Analytics Overview

Benecaster tracks your audience in three layers: the Benecaster dashboard (always on), the optional download proxy, and platform benchmarks (available when you opt into telemetry). An Analytics Dashboard add-on adds deeper charts and trends on top of all three.

Benecaster Dashboard Analytics

The Benecaster dashboard shows the numbers you need most without any configuration:

Active subscriber count with monthly growth/churn delta
90-day subscriber sparkline — daily snapshots of your total active audience
Tier breakdown — active, new, and churned subscribers per tier for the last 30 days
Estimated monthly revenue — active subscribers × tier prices from your membership plugin

These are available on all plans, including free. See Dashboard Overview for a full walkthrough of every panel.

Download Tracking

The download proxy logs every feed request with the podcast app, episode, subscriber tier, date, and approximate location (country and region — see Privacy below). No audio content passes through WordPress — the proxy logs the request and immediately redirects to your hosted file.

Download tracking is off by default and available on all plans including free. There is no install-wide switch — it is a per-show default (Details → Show Flags → Enable download tracking), with a per-episode override in the Media tab (Inherit from show / Force on / Force off) for the cases where one episode should behave differently from the rest of its show. Turn it on for a single show and leave the rest alone, or turn it on show-wide and force it off for a handful of episodes — either direction works.

Two things worth knowing before you turn it on:

Range requests are recorded separately from full downloads. Podcast apps routinely request a slice of a file when a listener seeks, and counting those as downloads inflates your numbers. Benecaster keeps them distinguishable.
Raw records don’t accumulate forever, even at the “Forever” retention setting. Every night, download rows older than 30 days are automatically summarized into permanent daily counts (by episode, tier, and app) and the detailed originals are removed — your download counts stay accurate from the summary, and the raw table stops growing. The retention window at Settings → Tools → Analytics Data still applies to the two other tables in that panel (subscriber events, daily snapshots), which are not summarized this way and do grow with the window you choose.

See Download Tracking for full setup instructions.

Subscriber Events

Benecaster records a subscriber event each time a subscriber’s status changes. These events power the tier breakdown on the dashboard and feed the Analytics Dashboard add-on’s growth and churn charts.

Event	When it fires
Joined	A new subscriber token is created
Upgraded	Subscriber moves to a higher tier
Downgraded	Subscriber moves to a lower tier
Churned	Subscription ends or token is revoked
Reactivated	A previously churned subscriber rejoins
Donated	A Listener Support donation is recorded

Events are recorded locally in your WordPress database and are not transmitted to Benecaster’s servers unless you opt into telemetry.

Privacy and Telemetry

Benecaster’s telemetry is opt-in and built around one rule: individual subscribers are never identifiable in any data sent to Benecaster’s servers. The data that leaves your site is always aggregate statistics.

What is always sent

A small set of software metadata is included in the daily license validation ping regardless of opt-in settings. This is not subscriber data — it is version and configuration information:

Plugin version
Show count

Base telemetry opt-in

When you opt in at Settings → Privacy → Share usage data, Benecaster adds subscriber and engagement statistics to the daily ping:

Active subscriber count by tier
Churn rate (cancellations as a percentage of active subscribers)
Subscriber tenure distribution in buckets (0–30 days, 31–90 days, 91–365 days, 365 days+)
Geographic audience distribution by country and region — transmitted as totals, not per-subscriber records (e.g. US: TX: 45, CA: 32)
Episode counts and average duration
Whether the setup wizard was completed
Which membership plugin gates your paid feeds (MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, etc.), by slug only
Which add-ons your license includes, by slug
Which of those add-ons you use: switched on for at least one show, by slug
Which Benecaster add-on plugins are installed and active, and which are installed but deactivated, by slug, read from your Plugins screen whatever your license includes

When the download proxy is also enabled:

Listening patterns by hour-of-day and day-of-week (aggregate distribution)
Podcast app breakdown (aggregate percentages)
Average episode reach rate

Revenue telemetry opt-in

Revenue data is behind a second, separate opt-in because it is more sensitive than subscriber counts. When you enable Share estimated revenue in Settings → Privacy, Benecaster additionally sends:

Estimated MRR in cents — calculated from bridge tier prices × active subscriber counts per tier

This is an estimate, not actual revenue, and is labeled as such everywhere it appears. It does not account for annual billing mix, trials, failed payments, or discounts.

