What do I need before I can use Benecaster?
A self-hosted WordPress site. Benecaster is a WordPress plugin — it doesn’t work with WordPress.com hosted sites or other platforms.
Audio hosting. Benecaster manages your RSS feed and subscriber access; it doesn’t store or serve audio files. You’ll need an existing podcast host (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Transistor, Captivate, S3, etc.) or file storage that produces a stable URL per episode.
Membership management. Benecaster includes a built-in membership system for subscriber billing and access control. If you already use MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro, Benecaster connects to it directly — your existing setup carries over. If you’re starting fresh, the built-in system handles everything with no additional plugin required.
Hosting with room to grow. Benecaster is lightweight for most shows, but a few hosting choices make a meaningful difference:
- Object caching (Redis or Memcached) — strongly recommended for any show with active subscribers. Most managed WordPress hosts include it. Feed requests with a warm cache add minimal server load; without it, each request hits the database.
- A host that allows PHP-FPM — important at Growth tier and above where concurrent feed requests compound.
- Adequate disk space — minimal for most shows, but the optional download proxy generates log data that grows with subscriber count and episode frequency. See How much disk space does Benecaster need? →
Shared hosting works fine for Launch and Starter. A managed WordPress host (Kinsta, WP Engine, SiteGround) is worth the investment from Growth onward.
