Switching Your Subscription Plugin

If you’re moving from one membership plugin to another — for example, from Paid Memberships Pro to MemberPress — the Bridge Switch Wizard handles the transition without breaking existing subscriber access. The same wizard moves a show onto or off Benecaster’s built-in membership. This tutorial walks through the full process.

When to Use the Bridge Switch Wizard

The wizard is the right path whenever you’re replacing your subscription plugin entirely. Examples:

You started with WooCommerce Subscriptions and want to move to MemberPress
You’re consolidating from two membership plugins to one
You’re testing a new plugin after running your paid tiers on the old one

If you’re simply adding a second plugin alongside your existing one, or troubleshooting a connection issue with your current plugin, you don’t need this wizard — see Subscription Plugin Overview instead.

Before You Start

Install the new membership plugin and activate it
Set up your membership levels in the new plugin — create levels matching your existing tiers (e.g. if your current setup has Gold and Silver tiers, create Gold and Silver levels in the new plugin)
Back up your database — the wizard preserves your tier mappings, but a backup is always good practice before structural changes

The wizard won’t migrate subscribers from one plugin to another — that’s your membership plugin’s job. The wizard only updates which plugin Benecaster talks to.

Your subscribers’ payments do not move, and nothing can move them. This is the part people most often get wrong, so it is worth being blunt about: a recurring payment belongs to the plugin that created it. Your subscribers’ existing subscriptions keep billing through your old plugin, on its schedule, at its price — switching bridges does not touch them, and neither does anything else in Benecaster.

That leaves you running two things at once: billing still handled by the old plugin, feed access now decided by the new one. It works, but it is not a finished migration. To actually move billing across, each subscriber has to subscribe again through the new plugin and cancel the old subscription — which means asking them to re-enter payment details, and accepting that some won’t.

Plan the billing side before you run the wizard, not after. Most podcasters switching plugins keep the old subscriptions running until they lapse naturally and only sign new subscribers up through the new plugin, rather than asking their whole audience to re-subscribe at once.

Running the Wizard

Open Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription. Under Subscription Plugin, click the plugin you’re moving to. Built-in membership is in the same list, so the wizard also covers moving onto or off Benecaster’s built-in membership. Because the show already has a plugin, clicking another opens the Switch subscription plugin wizard rather than switching straight away. It has five steps, numbered Step 1 of 5 to Step 5 of 5, and Continue moves you on.

Step 1 — Back up before you switch

The wizard tells you which plugin you’re using now and how many active subscribers you have. Create a Benecaster backup now makes one if you haven’t. Tick I have backed up my site and database to continue.

Step 2 — Confirm your setup is ready

Benecaster can’t move subscriber records between membership plugins, so this step asks you to confirm three things by ticking each one:

your subscribers are already set up in the new plugin with active memberships
you have tested that at least one subscriber can sign in through it
you understand that a subscriber not found in the new plugin loses feed access as soon as you switch

Step 3 — Select your new plugin

Pick the plugin you’re switching to. The list holds every supported plugin active on this site except the one you’re leaving.

Step 4 — Map your levels

Switching to a membership plugin. The step is headed Map your [plugin] levels. It lists each of the new plugin’s membership levels, with a Benecaster tier dropdown beside it. The dropdown offers — No access —, Free, Paid, and then your show’s tiers by name. When you’re leaving built-in membership, those are your tiers from Benecaster → Memberships → Tiers, including any you have retired, so you can put each level onto the tier its members already hold. Public isn’t offered, because nobody is a member of it.

Key principle: map each level onto the tier its members have today. If Gold Member in your old plugin was mapped to the Gold tier, map the equivalent level in your new plugin to Gold as well. That keeps feed access for subscribers you move across. Several levels can share a tier: a Supporter Monthly and a Supporter Annual level can both go onto Supporter. A level you put on a free tier counts as free, and so does a level the new plugin prices at 0. Both count from the moment you finish the wizard.

A level left at — No access — is unmapped, and its members have no feed access after the switch. The wizard counts them under the table, and the button reads Continue with N unmapped while any remain. You can map them later in Settings → Subscription → Tier Mapping.

