benecaster_license_free_threshold_warning
Fires when a site’s paying subscriber count reaches 80% of its plan’s paying-subscriber limit. At most once per calendar month, however many daily validation cycles run. The built-in admin notice fires independently.
This hook changed meaning on 2026-08-29 without its signature changing, so an existing callback still runs and still receives one int — but the moment it fires has moved. It previously fired at a hardcoded 8 subscribers. The threshold is now derived from the plan’s own limit, which is pricing-server data: 8 on Launch (80% of 10) as before, but 40 on Starter, 200 on Growth, and never on a plan with no subscriber limit. If your callback assumed “8 means nearly at 10”, it is now wrong on every paid plan.
It is a notice cadence, not a plan-change signal, and the old documentation implied otherwise. Nothing about this hook tracks or predicts an upgrade. Plan changes are decided by the licence server on a 30-day rolling window the plugin cannot see, so this firing tells you nothing about whether or when a plan will move. Do not build an “upgrade is coming” notification on it.
The licence server sends the customer-facing threshold email. This hook exists so a podcaster can render their own in-plugin response alongside it — an admin notice, or a ping into external monitoring.
Parameters
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
$count |
int |
— | Current paying subscriber count at time of validation |
Examples
Log threshold warning to error log
add_action( 'benecaster_license_free_threshold_warning', function( int $count ): void {
error_log( sprintf(
'[Benecaster] Launch plan threshold warning: %d paying subscribers on %s',
$count,
home_url()
) );
} );Need this built rather than just documented? See our services →