Migrating from Patreon

Moving from Patreon to Benecaster happens in two distinct stages. The first stage — uploading your Patreon patron list — is free and available to all Benecaster accounts, and you can do it before making any migration decision. The second stage — actively moving your subscribers — is what the Migration Wizard handles.

Stage 1: Start Your Scorecard

Upload your Patreon patron export to see your full supporter picture in one place: your Patreon patrons alongside your Benecaster subscribers in a single dashboard view.

Nothing migrates at this stage. Your patrons remain on Patreon. No accounts are created, no emails are sent, no feed access is granted. You’re building a scorecard — a clear picture of who’s on each platform before you decide what to do next.

To upload your patron list:

1. Log in to Patreon and go to Patron Manager → Export
2. Export your patron list as a CSV
3. In your WordPress admin, go to Benecaster → Subscribers → Patreon
4. Upload the CSV

Your Patreon patrons appear in the subscriber dashboard labelled Patreon (unlinked). The total count shows your combined Benecaster and Patreon supporter base.

Patreon Data Retention

Benecaster stores your Patreon patron data for 90 days from the date of upload.

• Days 60–89 (amber warning): An amber banner appears below the patron count in the Patreon section: “Your Patreon scorecard data expires in X days — upload a current Patreon export before it expires.”
• Day 90+ (red expired banner): The amber warning is replaced by a red banner: “Your Patreon scorecard has expired — re-upload your current Patreon export to refresh it.”

What happens when data expires: Patron records that haven’t been converted to active Benecaster subscribers are removed from the system. Your Benecaster subscribers are unaffected.

If you decide to migrate after data has expired: Re-upload a fresh Patreon export. The new upload deduplicates automatically — any patron who has already joined Benecaster since your last upload will be recognized and won’t be treated as a migration target.

Why 90 days: Patron data includes names and email addresses. Storing it indefinitely when it may never be used for a migration is unnecessary. The 90-day window is long enough for most podcasters to decide whether to proceed; if you need more time, re-uploading a current export resets the clock and ensures your data reflects your current patron base.

Stage 2: Migrate Your Subscribers (Migration Wizard)

When you’re ready to actively move your Patreon subscribers to Benecaster, the Migration Wizard runs the campaign: invitation emails, grace period access, funnel tracking, and re-send capability for non-completers.

The Migration Wizard is included free with Growth, Pro, Multi-Show, and Studio plans. Starter users can purchase it separately as a one-time add-on.

See Migration Overview for the full walkthrough.

Keeping a Patron’s Original Join Date

Tenure badges are calculated from when a subscriber’s access started on Benecaster, so a patron of four years would otherwise arrive labelled a 1-Month Member.

Adding a patron by hand carries their date across. On Benecaster → Subscribers → Add subscriber manually there is an optional Supporter since field — enter the date that patron first started backing you and their badge reflects the years they have already given you. Dates in the future, or before 2004, are refused, and nothing is created when one is.

Your Patreon export holds that date, but the column’s name depends on when the export was generated — it has appeared as Join Date, Patron Since and Patronage Since Date. Look for whichever of those your file has rather than a specific one.

The Migration Wizard does not carry join dates yet. Patrons moved through the wizard’s campaign start their tenure on the day they complete migration. If tenure matters to you and your patron list is short, adding those supporters by hand is currently the only way to preserve it.

See Subscriber Tenure Badges for how the badge itself works.

Before You Migrate: Audio Hosting

If your episode audio files are hosted directly on Patreon, you must move them to a podcast hosting provider before migrating subscribers. Benecaster does not host audio — it points your RSS feed at audio URLs from your hosting provider.

A subscriber who completes migration but can’t access audio because it’s still on Patreon will have a broken feed from day one.

See Moving Audio Files Off Patreon for guidance.

Explicit-Content Field

Patreon exports carry no explicit-content field, so there is nothing for Benecaster to import. Every imported episode is left on Inherit from show, which means each one takes whatever your show’s Explicit setting says.

Benecaster deliberately does not guess here. Marking imported episodes “clean” because the source was silent would be inventing a fact, and on a show you had marked explicit it would quietly override every episode in your back catalogue the wrong way.

So check the show-level Explicit value before you publish. Set it in Shows → Settings → Feeds — it is the value your whole imported catalogue will report to Apple Podcasts and every other directory. If most of your show is explicit and a handful of episodes are not, set the show to Yes and mark those few episodes No individually afterwards.

See Show Settings and Creating Episodes.