Default Email Templates
Benecaster sends a small set of transactional emails automatically. These are plain, functional messages — not marketing campaigns. They deliver the information subscribers need: their feed URL when they join, their new URL when they reset, confirmation when their plan changes.
What Benecaster Sends
Welcome Email
Sent when a new subscriber token is generated for the first time.
Contains:
- The subscriber’s private RSS feed URL
- Direct links to open the feed in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Castro (deep links pre-fill the URL)
- A link to the subscriber account page for future reference
The welcome email is the most important email Benecaster sends — it’s how subscribers get their feed URL. Every time a new subscription activates and a token is generated, this email fires automatically.
Token Reset Email
Sent when a subscriber’s feed token is reset — either by an admin via the subscriber detail panel, or by the subscriber themselves from their account page.
Contains:
- The new private RSS feed URL (the old URL is immediately invalid)
- Deep links for Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Castro using the new URL
- An optional custom message if the admin added one when initiating the reset
If a subscriber’s app stops receiving episodes, this email tells them exactly what they need to do.
Tier Change Email
Sent when a subscriber’s membership tier changes — whether from a bridge event (upgrade, downgrade, cancellation + resubscribe at a different tier) or from an admin manually changing their tier.
Contains:
- Their previous tier name (struck through)
- Their new tier name (bolded)
- The subscriber account page link
This email fires for every tier change regardless of whether the admin used the “Send notification” option. It is not gated by that checkbox — the checkbox controls a separate admin-notification hook for add-ons.
Email Sending Rate
Go to Benecaster → Settings → Email to configure the sending rate.
The Emails per hour setting controls how quickly Benecaster dispatches emails from its internal queue. This applies to standard-priority email only — welcome emails, feed URL delivery, and subscriber notifications. It does not apply to admin and security emails (license alerts, wizard notifications), which are always sent immediately.
| Setting | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Emails per hour | 300 | 10–2,000 |
Set this to match the sending limit in your SMTP provider’s plan. Most transactional email services publish this limit in your account dashboard — Mailgun calls it “sending rate,” Postmark calls it “messages per minute” (multiply by 60), SendGrid lists it under your plan details.
Why this matters: If Benecaster queues faster than your SMTP provider allows, your provider may defer or block messages. Setting the rate conservatively below your provider’s limit prevents this.
Queue depth: The Email settings panel shows how many emails are currently waiting to send. Under normal conditions this is zero or near zero. A large backlog means your provider is throttling sends — lower the rate or contact your provider.
Email Format
All Benecaster emails send as multipart: HTML for modern clients, plain text as a fallback. The plain text version is auto-generated from the HTML unless you override it via the benecaster_email_body_text filter.
Emails include List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click headers (RFC 8058). Gmail, Yahoo, and Apple Mail surface a native “Unsubscribe” button from these headers — subscribers who click it are unsubscribed from non-transactional email only. Transactional emails (feed URL delivery, token reset) are not affected.
Customising
- Override templates from your theme: see Customizing Email Templates
- Change merge tags, suppress specific emails, or reroute to a third-party provider: see Customizing Email Templates
- Full merge tag reference: see Email Merge Tags
- Unsubscribe flow from the subscriber’s perspective: see Unsubscribe Handling
- Design and send episode announcements and broadcasts: see Email Editor (add-on)
