# Workspaces and roles

> The specification of Reply's organization structure — how an organization contains workspaces and users, the permanent organization-owner rules, the three role levels, Team Edition Public and Private modes, and the seat types that gate access to mailboxes, LinkedIn, and calls.

**Every Reply account is an organization containing workspaces — isolated groups with their own users, data, and roles. The organization owner is permanent, belongs to every workspace, and cannot be removed. Roles exist at organization, team-wide, and workspace levels. Team Edition adds shared prospects and sequences in Public or Private mode.**

_Status: Reviewed — human-edited, facts not yet confirmed against the product._

## At a glance

| Aspect | Detail |
| --- | --- |
| **What it is** | The containment and access model of a Reply account: an organization holds workspaces; workspaces hold users, each with a role |
| **Belongs to / Contains** | Organization → workspaces (clients, teams, projects) → users with roles; contacts, sequences, and email accounts are isolated per workspace |
| **Surfaces** | UI — profile photo → **Organization** (tabs: Workspaces, Users, Roles & Permissions); profile photo → **Team Management** (tabs: Members, Permissions) for a single team |
| **Key rule** | Exactly **one** organization owner per organization — automatically part of every workspace, cannot be removed, reassigned, or transferred |
| **Lifecycle** | Organization created with a Default Team → workspaces added → users invited (*Pending* until accepted) → workspaces deleted only after all users except the owner are removed |
| **Does not** | Share data between workspaces, allow transferring the organization-owner role (deleting the whole organization is the only way to remove it), or allow reverting Team Edition once enabled |
| **Availability** | Organizations are available by default for all new accounts |

## Definition

An organization is the top-level container of a Reply account. It holds workspaces —
separate groups for individual clients, teams, or projects, each with its own users,
roles, settings, and data — and the users invited into them. Roles define what actions
users can take; permissions determine which features and data they can access. Team
Edition is the collaboration layer inside a team: it merges prospects, sequences,
schedules, and templates across members, in either Public or Private mode.

## Purpose

Organizations are designed for teams and agencies that manage outreach for multiple
clients: separate workspaces keep each client's prospects, sequences, and templates
independent, while roles and permissions control visibility and access from a single
account.

## Relationships

| Relationship | Object |
| --- | --- |
| Organization contains | Workspaces, users, and three levels of roles; opened via profile photo → **Organization** |
| Workspace contains | Its own users, roles, and settings; data (contacts, sequences, email accounts) does not cross workspaces |
| User | Invited by email; must be assigned a workspace and a role; can belong to several workspaces with a different role in each, and to several organizations with one set of credentials |
| Role | Organization Role, Team-wide Role, or Workspace Role — full permission tables: [Permissions](/reference/permissions) |
| Seat | Access to one resource at a time: team member, mailbox, LinkedIn automation, or Cloud Calls |
| Team member | Invited from **Team Management → Members**; the tab shows each teammate's status and role, plus team-wide Delivered, Open, and Reply metrics |
| Mailbox ownership | Every [email account](/specifications/email-accounts) belongs to one teammate and shows their name in the owner column; a mailbox can be marked default for its owner |

## Team Management vs Organization

Two surfaces manage people, and they are not the same thing. **Team Management** (profile
photo → **Team Management**) manages the members of a single team — invitations, the
Admin/Regular role pair, and per-member statistics. **Organization** (profile photo →
**Organization**) manages workspaces, the organization-wide user list, and the three-level
role catalog. Teams that run outreach for several clients belong in the Organization
setup, where each client gets its own workspace with independent prospects, sequences, and
templates.

## Creation

**Workspaces.** Click **New workspace** in the Workspaces tab, enter a name, and click
**Create**; a logo can be added and the workspace renamed later. Before the first
non-default workspace is created, a one-time **Choose Your Billing Model** modal appears:
**Organization Billing** (all workspaces billed under a single organization plan) or
**Per Workspace Billing** (each workspace billed individually). The choice is permanent,
applies to all future workspaces — including ones created after deleting all previous
ones — and the prompt appears only once. Agency accounts are pre-assigned Organization
Billing and never see the modal.

**Users.** Click **Invite user** (Users tab) or **+ Invite** next to a workspace, enter
one or more email addresses separated by commas, and assign a workspace and role — both
are required. Invitees show a *Pending* status until they accept; an invite can be
withdrawn with **Cancel invite**. A user with a standalone solo trial account cannot be
invited until Reply support deletes that trial account.

