Quick Start Guide
Benecaster is a WordPress-native podcast platform with per-tier private RSS feeds — your site, your subscribers, your feed. No Patreon, no platform fees, no giving up ownership of your audience.
Your subscribers sign up and pay through your existing membership plugin (MemberPress, WooCommerce, and others are supported). Benecaster generates a unique private RSS feed URL for each subscriber. They add that URL to their podcast app and get only the episodes their tier gives them access to. Your audio files stay at your existing podcast host — Benecaster only controls who can see the feed.
What You Need
Before setting up, make sure you have:
- A WordPress site running PHP 8.2+ and WordPress 6.4+ — full requirements
- A Benecaster account on benecaster.com — free tier is fine. You’ll download the plugin and manage your connected sites from the Benecaster Customer Dashboard.
- One of the supported membership plugins already installed: MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro
- Your episode audio already hosted somewhere (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Podbean, S3, etc.)
Steps to Go Live
1. Install and Activate Benecaster
Log in to your Benecaster Customer Dashboard on benecaster.com and download the Benecaster plugin from the Downloads panel, then install it through your WordPress admin. Full instructions: Installing Benecaster.
2. Run the Setup Wizard
The setup wizard launches automatically after activation. It walks you through creating your first show (name, description, artwork, category), connecting your membership plugin, mapping tiers, connecting the show to your Benecaster.com account, and optionally importing existing episodes. Takes about 10 minutes. The connect step redirects you to benecaster.com to authorize the site — see Connecting Your Site to Benecaster for details.
The wizard saves progress at each step — if you close it early, a Resume setup notice appears on the Benecaster dashboard and picks up at the last incomplete step next time you log in. Any optional steps you skip appear as dashboard tips, each linking back to that wizard step when you’re ready to complete it. Setup Wizard Walkthrough.
3. Create Your First Episode
Add episodes using the Benecaster episode editor. You’ll set the audio URL, episode metadata, and which tier gets access and when. Creating and Editing Episodes.
4. Test Your Feed
Before announcing to subscribers, test the feed URL yourself. Subscribe to your own show using a personal token — your feed should return the episodes you expect. How Tokens Work.
5. Invite Subscribers
When a subscriber signs up through your membership plugin, Benecaster automatically generates their token and sends a welcome email with their private RSS feed URL. They add it to their podcast app and they’re in.
How the Feed Works
Each subscriber gets a unique URL like:
https://yoursite.com/podcast-feed/?token=abc123...
When their podcast app polls that URL, Benecaster validates the token, looks up their current membership tier, and returns only the episodes they have access to. If their subscription lapses, their feed stops updating — they don’t lose episodes they already downloaded, but they won’t receive new ones.
The token is the gate. Without it, the feed returns nothing.
The Free Tier
The free Benecaster plan supports up to 10 paying subscribers with all premium features included — no time limit, no feature restrictions. It’s designed to let you get fully set up and serve early subscribers before paying for the plugin. When you cross 10 subscribers, you’ll receive a warning in advance and your plan bumps to Starter ($9/month) at your next billing period.
