Roles and permissions

A member's role decides what they can do in your organization. Each member has exactly one role, and it applies in every project they can open. Which projects those are is set separately, with project access.

The system roles

Every organization starts with four roles. Their names, descriptions and permissions are fixed: nobody can edit or delete them, on any plan.

Role	What it allows	Editor seat
Admin	Full access: all content, the content model, design tokens, projects and settings, plus members, roles, API tokens, webhooks, email settings, billing and the activity log.	Yes
Content Editor	Creates, edits, publishes and deletes documents, media and taxonomy terms. Can view the content model, design tokens, projects, settings and members but not change them. No access to the navigation menu, billing or the activity log.	Yes
Billing	For billing contacts. Can view everything, including the plan and usage, but change nothing. Managing the subscription needs an Admin.	No
Viewer	Can view everything in the organization (content, the content model, settings and members) but change nothing.	No

Studio shows these descriptions wherever you pick a role, so you can compare them as you choose.

The account owner

Every organization has one account owner, marked with a crown in the Users list. The owner:

• can do everything in the organization, whatever role they hold;
• always has access to every project;
• is the only person who can transfer ownership or delete the organization;
• can't be removed, can't have their role changed, and can't leave until they hand ownership to someone else.

The person who creates an organization becomes its owner and is also given the Admin role. To make someone else the owner, see Transfer ownership.

Custom roles Team plan

When no system role fits, build your own. Open Manage roles from your organization's page and select New role….

The Permissions grid lists every area of Studio (content, content model, design, projects and settings, people and access, administration) with the actions each one supports: View, Create, Edit, Delete and Manage. Tick what the role may do.

• Start from a system role to copy its permissions, then adjust. This replaces the current selection.
• Choosing any action on an area also grants View on that area.
• You can't grant a permission you don't hold yourself. Those boxes are disabled, so a delegated role manager can never create a role more powerful than their own.

Custom roles can be renamed, re-described and changed later. You can delete a custom role only when no member holds it, so reassign its members first.

If your organization moves off the Team plan, existing custom roles keep working as they are. You can't change their permissions until you upgrade, but you can still delete them.

Editor seats

Your plan includes a number of editor seats, shown on your organization's page. A member uses an editor seat unless their role is the system Viewer or Billing role.

A custom role always uses an editor seat, even one built with nothing but View permissions. Only the two system roles are free. Project access doesn't change this: a member uses the same seat whether they can open one project or all of them.

Change a member's role

On the member's page in the Users list, choose a new Role and save. See Manage members.

The change reaches the member's open sessions when their sign-in next refreshes, which happens automatically within 15 minutes, or straight away if they switch organizations or sign in again.