IP addresses

Raw IP addresses are never stored. When a feed request or download arrives, the IP is looked up against a locally-installed geographic database to extract a country code and region code (US state, Canadian province, etc.), then immediately discarded. Only the country and region codes are stored — no city, postal code, or precise location.

Platform Benchmarks

When at least one of your shows is connected to benecaster.com and telemetry is enabled, the dashboard shows how your show compares to other Benecaster-powered podcasts:

“Your churn rate (3.2%) is below the platform median (5.8%)”

Benchmarks are fetched from Benecaster’s license server and only returned when at least 10 other qualifying sites contribute data to that metric — a privacy floor that prevents any individual show from being identifiable in the aggregate.

If no show on your site is connected, or telemetry is off, or not enough qualifying sites exist yet, the benchmark panel is silently absent, with no error. Once it is showing, it also has two share sections, Membership plugins in use and Add-ons switched on, which list the share of participating sites using each plugin or add-on. Those two read “Not enough data yet.” when fewer than 10 sites have reported, instead of disappearing.

The Analytics Screen

Benecaster → Analytics shows something different depending on the show selected at the top of the screen:

With the Analytics Dashboard add-on running for that show, the add-on fills the whole screen with its charts.
Without it, you see the same 90-day subscriber growth chart as the Dashboard, plus one card:
- Get deeper insights with Analytics Dashboard — what the add-on adds, with Learn more → and Get Analytics →, which opens Settings → Add-ons. While the add-on isn’t released yet the card says Coming soon instead.
- Analytics Dashboard is not running for this show — your license includes it for this show, but it’s switched off here or not installed yet. Go to Add-ons → takes you to switch it on.
- Analytics Dashboard is not licensed for this show — your license no longer includes it. Your analytics history is safe: Benecaster keeps recording it, and renewing brings your full charts back. The card offers Renew Analytics Dashboard → and Go to Add-ons →.
If the add-on is running on another of your shows, either of the last two cards also says Analytics Dashboard is running on another of your shows: (or …on other shows of yours:) with a Switch to {show name} button for each. The button selects that show in the show switcher and keeps you on this screen. Running means that show’s license includes the add-on and it’s switched on and installed there.

Analytics Dashboard Add-on

The Analytics Dashboard add-on ($79/year) extends the Benecaster charts into a full analytics interface:

Subscriber growth over time with adjustable date ranges
Detailed churn and reactivation analysis
Per-episode download counts and app breakdown
Geographic audience map
Cohort analysis — how subscriber groups perform over time
Platform benchmarks surfaced in context with your own data
CSV export

The add-on reads the same locally-stored data that the Benecaster dashboard uses — there is nothing extra to configure. If you purchase it after your show has been running, it has full historical data from day one.

See the Analytics Dashboard page for pricing and availability.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`wordpress_logged_in_*`	Benecaster	Keeps you signed in to your Benecaster account.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wordpress_sec_*`	Benecaster	Secures your signed-in session over HTTPS.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wp-settings-*`	Benecaster	Remembers your admin screen preferences.	One year.
`benecaster_ls_purchase_sign_in`	Benecaster	Signs you in to your new account on the page you bought from, once your purchase has gone through.	Thirty minutes, or until you are signed in.
`benecaster_ls_cookie_consent`	Benecaster	Remembers the choice you make on this banner, so we do not ask again.	One year.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`__stripe_mid`	Stripe	Lets Stripe recognise the device across payment attempts to detect card fraud.	One year.
`__stripe_sid`	Stripe	The same fraud check, for the current visit only.	Thirty minutes.