**Cross-organization invitations.** Inviting an email address that already belongs to a
user in another organization triggers a joining flow instead of registration: the user
logs in with their existing credentials and chooses **Accept & Join** or **Decline**.
After accepting, they belong to both organizations simultaneously, permissions apply
independently per organization, data stays isolated per workspace, and the workspace
switcher in the Profile menu groups workspaces by organization.

**Team members.** In **Team Management → Members**, click **Invite team member**, enter the
person's name and email address, and click **Invite**. They receive an email invitation
with a sign-up link. A person who already created a trial account in Reply cannot be
invited until support deletes that account. An invitation can be cancelled — and a member
removed — from the drop-down menu under the arrow on the right of their row.

**Roles.** In the Roles & Permissions tab, click the **+** icon next to the section
(Organization Roles, Team-wide Roles, or a workspace under Workspace Roles), name the
role, click **Create**, then enable or disable permissions and click **Save**. Roles are
assigned to users from the Users tab.

## Lifecycle and states

Each organization starts with a **Default Team** and three roles: **Organization Owner**
(full access to everything, including team creation, role management, and billing),
**Team Lead** (manages team activities and members per assigned permissions), and **Team
Member** (limited access focused on operational tasks). Users move from *Pending* to
active on accepting an invitation. The organization-owner role is permanent: it is
assigned automatically to the account creator, there is only one per organization, and
the only way to remove it is to delete the organization with all teams and members.

## Configuration

### Role levels

| Level | Scope | Typical use |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Organization Roles | The entire organization: billing, inviting and removing users, workspace management, logging in as other users, and organization-wide objects (templates, playbooks, custom fields) | Administrators |
| Team-wide Roles | The same permission set applied across multiple workspaces at once; a change propagates to every workspace using the role | Account managers, senior SDRs working with several client teams |
| Workspace Roles | A single workspace; changes in one workspace never affect others; some permissions carry *Workspace* / *My* scopes | Per-team access, one-off adjustments, Reports-only client access |

The full permission catalogs for each level are maintained on one page —
[Permissions](/reference/permissions) — and are not duplicated here. Workspace roles
cannot manage organization-level permissions unless the user also holds an Organization
Role.

### Team Edition

Team Edition merges contacts, sequences, schedules, and templates of all team members
into unified lists, merges duplicate prospects and duplicate blacklists (the blacklist
then works across the team), and enables collaboration at the prospect level — prospect
flow, communication, and every activity attached to the prospect. Schedules become
manageable at the team level, and detailed statistics become visible per team member.

Enabling it requires being the Team owner:

1. Click your profile photo in the bottom-left corner and select **Team Management**.
2. Go to the **Permissions** tab.
3. Click **Enable management**.
4. Choose **Public** or **Private** mode.
5. Click **Next**. A notification confirms Team Edition is enabled.

Reply recommends starting with Public and switching to Private later if needed, so
everything can be set up properly first. Once enabled, Team Edition cannot be reverted.

With Team Edition on, **account-based sales** becomes available: turning on **Pause all
contacts from the same organization on reply** (Settings → Contacts → Contact handling)
automatically pauses all contacts sharing the business domain of a contact who replied.

#### Public mode vs Private mode

The mode decides what a *regular* member sees and can act on. Team owners see everything
in both modes.

| Aspect | Public mode | Private mode |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Prospects | All prospects are shared. Every member can create, edit, and delete prospects. The owner shows in the Owner column on the People page — hover the icon for the full name | A regular member sees only the prospects they own |
| Sequences | Members see every member's sequences and their metrics; the owner shows in the **OWNER** column | A regular member sees only the sequences they own |
| Same prospect in several sequences | Allowed — the same prospect can sit in multiple sequences at once, for example a marketing sequence from one member and a product-update sequence from another | Not allowed — one prospect cannot be in the sequences of different regular members at the same time |
| Acting on another member's records | Any member can add and remove prospects from sequences, change sequence settings, remove sequences, and change the status of prospects in sequences owned by someone else | A regular member acts only on their own records |
| Changing ownership | The team owner, or the member who owns the prospect or sequence | Only the team owner, signed in as Team Owner |
| Mailboxes | Members can view and manage teammates' mailboxes in Email Accounts; inside a sequence, only the sequence owner adds or removes mailboxes | Only the team owner can view and manage teammates' mailboxes |
| Templates, schedules, reports | Shared across the team | Shared across the team — templates and schedules keep everyone on the same standards |
| Lists, folders, filters, integrations, settings | Shared with the team | Visible only to the users who created them |
| Communication history | Full flow in the contact sidebar | Full flow in the contact sidebar |
| Choose it when | The team works as one pool and wants the freedom to share prospects, sequences, schedules, templates, and reports | The team needs more control and data privacy — routing prospects by inbound or outbound flow, region, segment, or seniority, and running account-based outreach |

