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License Activation and Connection Issues

Find Your Problem

What you’re seeing Where to go
Connecting failed and mentions verification Site verification failed
Connecting failed some other way, or nothing happens Connection failed
Connected, but paid features are still locked Features are locked
It worked, then the plugin dropped back to free Reverted to free
A show’s card says Reconnect required Reconnect required
Your site and benecaster.com disagree about your plan The two disagree
A staging copy is using up a show slot Staging counted against your limit
None of the above Still stuck?

Site Verification Failed During Connection

During the OAuth connection flow, Benecaster.com sends a probe request to your site’s verify endpoint to confirm the site is publicly reachable. If the probe fails, you’ll see a “Site verification failed” notice with:

  • The exact URL that was probed
  • The HTTP response code and elapsed time (or a cURL error)
  • Suggested next steps

To diagnose, test the endpoint yourself:

curl -I "https://yoursite.com/wp-json/benecaster/v1/verify?code=probe&nonce=probe&show_uuid=probe"

You should see HTTP/2 400 in the response — a 400 error is expected for a probe request (it means the endpoint exists and Benecaster is handling the request; the 400 indicates the code/nonce/show_uuid values are not real). Any other result indicates a problem:

  • Connection refused / DNS failure — your site is not publicly accessible. Check your host’s external-facing configuration.
  • HTTP 403 / 503 — a firewall, security plugin, or CDN is blocking the request. Add an exception for /wp-json/benecaster/v1/verify.
  • HTTP 200 with HTML — a maintenance-mode plugin or page-cache plugin is serving HTML instead of routing to the REST API. Disable page caching for /wp-json/ paths and disable maintenance mode, then retry.
  • SSL error — your SSL certificate is expired or the chain is incomplete. Renew or repair the certificate.

See Connecting Your Site for a detailed walkthrough of each cause. After resolving, click Connect to Benecaster again — the flow generates a fresh PKCE state on every attempt.

Connection Failed

Check that your server can reach benecaster.com. Connecting requires an outbound HTTPS connection from your server to benecaster.com. Some hosts block outbound connections by default or require firewall rules to be opened. Go to Tools → Site Health → Info → WordPress Constants and look for any proxy settings that might be intercepting requests. If you’re on a managed host with a firewall, ask your host to allow outbound HTTPS to benecaster.com.

Check whether you’re at your show limit. Every plan allows a set number of connected shows, and Multi-Show and Studio allow more than one. If you’re at the limit, the connect screen says so and offers to disconnect an existing show to free a slot — you can do that yourself, without contacting us. You can also do it ahead of time from Connected shows on your account page, which is the route to use when the site you want to remove is one you can no longer reach. See Show and Site Limits.

Check that your plan is in good standing. A suspended or cancelled plan can’t connect a new show. Log in to benecaster.com and check the Your plan panel in My Account.

Connected Successfully but Features Are Locked

If your show connected but premium features (subscriber authentication, private feeds) are still unavailable, the most likely cause is that no subscription plugin bridge has been connected yet.

Premium features are locked until a supported membership plugin (MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro) is installed, active, and connected through Benecaster’s setup wizard.

Go to Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription and confirm a bridge is selected. If the list is empty, your membership plugin either isn’t installed or isn’t active.

License Shows as Active but Plugin Reverted to Free

This happens when the license validation check-in fails and enough time passes without a successful check-in.

Benecaster is fail-open — short check-in failures don’t affect anything. But if check-ins have been failing for an extended period, you’ll see a warning in the Benecaster admin.

Check outbound connectivity. Go to Settings → Tools → License and click Run license check now. If the check cannot reach benecaster.com, investigate your host’s outbound firewall settings. The days before features are restricted are counted from the first failed check, so running the check by hand while you investigate does not use them up. License Status and Plan gives each stage under Validation Failure.

Check your subscription status. Log in to benecaster.com to confirm your subscription hasn’t lapsed or your payment method hasn’t expired.

Run the check again once the cause is fixed. A successful check restores everything straight away, on the same feed URLs.

A Show Says Reconnect Required

A show’s card under Settings → Account says Reconnect required when benecaster.com has refused that show’s connection on two daily checks at least 12 hours apart. One refusal is not enough, so running Run license check now twice in a row does not cause it.

Go to Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription. Under License, click Reconnect this show and authorize the connection at benecaster.com. Your subscribers’ feed URLs stay the same.

benecaster.com and Your Site Disagree About Your Plan

Occasionally the two sides get out of step — most often because a message from our payment provider never reached us. It shows up in one of two ways:

  • Your site says your plan has ended, but you’re still being charged. This is the one to tell us about straight away. Your feeds are restricted while your card is being billed, and we can put it right the same day.
  • Your site says everything is fine, but you know you cancelled or stopped paying. Nothing is broken for you, so there’s nothing you need to do — but we’d rather hear from you than not.

We check for this ourselves every day and it usually gets fixed before anyone notices. A daily sweep on our side compares every license against our payment provider’s records and flags any that disagree, so most of these are caught and corrected without anyone reporting them. If you spot it first, email support@benecaster.com with your Benecaster invoice number (it looks like BC-000012) and say which of the two you’re seeing.

Don’t disconnect and reconnect to try to fix it. That doesn’t change what our billing records say, and it takes your feeds down while you do it.

Staging Site Counted Against Your Show Limit

Whether a connected site uses one of your plan’s site slots is decided at benecaster.com, from the site’s address. We keep a list of the address shapes hosting companies use for staging copies, and a site whose address matches one doesn’t use a slot. Support can also mark a single site as staging by hand.

Staging mode in the plugin doesn’t decide this. Your staging site may show the orange border and the staging banner, because the plugin recognises its address (localhost, a .local or .test domain, a staging part in the hostname) or because BENECASTER_STAGING is set in its wp-config.php. That changes how Benecaster behaves on that copy. It doesn’t by itself stop the site using a slot.

To fix it, contact support with the staging site’s address. We’ll either add your host’s staging address shape to our list or mark that one site as staging. The change takes effect at the site’s next daily check-in, and there’s nothing to change on your side.

If you’ve finished with the staging copy, you can also disconnect it from your account page to free the slot straight away.

Still Stuck?

Contact support at support@benecaster.com. Include:

  • Your Benecaster invoice number (BC-000012) or the email address on your benecaster.com account
  • The URL of the site you’re trying to connect
  • Any error message shown during the connection
  • Your PHP version and WordPress version (visible in Tools → Site Health)

See Also

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