Add-on: Analytics Dashboard

$79/year

Running a private podcast without data is guesswork. The Analytics Dashboard changes that.

Know exactly how your show is growing.

Most private podcasters have no clear picture of their own business. They know their subscriber count from their membership plugin — and not much else. Is churn going up? Are subscribers actually listening? How does your show compare to others on the same infrastructure? The answers are sitting in your subscriber logs, but there’s no way to see them.

The Analytics Dashboard surfaces everything: subscriber growth by tier, cohort retention, feed engagement as a proxy for active listeners, episode download counts, email open rates, and — uniquely — benchmark comparisons against the Benecaster platform median. The kind of context that usually requires being part of a podcast network is available here at the individual creator level.

The data has been collecting since day one. Benecaster writes subscriber lifecycle events and daily snapshots from the moment you activate the plugin — whether or not you have the Analytics Dashboard. Purchase it today and your full history is immediately available. There’s no “starts tracking from now” gap.

Every dimension of your show’s growth.

Subscriber growth:

Multi-line growth chart — one line per tier, date-range selectable (7 days / 30 days / 90 days / 12 months / custom)
Tier breakdown table: active count, new subscribers, churn, and net per tier; “vs prior period” toggle
Tier movement tracking: upgrades and downgrades in the period shown separately
Cohort retention: subscribers who joined in Month X — what percentage are still active?

Feed engagement:

Percentage of subscribers whose podcast app polled their feed in the last 7 days, per tier
Average feed polls per day per tier
A reliable proxy for active listeners — no tracking pixels or app-side instrumentation required

Every time a subscriber’s podcast app checks their private feed URL, Benecaster writes a log entry. Individual request logs are kept for a configurable retention period; daily rollups are retained for long-term trend data. This is what powers the feed engagement charts — without any client-side instrumentation or tracking pixels. The retention window is configurable in Settings → Analytics: shorter retention reduces disk usage while preserving rollup trends indefinitely.

Download analytics (requires the redirect proxy — see below):

Episode download counts per episode, per tier, per date range
Podcast app breakdown (Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, etc.)
Grouped bar chart: top episodes with bars per tier

Email engagement (requires Email Editor add-on):

Open rate and click-through rate per episode notification send
Per-tier open rate breakdown
Trend vs. prior period

Benchmark comparisons (requires telemetry opt-in):

Your churn rate vs. the Benecaster platform median
Your geographic audience concentration vs. comparable shows
Your episode reach rate vs. platform top quartile

The license server aggregates anonymized data across all Benecaster installs. These benchmarks are the kind of performance context that usually requires being part of a podcast network — available here at the individual creator level.

Analytics Digest — scheduled email reports:

Three independent digest frequencies, each with its own on/off toggle. All default to off.

Daily: net subscriber change today; notable callouts if a threshold is crossed
Weekly: the main report — subscriber total, tier breakdown, top episode, feed engagement, benchmarks
Monthly: comprehensive — full subscriber detail, cohort highlight, year-over-year comparison

Empty digests are never sent. Sections that depend on optional features (download proxy, telemetry) are omitted cleanly if those features aren’t active.

Export: All visible data is exportable as CSV or as a PDF — current dashboard view, show name and artwork in the header, date range included. Use the PDF when you’re sharing performance with a co-host, presenting to stakeholders, or just want something that looks like a real report.

A note on server load.

Feed request logging adds a lightweight database write on each feed poll. For most shows this is negligible. At scale — large subscriber counts combined with high polling frequency — it’s worth knowing this is happening. Adjust the retention window in Settings → Analytics to control disk usage; daily rollups are always retained regardless of the raw log setting.

The redirect proxy is opt-in because it adds real server load. Every episode download becomes an additional WordPress request — during release windows on active shows, enabling the proxy roughly doubles your feed traffic volume. Managed WordPress hosting with Redis handles this well. If you’re on shared hosting with a large audience, review your hosting tier before enabling it. Every Analytics Dashboard feature except download counts works without the proxy.

Context you can’t get anywhere else.

Benchmark data is only possible because Benecaster runs across many independent podcast sites simultaneously. The license server aggregates anonymized statistics — no individual subscriber data, no personally identifiable information — and returns platform-wide medians and quartiles.

Examples:

“Your churn rate (3.2%) is below the platform median (5.8%)”
“62% of your listeners are in the US vs. platform average 48%”
“Your average episode reach (74%) is in the top quartile”

Benchmarks require opting into anonymized telemetry in Settings → Analytics. Data transmitted: subscriber counts by tier, geographic distribution totals (country/region), listening pattern frequency distributions, churn rate. No emails, names, tokens, or individual subscriber activity.

Even More Powerful With

Email Editor — open rates and click-through rates per episode notification appear in the Analytics Dashboard, powered by Email Editor’s tracking pixel. See which episode emails your subscribers actually open.
Outlinks — click data from every tracked redirect surfaces within the Analytics Dashboard when both are active; per-episode click attribution sits alongside your subscriber metrics on the same screen.
Sponsor Manager — when both are active, sponsor reports automatically include download counts per episode and CPM calculates without manual math. Turn your Analytics data into a sponsor deliverable.

Requires / Works with

Requires: Benecaster with any paid plan
Feed request logging is always active; raw log retention is configurable in Settings → Analytics
Download analytics require enabling the redirect proxy in Settings → Analytics → Download Tracking
Benchmark data requires opting into anonymized telemetry in Settings → Analytics