Mapping Your Membership Tiers

Tier mapping connects your membership plugin’s subscription levels to Benecaster’s feed tiers. Without it, Benecaster doesn’t know which of your membership levels should unlock which episodes — and subscribers get empty feeds.

Why Tier Mapping Exists

Your membership plugin manages subscriptions in its own terms. MemberPress has “levels.” WooCommerce Subscriptions has “products.” Paid Memberships Pro has “levels” with IDs. Benecaster works with a simpler concept: a tier slug — a short label like gold, silver, or founding-member.

Tier mapping is the translation layer between those two worlds. You tell Benecaster: “When someone subscribes to my ‘Gold Annual’ level in MemberPress, treat them as a gold tier subscriber in Benecaster.” That mapping determines which episodes they see.

Setting up the Mapping

Tier mapping is available in two places:

• During the setup wizard — the Tier Mapping step appears after you select a subscription plugin. Changes save when you press Continue. If you’re not ready, use the Skip link (“I’ll configure this in Settings.”) — a dashboard tip will prompt you to return.
• After setup — go to Benecaster → Settings → Subscription.

The tier mapping table appears below the bridge picker once a bridge is connected. The left column lists every subscription level (or plan, or product) from your membership plugin. The right column has a dropdown for each level.

The dropdown for each level contains:

• No access — Explicitly excludes this level from podcast feed access. Use this for levels that are intentionally not related to podcast subscriptions (e.g. a newsletter-only tier). Subscribers at a “No access” level get an empty feed.
• Free and Paid — Benecaster’s built-in tiers.
• Any custom tiers you’ve created for this show.

New levels default to Paid until you change them. If a level should not grant podcast access, set it explicitly to No access — this makes your intent clear and prevents accidental feed access if a subscriber joins that level.

Multiple levels can map to the same tier — useful when you have monthly and annual billing variants of the same access level.

Click Save when your mapping is complete.

Creating Tiers Inline

You don’t need to leave this screen to create a new Benecaster tier. Use the Add tier field at the bottom of the right column: type a name and press Enter. The new tier is immediately available in all dropdowns on this screen and in episode availability settings across the show.

What “Tier” Means in Benecaster

A Benecaster tier is an access level you define for a show. Each tier determines which episodes a subscriber can see, based on the availability dates you set on each episode.

Tiers can be created inline during tier mapping (see above) or in the show’s settings. Common setups:

Tier name	Tier slug	Who gets it
Free	free	Public subscribers with no paid membership
Silver	silver	Entry-level paid subscribers
Gold	gold	Premium paid subscribers
Founding Member	founding-member	Legacy or grandfathered subscribers

You don’t need to use these names — use whatever reflects your actual tiers.

Common Configurations

Single tier (all paid subscribers see everything)
Map all your paid membership levels to one tier. Keep it simple. Most podcasters starting out use this.

Two tiers (free + paid)
Map no levels to free — the free tier is for unauthenticated public access. Map all paid levels to a single paid tier.

Multiple paid tiers with early access
Map your premium level to gold and your standard level to silver. Set episode availability dates so Gold subscribers get access two weeks before Silver.

Monthly and annual versions of the same tier
Map “Gold Monthly” and “Gold Annual” both to the gold tier. They get identical episode access — the distinction between monthly and annual is your membership plugin’s concern, not Benecaster’s.

What Happens When Mapping Changes

If you add a new membership level, it won’t appear in the tier map until you visit Tier Mapping and save. In the meantime, subscribers at that level get empty feeds.

If you change a mapping — for example, moving “Silver” subscribers from the silver tier to the gold tier — existing subscribers at that level immediately get the new tier’s feed access on their next podcast app poll. No token regeneration is needed.

If you remove a tier entirely from your show settings while subscribers are still mapped to it, those subscribers get empty feeds until you create a replacement tier or remap them.

Warnings and Notices

Stale Bridge Warning

If you switch to a different membership plugin, an amber warning banner appears at the top of the tier mapping table. It means your saved mappings reference levels from a different plugin than the one currently connected — the level names shown may no longer be accurate.

Re-save the mapping to clear the warning. Benecaster will replace the old rows with the current plugin’s levels and your new assignments.

Orphaned Level Notice

If a membership level that was previously mapped has since been deleted from your membership plugin, a blue info banner lists the affected levels by name. Their mappings will be removed automatically when you next save — you don’t need to do anything to clean them up, but you should verify that no active subscribers were using those levels before saving.

Troubleshooting

Subscriber gets an empty feed even though their membership is active:
Check that their membership level is mapped. Go to Tier Mapping and verify. Also verify the subscriber’s level name exactly — look-alike names (“Gold” vs “Gold Annual”) are easy to miss.

Subscriber sees the wrong episodes:
A tier mismatch in the mapping. Check which tier their level maps to, and verify the availability dates on the episodes they expect to see.

Newly created membership level doesn’t appear in the mapping screen:
Visit Tier Mapping and click Refresh Levels. Some membership plugins require Benecaster to re-query available levels after new ones are added.

See Feed Showing Wrong Episodes and Subscription Plugin Not Connecting for additional troubleshooting steps.