Setting Up Early Access Tiers

Early access is the most common paid podcast model: subscribers hear each episode first, everyone else hears it after a delay. This walkthrough sets that up end to end.

The mechanism is availability scheduling — one publish, different release dates per tier, one feed URL per subscriber that always reflects what they’re entitled to. Tier Availability is the reference; this is the practical path.

What You’re Building

One show, two tiers:

• Premium — paying subscribers, episodes available immediately
• Free — everyone else, episodes available seven days later

Nothing about this requires two feeds or two shows. Each subscriber has one URL, and Benecaster serves whichever episodes their tier can currently access.

Step 1: Set Up Your Tiers

Early access needs at least two tiers to stagger between. If your paying tier is handled by a membership plugin, connect that first and map it — see Tier Mapping.

A free tier is worth having even if it feels counterintuitive. It’s what lets people subscribe to the delayed feed, which is your main conversion path: someone listening a week behind, seeing every episode arrive late, has a standing reason to upgrade.

Step 2: Set Show Defaults

Go to your show’s availability settings and set the default offset per tier:

These are defaults applied to every new episode, so you configure the pattern once rather than per episode.

Step 3: Publish an Episode and Check It

Publish a test episode and confirm both sides:

• The episode appears immediately in a Premium subscriber’s feed
• It does not appear in a Free subscriber’s feed until the offset elapses

The quickest check is the episode’s availability panel, which shows the resolved date per tier. If Free shows a date seven days out, it’s working.

Choosing the Delay

The delay is the entire value proposition of the paid tier, so it’s worth thinking about rather than defaulting.

Match it to your publishing rhythm. For a weekly show, seven days means free listeners are always exactly one episode behind — a delay they feel constantly. For a daily show, seven days is punishing; two or three is plenty.

Shorter than you think still works. Even 24–48 hours creates a real reason to subscribe for an engaged audience, and generates far less resentment than a long wait.

Consistency matters more than length. An unpredictable delay reads as disorganised. A dependable one reads as a policy.

Variations

A specific episode released to everyone at once — override the Free tier’s date on that episode to match the publish date. Useful for a trailer, a season opener, or anything you want to reach as many people as possible.

Premium-only bonus episodes — set the Free tier to “Never” on that episode. It never appears in the free feed at all. Worth using sparingly: exclusive content is a stronger hook than early access, but too much of it turns the free feed into an advert.

Three tiers — add a middle tier at, say, three days. Whether that converts better than two tiers is worth testing rather than assuming; more choices sometimes means more hesitation.

What Subscribers See

A subscriber who upgrades gets immediate access to everything their new tier can reach, using the same feed URL they already have. Nothing to re-add, no new URL to send.

Someone who downgrades or lapses keeps the same URL too — it simply returns fewer episodes. There’s no broken feed and no error, which is the point of the design.

Common Mistakes

Creating two shows instead of two tiers. If you find yourself managing a “Premium feed” and a “Free feed” as separate shows, stop — that’s twice the work and it splits your analytics. Tiers within one show are the intended structure.

Setting the delay and never revisiting it. Whether your delay is right is an empirical question. Watch your conversion rate and treat the number as adjustable.

Applying a delay to your back catalog. New subscribers should get the archive immediately — a delay there just makes your show look sparse to someone deciding whether to stay. Stagger new releases only.