Sharing Anonymous Usage Data (Telemetry)

Benecaster can send a small anonymous usage payload to the license server during its daily check-in. It exists so feature decisions are based on how Benecaster is actually used rather than on guesswork — which formats people publish in, how large libraries get, which add-ons earn their place. Sharing is entirely voluntary. Both telemetry options default to off, and you are never opted in without doing it yourself.

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What’s Shared When You Opt In

Aggregate numbers about your setup. Nothing that identifies a person, and nothing you’ve written.

• Episode counts, average episode duration, and total content hours
• Show age — days since your first published episode
• Show count and whether the setup wizard was completed
• Active add-ons — which are installed, by slug
• Membership bridge — which membership plugin gates your paid feeds, by slug only (memberpress, woocommerce-subscriptions, paid-memberships-pro, restrict-content-pro, or benecaster-builtin). NullBridge shows are excluded
• Web player play counts — an aggregate total, with no subscriber identity attached
• Tier breakdown — subscriber counts per tier, by tier slug only

If you use the Transcription add-on, a further block reports how many minutes were transcribed, which import methods were used, and how much editing transcripts receive. Transcript content is never included.

For the exhaustive field-by-field table, including exact value types, see Privacy and GDPR → Telemetry to the License Server.

What’s Never Shared

None of the following is transmitted, whether or not you opt in:

• Subscriber identities — names, email addresses, or user IDs
• Subscriber IP addresses
• Episode titles, transcripts, or any content from your episodes
• Feed URLs or tokens
• Revenue amounts — unless you separately enable the MRR option below

There is no mechanism in the payload for any of it. Opting in shares counts and durations, not records.

What is sent either way. The daily license validation call carries a minimum payload regardless of this setting: your license key, site URL, plugin and WordPress versions, and your telemetry opt-in status. Privacy and GDPR has the full always-sent list.

Estimated MRR

A second, separate checkbox adds one more figure: an estimated monthly recurring revenue number.

How it’s calculated. Benecaster multiplies your active subscriber count in each tier by the price configured for that tier in your membership plugin, then sums across every tier and show. That’s the whole calculation.

It’s an estimate, and a rough one. It doesn’t account for annual billing, trial periods, discounts or coupons, or failed and lapsed payments. A site with a lot of annual subscribers will report a figure some way off its real monthly revenue. Benecaster flags the value as an estimate when it sends it.

No payment processor is involved. Benecaster never contacts Stripe or your membership plugin’s billing records for this — it uses subscriber counts and tier prices it already has.

It depends on base telemetry. The MRR checkbox stays disabled until you’ve enabled the main telemetry option. If you later switch base telemetry off, the revenue flag is cleared automatically on the server — you don’t need to untick it separately.

Turning Telemetry On or Off

1. Go to Benecaster → Settings → Account.
2. Scroll past the Shows portfolio panel to the Telemetry section.
3. Tick or untick Share anonymous usage data.
4. Optionally tick Also share an estimated monthly recurring revenue (MRR) figure — available only once the first box is ticked.

Changes save the moment you click. There’s no confirmation dialog and no Save button — a brief confirmation appears next to the checkbox for a couple of seconds, then clears. Switching telemetry off takes effect on the next daily check-in.

The Telemetry section only appears when a license is active.

Related Pages

• The Account Panel — the rest of the Account tab, including license status and your shows portfolio, with the telemetry toggles in the context of the screen they live on.
• Privacy and GDPR — the complete telemetry field tables, plus how Benecaster handles subscriber data, GeoIP, and data export and erasure requests.
• Settings Reference — every setting across all tabs, if you’re looking for something other than telemetry.