Mapping Your Membership Tiers

Tier mapping connects your membership plugin’s subscription levels to Benecaster’s feed tiers. Without it, Benecaster doesn’t know which of your membership levels should unlock which episodes — and members at an unmapped level get no feed URL at all.

Why Tier Mapping Exists

Your membership plugin manages subscriptions in its own terms. MemberPress has “levels.” WooCommerce Subscriptions has “products.” Paid Memberships Pro has “levels” with IDs. Benecaster works with a simpler concept: a tier slug — a short label like gold, silver, or founding-member.

Tier mapping is the translation layer between those two worlds. You tell Benecaster: “When someone subscribes to my ‘Gold Annual’ level in MemberPress, treat them as a gold tier subscriber in Benecaster.” That mapping determines which episodes they see.

Setting up the Mapping

Tier mapping is available in two places:

• During the setup wizard — the Tier Mapping step appears after you select an existing membership plugin. It doesn’t appear for Built-in Membership, which has no separate levels to map. Each of your levels gets a dropdown (No access, Free, Paid, or a tier you add with + Add tier), and new levels start on Paid. Changes save when you press Continue. If you’re not ready, use the Skip link (“I’ll configure this in Settings.”) — a dashboard tip will prompt you to return.
• After setup — go to Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription. The Tier Mapping section appears below the subscription plugin picker on a show connected to MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro or Restrict Content Pro. Each show has its own mapping. Like the setup wizard’s step, it doesn’t appear on a show using Built-in Membership, which manages its tiers under Benecaster → Memberships → Tiers instead.

In Show Settings the mapping is a board. Each Benecaster tier is a column, and each of your membership plugin’s levels (or plans, or products) is a tile:

• Drag a tile onto a tier’s column to map that level to the tier. The change saves straight away; there is no Save button.
• Drag a tile to another column to remap it, or back to Unmapped levels to remove its mapping.
• Unmapped tiles are amber. Members at an unmapped level get no feed URL and no welcome email from Benecaster. Leave a level unmapped on purpose when it isn’t about the podcast, such as a newsletter-only level.
• Several tiles in one column stack on top of each other. Click the stack to fan it out.

Prefer a table? Click List view at the top of the section for the same mapping with one dropdown per level (— No access — or a tier). Your choice is remembered. Changes in list view save as you make them, too.

The tiers offered are Free and Paid, plus any tiers the show already has. On a show that used Built-in Membership before switching to a plugin, that includes the tiers it set up under Memberships → Tiers, by name, retired ones and its Public tier included. So you can put a level onto one of those tiers even if the switch wizard didn’t map it, or when you add a level later. A level mapped onto a free tier from Memberships → Tiers counts as free. So does a level the membership plugin prices at 0, whichever tier it is mapped to, as soon as you save.

Multiple levels can map to the same tier — useful when you have monthly and annual billing variants of the same access level.

Levels Your Plugin No Longer Sells

A level your membership plugin has stopped selling still appears, with a grey Signups closed label on its tile (and beside its name in list view). Hover it for the explanation: “Your membership plugin no longer takes new signups for this level. Its members keep their access, but the pricing table and signup form leave it off.”

That covers a Paid Memberships Pro level with Allow Signups unticked, a Restrict Content Pro level set to Inactive, and a MemberPress membership or WooCommerce Subscriptions product set to Draft or Private. Map it like any other level, so its existing members keep their feed. [benecaster_pricing_table] and [benecaster_subscribe] leave it out because nobody can join it.

The public Tier

public is the tier your public feed carries. Map a level to it only if that level is meant to get your public episodes, such as a free membership level. Never use public as the slug of a paid level’s tier. Benecaster treats that slug as your public feed’s tier, not a paid one, and doesn’t stop you from using it, so check the slug before you map a paid level.

What “Tier” Means in Benecaster

A Benecaster tier is an access level you define for a show. Each tier determines which episodes a subscriber can see, based on the availability dates you set on each episode.

Tiers can be added with + Add tier in the setup wizard’s Tier Mapping step. Common setups:

You don’t need to use these names — use whatever reflects your actual tiers.

Common Configurations

Single tier (all paid subscribers see everything) Map all your paid membership levels to one tier. Keep it simple. Most podcasters starting out use this.

Two tiers (free + paid) Map no levels to free — the free tier is for unauthenticated public access. Map all paid levels to a single paid tier.

Multiple paid tiers with early access Map your premium level to gold and your standard level to silver. Set episode availability dates so Gold subscribers get access two weeks before Silver.

Monthly and annual versions of the same tier Map “Gold Monthly” and “Gold Annual” both to the gold tier. They get identical episode access — the distinction between monthly and annual is your membership plugin’s concern, not Benecaster’s.

What Happens When Mapping Changes

When you add a level in your membership plugin, it shows up the next time the board loads, as an unmapped tile with a NEW badge, and a notice appears: “New membership levels detected: … Map them to Benecaster tiers to grant subscribers access.” Until you map it, members who join at that level get no feed URL and no welcome email from Benecaster.

If you change a mapping — for example, moving “Silver” subscribers from the silver tier to the gold tier — existing subscribers at that level immediately get the new tier’s feed access on their next podcast app poll. No token regeneration is needed.

If you remove a tier entirely from your show settings while subscribers are still mapped to it, those subscribers get empty feeds until you create a replacement tier or remap them.

Warnings and Notices

Stale Bridge Warning

If you switch to a different membership plugin, an amber warning banner appears at the top of the tier mapping table. It means your saved mappings reference levels from a different plugin than the one currently connected — the level names shown may no longer be accurate.

Re-save the mapping to clear the warning. Benecaster will replace the old rows with the current plugin’s levels and your new assignments.

Orphaned Level Notice

If a membership level that was previously mapped has since been deleted from your membership plugin, a blue info banner lists the affected levels by name. Their mappings will be removed automatically when you next save — you don’t need to do anything to clean them up, but you should verify that no active subscribers were using those levels before saving.

Troubleshooting

Subscriber gets an empty feed even though their membership is active: Check that their membership level is mapped: on the Tier Mapping board, it must not be in Unmapped levels. Also verify the subscriber’s level name exactly — look-alike names (“Gold” vs “Gold Annual”) are easy to miss.

Subscriber sees the wrong episodes: A tier mismatch in the mapping. Check which tier their level maps to, and verify the availability dates on the episodes they expect to see.

Newly created membership level doesn’t appear in the mapping screen: Reload the Subscription tab: the board reads your plugin’s levels each time it opens. A level your plugin has stopped selling is still listed, with a Signups closed label. If a level is still missing, check that it belongs to the plugin this show is connected to.

See Feed Showing Wrong Episodes and Membership Plugin Not Connecting for additional troubleshooting steps.