Setting Tier Availability
Episode availability controls when each tier gains access to an episode. You can release an episode to all tiers at the same moment, or stagger access so your premium subscribers hear it days or weeks before everyone else.
This is Benecaster’s own scheduling system — separate from any scheduling or drip feature in your membership plugin. Membership plugin drip rules do not affect your RSS feeds.
How It Works
Each episode has an availability date per tier. When that date and time arrives, Benecaster adds the episode to that tier’s feed. The feed cache is cleared automatically, so subscribers polling within the next few minutes see the new episode.
Availability is checked every five minutes. An episode set to unlock at 9:00 AM will be in subscribers’ feeds by 9:05 AM at the latest.
What “available” means: Once an episode is available to a tier, it appears in every subscriber at that tier’s private RSS feed. Their podcast app will see it on the next poll — typically within a few hours depending on the app’s update schedule.
Show Defaults
Every show has default availability offsets — a pattern that new episodes inherit automatically. You set these once in Benecaster → Settings → Availability and forget about them for routine episodes.
A typical early-access show might look like:
| Tier | Default offset |
|---|---|
| Premium | Same as publish date — immediate |
| Basic | Publish date + 3 days |
| Free | Publish date + 7 days |
When you publish an episode, Benecaster calculates the actual availability dates from your publish date plus the offset and saves them to the episode automatically. No per-episode work needed for your standard release pattern.
Overriding Dates per Episode
For episodes that don’t fit the default pattern — a trailer, a bonus episode for all tiers, a special early release — you can set dates individually.
Open the episode editor and look for the Availability section. By default it shows “Use show defaults” with a timeline visualization of the inherited dates. Click Override dates for this episode to open date pickers for each tier.
Each tier has its own datetime input. Set the date and time each tier should gain access. Changes save when you save the episode.
To revert to show defaults, re-check “Use show defaults.”
Immediate Availability
Setting a tier’s availability date to the publish date (or any time in the past) means that tier gets access as soon as the episode is published. Tiers set to a future date remain locked until that date arrives.
If you want all tiers to get access at the same time, set the same date across all tiers — or set all offsets to zero in your show defaults.
Common Configurations
Early access for premium subscribers
Set Premium to the publish date and Basic/Free to 3–14 days later. Premium subscribers hear each episode immediately; everyone else hears it after the delay. This is the most common use of availability scheduling.
Simultaneous release to all tiers
Set all tier offsets to zero. Every subscriber gets every episode at the same time — availability still controls when the episode goes live in feeds, but there’s no stagger.
Evergreen back catalogue
Leave back-catalogue episodes with all tiers at the same date (typically their original publish date). New episodes stagger. Subscribers who join today get immediate access to everything already published, and staggered access to new releases going forward.
Premium-only episodes
Set Basic and Free tiers to “Never.” Only Premium subscribers see the episode in their feed. Useful for bonus content that’s genuinely exclusive rather than just early.
Availability and the Episode Page
Availability dates control when an episode appears in RSS feeds. The episode page on your website has a separate “Web publish date” — the date the episode page becomes publicly visible on the site.
These two settings are independent. A common pattern is to publish the episode page on the web immediately (so it appears in your site archive and is shareable) while the RSS feed access is staggered per tier.
Availability and Email Notifications
If you have the Email Editor add-on installed and episode notifications enabled, Benecaster sends subscribers an email when an episode becomes available to their tier. Each tier gets the email at its own availability time — Premium subscribers get notified immediately, Basic subscribers get notified three days later, and so on.
See Episode Notifications for setup.
What Availability Does Not Do
Availability does not restrict access retroactively. Once an episode is available to a tier, it stays available. Setting a past episode’s availability date to the future does not remove it from feeds — it only affects new unlocks going forward.
Availability does not replace your membership plugin’s subscription gating. A subscriber still needs an active subscription at the right tier to have a feed at all. Availability controls the episode schedule within the feed — it assumes the subscriber already has feed access.
Availability is not the same as your membership plugin’s drip feature. Membership plugin drip rules apply to WordPress page/post access — they hide pages on your website based on how long someone has been a member. They have no effect on Benecaster’s RSS feeds. Use Benecaster availability dates to control when episodes appear in feeds. See Content Drip and Membership Plugins.
