, the bridge switch prompts you through the transition. See Subscription Plugin Overview for guidance on when to switch versus when to stay with your existing plugin.

Connecting Stripe

Built-in Membership uses Stripe directly. You configure your own Stripe account keys — Benecaster never touches the money.

Go to Settings → Membership → Payments.
Enter your test publishable key and test secret key under the Test section.
Enter your live publishable key and live secret key under the Live section.
Use the Test Mode toggle to switch between environments. Both key sets are saved independently — switching never requires re-entering keys.

See Payment Test Mode for how to test the full purchase flow before going live.

The Subscriber Experience

When a subscriber clicks a sign-up link on your site:

They choose a tier and billing period from the subscription page (rendered by [benecaster_subscribe]).
They complete payment through a Stripe-hosted checkout page.
Benecaster generates a feed token and sends the welcome email with their private RSS feed URL.
The subscriber’s account page shows their active tier, billing period, next renewal date, and payment method — with options to update or cancel.

If payment fails, the subscriber sees a persistent notice on their account page and receives a payment failure email. Benecaster does not revoke feed access during Stripe’s retry window — access continues until all retries are exhausted and Stripe cancels the subscription.

Subscriber Billing Emails

Four billing email types are active by default. You can enable or disable each per show, and configure how many days before renewal the reminder is sent.

Settings location: Benecaster → Shows → [Your Show] → Subscription → Subscriber Billing Emails

Toggle	Default	Description
Payment receipt	On	Sent after every successful payment
Renewal reminder	On	Sent N days before the billing period ends
Payment failed	On	Sent once when payment first fails (not on every retry)
Subscription cancelled	On	Sent when access is revoked at the end of the billing period

Days before renewal (default 7): Controls when the renewal reminder is sent. Range is 1–30. The input is greyed out when the renewal reminder toggle is off.

Subscribers on external bridges (MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, etc.) do not receive these emails — they receive billing emails from their membership plugin.

See Built-in Membership Billing Emails for full details on each email type, and Customising Email Templates for the PHP override path.

What V1 Does Not Include

Built-in Membership V1 is focused on the core subscription lifecycle. The following are deferred to later releases:

Multi-currency pricing — V1 uses a single currency (your Stripe account’s default). Podcasters with multi-currency needs should use the WooCommerce Subscriptions bridge.
Subscriber-chosen pricing (NYOP) — let subscribers pay what they want. Planned as a separate add-on.
Automated migration from external plugins — moving existing MemberPress or WooCommerce subscribers to built-in membership. Requires a separate technical spike; planned for a later add-on update.

For Developers

The built-in membership system exposes hook surfaces for third-party code:

benecaster_membership_tier_created, benecaster_membership_tier_updated, benecaster_membership_tier_deleted — fire after tier CRUD operations. Use to sync tiers to external systems.
benecaster_stripe_membership_subscription_deleted, _updated, _invoice_payment_failed, _invoice_paid — routing actions fired by MembershipWebhookHandlers when Stripe events arrive. Hook here rather than on raw Stripe event strings.
PodcastPaymentGateway interface — implement this to add a custom payment gateway (e.g., PayPal, regional processors). See class-podcast-payment-gateway.

See the For Developers section for full parameter specs and usage examples.