In both modes the contact sidebar shows the same communication record: every action taken
on the prospect by any team member, the sequence the prospect is currently active in plus
past sequences, the prospect's status in each sequence, the sequence owner, Opens and
Replies metrics, and the emails sent and replies received. That is what makes reassignment
safe — when a prospect moves to another member, the full history travels with them.

#### Changing prospect and sequence ownership

In **Public mode**, ownership moves without extra conditions. On the **People** page,
select the prospects, click **Change owner**, pick the new owner, and click **Apply**. On
the **Sequences** page, hover the sequence, expand the **Actions** drop-down, click
**Change owner**, pick the new owner, and click **Apply**.

In **Private mode**, the team owner must be signed in, and prospect ownership is blocked
while the prospect sits in a sequence. Two ways around it: change the *sequence* owner, in
which case every prospect in that sequence changes owner automatically — but all prospects
in the sequence must already belong to the same owner — or remove the prospect from the
sequence first and then change its owner. The same rule gates the sequence itself: a
sequence owner can be changed only when all prospects in it belong to one owner.

> Changing the owner of a sequence that has already sent at least one email stops any
> further sending. The new sequence owner has to connect an email account after the
> ownership change before the sequence resumes.

### Team Management roles

Separate from the organization-level role catalog, a team has two roles assigned from
**Team Management → Members** after the invited member accepts:

| Team role | Access |
| --- | --- |
| Admin | Can open other members' accounts directly from their own and make changes on their behalf — managing contacts, sequences, and the rest |
| Regular | Can access only their own data; cannot make changes for other team members |

Selecting or editing one of these roles only works while Team Edition is **disabled**.
Once Team Edition is on, the mode — Public or Private — governs access instead. An admin
switches into a teammate's account by clicking the profile photo in the bottom-left corner
and selecting the member from the list of all members.

### Mailboxes in a team

Teammates' mailboxes are managed from the **Email Accounts** section of Settings. A member
who is not the Team Owner can view and manage them only in Team Edition Public mode.

By default the list is filtered to mailboxes you own — click the **X** next to the
**1 owner** filter to see all of them. To filter by specific people, click **All owners**,
select the owners, and click **Apply**. Each mailbox then shows its owner's name in a
separate column.

For a teammate's mailbox you can click **Reconnect** to restore the connection, open
**WarmUp settings** to manage warm-up, and remove the account from the three-dot menu with
**Remove**. What you cannot change is someone else's default: a mailbox marked default
belongs to that teammate and is used automatically for the sequences they create, and only
its owner can change that setting. See [Email accounts](/specifications/email-accounts) and
[Connect a mailbox](/how-to/connect-a-mailbox).

### Seats

| Seat type | Grants |
| --- | --- |
| Team member | A user who can log into their Reply account |
| Mailbox | An email account connected to send messages |
| LinkedIn automation | A connected LinkedIn account used for outreach |
| Cloud calls | Renting a phone number and making calls in sequences |

Each seat covers one connected account or feature at a time; accounts can be disconnected
and reconnected without affecting billing as long as the seat limit is respected, and
multiple team members can share the same mailbox seat. Changing the number of team
members automatically adjusts the included mailbox, LinkedIn, and warm-up seats per the
plan — except on the Email Volume plan, where the mailbox count follows the active
contacts tier, not the user count. Pre-warmed mailboxes do not occupy mailbox seats but
do count against the plan's email account limit. Seat and account numbers per plan:
[Limits](/reference/limits).

