Automated Emails
This is the complete list of emails Benecaster sends on its own, what triggers each one, and who receives it. Emails Overview covers the three you’ll see most often in more depth; this page is the full catalog.
Most of these are sent by your own site, through your own SMTP connection — see SMTP Setup. A few come from benecaster.com instead, and those are listed separately at the end.
Subscriber Emails
These go to your subscribers. All of them are transactional — they’re sent because of something that happened to that person’s account, not as marketing.
| Sent when | Can be turned off | |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | A subscriber’s feed token is generated for the first time. Contains their private feed URL. | Per show |
| Token reset | You reset a subscriber’s feed token and choose Reset and send email (single or bulk). Contains the new URL and tells the subscriber to remove the podcast from their app and add it again. It closes with a short Why did this happen? note: the show replaces a feed link when it may have been seen by someone it wasn’t meant for, their subscription hasn’t changed, and who to contact (your Author Email, or the site admin address if that’s blank). The note is there because this email only ever follows a reset you made, so the subscriber didn’t ask for it. A subscriber who resets their own link sees the new URL on their account page instead, so no email is sent. | Per show |
| Feed Link | You click Email link on a subscriber’s detail panel. Re-sends the URL they already have; nothing is reset and their app keeps working. | Always sent when you ask |
| Tier change | A subscriber moves between tiers — upgrade, downgrade, an admin change, or a plan change they scheduled taking effect. An upgrade from the account page sends it once the payment succeeds. | Per show |
| Donation thank-you | A listener logs a Listener Support donation. Only sent when a donor email address is available. | Per show (off by default) |
| Manual grant expired | Admin-comped access reaches its expiry date. Dispatched by the hourly manual-grant expiry cron. | — |
The welcome and token reset emails are the two that carry feed URLs automatically (Feed Link carries one too, but only when you send it), which makes them the ones worth protecting. If a subscriber says they never got their feed, that’s almost always one of these two — see Emails Not Sending.
They don’t arrive at the same speed on a new site. Welcome emails go through the paced queue, and while your sending address is still warming up, Benecaster sends only a limited number a day. After a migration, a batch of welcome emails can take several days on plain host mail. Token reset emails skip the queue and the warm-up, so a reset reaches its subscriber within seconds. So do password resets, security alerts and anything sent to a site admin. Settings → Email → Sending Warm-up shows today’s limit, and Why a New Domain Should Send Email Slowly explains why it’s there.
Built-in Membership Emails
These only apply when you’re using Benecaster’s built-in membership rather than a third-party membership plugin. On a show that uses MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro or Restrict Content Pro, that plugin sends its own billing emails and Benecaster sends none of these, Payment failed and Subscription cancelled included.
| Sent when | Can be turned off | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription receipt | Each successful payment. | Per show |
| Renewal reminder | A configurable number of days before the billing period ends (default 7). | Per show |
| Payment failed | Once, on the first failed renewal attempt — not on every retry. | Per show |
| Cancellation confirmation | Immediately when a subscriber requests cancellation. | Per show |
| Subscription cancelled | At terminal cancellation — the billing period ended or all retries were exhausted. | Per show |
| Price change notice | As soon as a tier or buy-up price change with Move is saved — the notice itself, to every subscriber it applies to. | — |
| Price change reminder | Optional, a configurable number of days before a subscriber’s first renewal at the new price. | Per show (off by default) |
| Price change cancelled | A pending price change is cancelled before its notice period ends. | — |
| Billing change scheduled | Once, when a subscriber schedules a self-service switch to another billing period of their tier. Transactional. | — |
| Plan change scheduled | Once, when a subscriber schedules a move down, or to a tier at the same price. The Tier change email follows when the move lands at their renewal, so one move sends both, by design. Not sent for an upgrade, which takes effect at once. Transactional. | — |
| Move to free plan scheduled | Once, when a subscriber chooses your free plan instead of paying. Confirms the date their paid plan ends, that they won’t be charged again, that they stay a member with the same feed address, and that extras they pay for end then too. The Tier change email follows when the move lands; Subscription cancelled is never sent for it, because they haven’t left. Transactional. | — |
See Billing Emails for what these contain.
Promote to a Membership Plugin Emails
These go to subscribers you moved from built-in membership to a membership plugin with Promote, while they have a grace period to pay again through that plugin.
| Sent when | Can be turned off | |
|---|---|---|
| Promote grace reminder | 6–8 days before a promoted subscriber’s token expires. Its Re-enter payment details button opens the membership plugin’s signup page for their level. | — |
| Promote grace expired | A promoted subscriber’s grace period ends and their token is revoked. Its Resubscribe button opens the same signup page. | — |
Both buttons use the signup page confirmed under Show Settings → Subscription → Signup pages, or the one Benecaster suggests from the plugin’s settings. With no signup page for the subscriber’s level, the button opens the show page instead, labelled Visit the show page. See Promote to Bridge — Grace Period.
