Show Limits and Multi-Site Use

Your plan sets one limit that matters: how many active shows you can run.

Where those shows live is up to you. Benecaster does not charge by the WordPress installation. Three shows on Multi-Show can sit together on one site, or on three separate sites at three separate domains, or any arrangement in between — it costs you the same either way. See Running Multiple Shows for the ways three shows can be laid out.

A staging copy does not count when benecaster.com recognises its address as staging, or support marks it as staging. Then you can develop against a staging site without spending an activation — see Setting up a staging site. Staging mode in the plugin doesn’t decide it: a site in staging mode at an address benecaster.com doesn’t recognise uses a slot.

If a staging site of yours is being counted, contact support and we will fix it. Recognition works from your staging site’s address, and an address that carries none of the usual markers is not something we can spot. There is no setting for this on your side — the fix is ours to make, and it is quick. See Staging Site Counted Against Your Show Limit.

Reaching Your Show Limit

When every show slot on your plan is occupied, the Add Show button is disabled and any attempt to create a show is blocked immediately, with an upgrade prompt.

There is no grace period and no 80% warning, unlike the subscriber and token limits. The block is a hard gate at the moment you try to create the show, and nothing about your existing shows changes.

Unarchiving is gated the same way, and it is checked against the license server rather than against cached plan data — so a slot that looks free locally is still refused if the server disagrees.

Archiving or deleting a show frees its slot. The limit counts active shows, not shows you have ever created; an archived show does not count. A podcaster who retires Show A can create Show B without upgrading — the Add Show button is available again as soon as Show A is archived.

Going Over Your Show Limit

This is a different situation from reaching the limit, and it is the one that affects shows you already have.

Benecaster disables the excess shows, newest first. If you are running five shows on a plan that allows three, the two most recently created are disabled. The choice is by creation date, not by size or activity.

Partial recovery follows the same order. Upgrade from a 1-show plan to Multi-Show (3 shows) while four shows are disabled: the two oldest of the four come back, and the two newest stay disabled. The newest show is always the last to return.

A disabled show’s feeds return an error. Both the public feed and every private subscriber feed for that show stop serving, with an XML comment reading “This podcast feed is temporarily unavailable while the site owner is over their plan’s show limit.” Listeners’ podcast apps report the feed as gone or unavailable.

This affects the public feed too, which sets it apart from every subscriber-limit consequence. Going over your subscriber limit or token cap never touches your public feed; going over your show limit takes the whole show off the air.

The show is hidden from your site’s public listings — show archives and listing pages stop displaying it. It stays visible in the admin Shows portfolio, marked with a Disabled pill.

Nothing is deleted. The show, its episodes, its subscribers and their tokens are all intact. Disabling is a metadata flag on the show’s post record, and it is fully reversible. The feeds are switched off, not the data.

You cannot create a new show while over the limit. Creating one would push the site further over, so it is blocked until you restore capacity. The REST API returns 403 show_limit_exceeded for this — distinct from 403 show_limit_reached, which is the ordinary at-capacity refusal when you are at your limit rather than over it. See Troubleshooting Shows for both codes.

It reverses on its own. Restore capacity — upgrade your plan, or archive another show — and the disabled show comes back at the next license check, which runs daily. It does not come back the instant you archive. No feed URL changes and no subscriber has to do anything. To check straight away, go to Settings → Tools → License and click Run license check now.

Which Limit Am I Hitting?

Shows You Own and Operate

Every show running under your license must be a podcast operation you run yourself. This is not a Multi-Show and Studio rule — it applies on every plan, including the free tier.

Not permitted:

• Running a show for a client as part of a freelance or agency engagement
• Sharing your benecaster.com account so another podcaster can connect their own show
• Reselling or sublicensing activation slots

If you are a developer or agency setting up Benecaster for a client, the license needs to be bought under the client’s own benecaster.com account — so that they own their subscriber data, their feeds, and their license relationship independently of their engagement with you. There is no reseller or volume licensing at this time.

If third-party use is confirmed, the whole license is terminated — every activation under it, not just the offending slot, with no refund. That includes the shows that are legitimately yours.

The full terms are in Section 7 of the Terms of Service.

Raising Your Limits

Upgrade at benecaster.com/shop/plans/ — Multi-Show for up to three shows, or Studio for no show limit at all. Disabled shows are re-enabled at the next validation after the upgrade lands.