Switching back to a plugin this show used before. The step starts with the mappings saved from when the show last used that plugin already filled in, and a note reads “N saved mappings from when this show last used [plugin] have been filled in. Check them before you continue.” Continuing without changes puts those mappings back. Change any level you want mapped differently, or set it to — No access — to leave it unmapped. A saved mapping is filled in only while the plugin still lists that level and the tier is still in the dropdown; any other level starts at — No access —.

Switching to built-in membership. The step reads No tiers to map: built-in membership needs no mapping, because each member is placed on one of your tiers by their own Benecaster subscription. Click Continue.

Either way, the step notes that your previous plugin’s mappings have been saved and will be restored if you switch back.

Step 5 — Confirm the switch

Confirm the switch sums up what will happen: Switching from, Switching to and Active subscribers. When you’re switching to a membership plugin it also shows Levels mapped and Levels unmapped. If any level is unmapped, a warning repeats that those subscribers lose feed access, and you have to tick I understand the risks and want to switch now.

Click Switch now. Benecaster:

Saves the new plugin’s level mappings (none when switching to built-in membership)
Sets the new plugin as the show’s subscription plugin
Fires the internal benecaster_bridge_switched event (add-ons that hook into bridge changes are notified)

The wizard closes and the Subscription settings show the new plugin.

After the Switch

A notice appears at the top of Benecaster → Settings confirming the switch. It also reminds you to verify that your membership plugin’s subscriber data has been migrated — Benecaster’s bridge now talks to the new plugin, so subscribers need active memberships there to maintain feed access.

Test subscriber access: log in as a subscriber who has been migrated to the new plugin and verify their feed URL still works. If it doesn’t, check the tier mapping — confirm their new plugin level is mapped to the correct Benecaster tier.

Old tier mappings: the tier mapping rows from your previous plugin are retained in the database but are no longer active. They won’t cause issues; they stay dormant unless you switch back to that plugin, when step 4 of the wizard fills them in for you to check. They don’t affect your counts either: each member counts once toward your paying-subscriber limit and is listed once on the Subscribers screen and in exports, and whether a member is free or paying comes from the new plugin’s mapping alone. Prices and pricing tables read only the new plugin’s mappings, so a tier you haven’t mapped in the new plugin drops off [benecaster_pricing_table] and [benecaster_tier_price] prints nothing for it until you do.

If Something Goes Wrong

Subscribers lose feed access after the switch Their membership level in the new plugin isn’t mapped to a tier. Go to Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription → Tier Mapping and add the missing mapping. No token regeneration is needed — the tier assignment takes effect on the subscriber’s next feed poll.

The wizard says the new plugin isn’t detected Ensure the plugin is installed and active on the same WordPress site as Benecaster. Some plugins require additional setup (creating at least one membership level) before Benecaster can detect them. See the setup guide for your specific plugin in the Connecting Your Membership Plugin section.

You want to undo the switch Run the wizard again and select the original plugin. Step 4 fills in the mappings it had before, so check them and continue. The same wizard works in both directions.

See Using the Tier Mapping Board for more on choosing a tier for each level. The Tier Mapping section in your Subscription settings is where you change the mapping after the switch.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`wordpress_logged_in_*`	Benecaster	Keeps you signed in to your Benecaster account.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wordpress_sec_*`	Benecaster	Secures your signed-in session over HTTPS.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wp-settings-*`	Benecaster	Remembers your admin screen preferences.	One year.
`benecaster_ls_purchase_sign_in`	Benecaster	Signs you in to your new account on the page you bought from, once your purchase has gone through.	Thirty minutes, or until you are signed in.
`benecaster_ls_cookie_consent`	Benecaster	Remembers the choice you make on this banner, so we do not ask again.	One year.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`__stripe_mid`	Stripe	Lets Stripe recognise the device across payment attempts to detect card fraud.	One year.
`__stripe_sid`	Stripe	The same fraud check, for the current visit only.	Thirty minutes.