Account Provisioning Emails
These support follower signup and accounts created for subscribers, plus one account-identity step outside signup. They don’t have a per-show on/off toggle — turning them off isn’t supported, since each one is the only way that step completes.
| Sent when | |
|---|---|
| New account — set password | A WordPress account is created for a subscriber rather than by them: bulk enrollment, a subscriber you add by hand, or a donation that signs the donor up. Contains a single-use link to set their password. Not sent for [benecaster_subscribe] signups, where the subscriber chooses a password on the form. |
| Already following | Someone submits the follower signup form with an address that already follows the show. |
| Follower — confirm signup | The double opt-in step of a new follower signup, sent before a token is created. |
| Email verification | A subscriber changes their email address on the account page. Goes to the new address with a single-use link that promotes it; the old address stays active until the link is clicked. |
Data Request Emails
These go out when someone asks for their personal details to be removed. There is one today: a Listener Support donor can ask for their details to be taken off their donations, and this email checks the request really came from them. The link works once and expires after 24 hours. Following it removes the donor’s name, email address and message from every donation made with that address; the donation amounts stay in your records.
| Sent when | |
|---|---|
| Donor data erasure — confirm | A donor asks for their details to be removed from their donations. The link confirms the request before anything is removed. |
Payment-failure emails about your own Benecaster plan are not sent from your site — see below.
Add-on Emails
These require an add-on. They aren’t sent, and don’t appear in your email settings, unless the add-on is active.
| Add-on | |
|---|---|
| Episode notification — a subscriber is told an episode is now available to their tier | Email Editor |
| Broadcast — a one-off message you compose and send to selected tiers | Email Editor |
| Analytics digest — daily, weekly, and monthly summaries | Analytics Dashboard |
Broadcasts are the only email in this entire catalog that is marketing rather than transactional, which is why they’re the only ones affected by unsubscribe preferences. See Unsubscribes.
Telling Subscribers About a New Episode Without Email Editor
Without Email Editor, Benecaster sends no episode emails. Subscribers still hear about new episodes in two ways:
-
Their podcast app. A private feed is an ordinary podcast feed, so the app picks up each episode when it becomes available to the subscriber’s tier and shows it the way it shows a new episode of any other podcast they follow.
-
An email you send yourself. Settings → Your Data exports a Subscribers sheet with each subscriber’s name, email address, tier and status. Keep the active subscribers on the tiers you want and send from your own email service. The export doesn’t carry anyone’s unsubscribe preference, so use your service’s own unsubscribe link and honour it. See Exporting Your Data.
Email Marketing Integrations, a free add-on that is coming soon, will keep a list in your email platform tagged by tier and up to date, so you won’t need the export.
Emails Benecaster Sends You From benecaster.com
Some emails come from Benecaster directly rather than from your WordPress site. These are dispatched by benecaster.com against your account, so they don’t pass through your SMTP connection, don’t appear in your email queue, aren’t affected by the sending warm-up, and can’t be customized with templates or filters.
| Sent when | |
|---|---|
| Threshold warning | You’re approaching your plan’s subscriber limit. |
| Threshold crossed | You’ve passed the limit. |
| Plan changed | Your plan was upgraded or changed. |
| Downgrade available | Your subscriber count has been low enough, long enough, to move down a plan. |
| Payment failed | A renewal payment fails — opens the grace window. |
| Payment reminders | Day 10, day 20, and day 29 of that grace window, escalating as the deadline nears. |
| Access restored | Payment succeeds after the grace window has already expired and access was cut off. |
Turning Emails Off
Per-show toggles live on Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Subscription, in two sections: Welcome and Feed URL Emails (Welcome email, Feed URL reset email, Tier change email — appears under every membership plugin) and, below it, Subscriber Billing Emails (the five billing-related emails) — which appears only when the show’s membership plugin is Built-in Membership, hidden under MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, Restrict Content Pro, or with no plugin selected, since those payment processors send their own billing emails. Turning an email off stops it for that show only — other shows on the same installation are unaffected. The tab shows a yellow note while the welcome or reset email is switched off, as a reminder that it’s stopping something.
Followers always get their welcome email, whatever the show’s Welcome email switch says (operator ruling) — it’s their only route to their feed URL, since there’s no billing relationship behind which it could reach them another way.
Be careful with the welcome and token reset emails. They’re the delivery mechanism for feed URLs, so disabling them means taking on the job of getting URLs to subscribers yourself. Turn them off only if you have a deliberate replacement in place.
For finer control than an on/off switch — suppressing an email for certain subscribers, or sending it through a different service — use the benecaster_email_should_send filter described in Customizing Emails.
See Also
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