Under Roles & Permissions billing models, seat limits scope differently:

| Billing model | Seat limit scope |
| --- | --- |
| Organization Billing | Limits are shared across the entire organization |
| Per Workspace Billing | Limits apply per workspace independently; seat charges for an added member go to the target workspace, not the inviter's active one |

## Processing behavior

The Users tab lists everyone in the organization with search, a workspace filter, and an
organization-role filter (multi-select, including a **None** option for users without an
organization role; roles combine with OR, and the role filter combines with the workspace
filter with AND). Pending invitations appear only in the fully unfiltered view — applying
any role filter, including None, hides them. Quick copy actions support tickets and API
calls: **Copy team ID** from the workspace menu, **Copy user ID** from a member's menu
(not available for pending invites), and a copy icon next to each member's email. A
user's role is changed by clicking their current role and picking a new one.

The Members tab in Team Management is the team-level counterpart: it shows each teammate's
status and role alongside the total Delivered emails, Open rate, and Reply rate across all
teammates' accounts. Clicking a colleague's name opens their profile with detailed
reports. Per-member analytics also appear on the Reports pages — see
[Campaign analytics](/capabilities/campaign-analytics).

## Side effects

- Removing a user from a workspace transfers their contacts, sequences, schedules, unfinished tasks, and templates to the organization owner in the same team; their connected email accounts and completed tasks are deleted permanently. The process cannot be undone, and for large accounts it can take several days (shown as a *Pending* status).
- Enabling Team Edition merges the contacts, sequences, schedules, and templates of all team members — and cannot be reverted.
- The billing model chosen at the first non-default workspace binds every future workspace.
- Deleting a workspace deletes all of its data — sequences, contacts, templates.
- Removing a team member from Team Management deletes that member's Reply account, and they cannot be added back to the team afterwards.
- With Team Edition enabled, a removed member's contacts, sequences, schedules, templates, and uncompleted tasks pass to the team owner; their completed tasks are deleted permanently.
- With Team Edition disabled, removing a member permanently deletes all data associated with them.
- Changing the owner of a sequence that has already sent at least one email stops further sending until the new owner connects an email account.

## Limits

| Limit | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Organization owners per organization | **1** — cannot be transferred or removed |
| Removing workspace members | One at a time |
| Billing model selection | One-time and permanent |
| Workspaces per organization / users per workspace | Not documented |
| Seat | One connected account or feature at a time |
| Team Edition | One-time and permanent — cannot be reverted |
| Same prospect across regular members' sequences (Private mode) | **1** sequence at a time |
| Editing the Admin / Regular team role | Possible only while Team Edition is disabled |
| Changing a sequence owner | Allowed only when all prospects in the sequence belong to one owner |
| Removing a team member | Permanent — the member cannot be added back to the team |

## Deletion behavior

A workspace is deleted from its three-dot menu (**Delete workspace**, then typing
`DELETE` to confirm) — but only after every user except the organization owner has been
removed from it; until then the Delete button is unavailable. Deletion is permanent and
removes all related data. Users cannot be deleted from the Users tab; they are removed
per workspace from the Workspaces tab (**Remove from the client**, confirmed by typing
`DELETE`), with the data-transfer side effects described above. The organization itself
can be deleted, which is also the only way to remove the organization-owner role.

### Removing a team member

Only the team owner can delete team members. Click the profile photo in the bottom-left
corner, select **Team Management**, open the **Members** tab, hover over the member, click
the three dots, and choose **Remove**. The action is permanent, cannot be reverted, and
the removed member cannot be added back to the team.

What survives depends on Team Edition:

| Team Edition | Outcome for the member's data |
| --- | --- |
| Enabled | The team owner becomes the owner of the member's contacts, sequences, schedules, tasks, and templates. Uncompleted tasks are reassigned to the owner; completed tasks are permanently deleted |
| Disabled | All data associated with the deleted teammate is permanently removed — enable Team Edition *before* the deletion if the data must be kept |

Mailboxes follow their own rule. Email accounts the member connected **manually** are
disconnected and deleted. Mailboxes and domains **purchased through Reply** — both regular
purchased packages and pre-warmed packages — are reassigned to the team owner instead:
they stay active and visible under the owner, keep sending and warming up, and are not
cancelled at the provider. A pre-warmed package moves intact, all 3 mailboxes plus their
domain together and never partially, and the purchased domain stays with the team. After
the reassignment the team owner receives a notification stating how many mailboxes and
domains were reassigned and which member they came from.

In Team Edition Private mode, check before deleting that the removed member's contacts are
not already in the owner's account — the contacts move to the owner during the deletion
and cannot exist there twice.

## Edge cases

- A user can hold different roles in different workspaces, and belong to multiple organizations with a single username and password — an Owner in one can be a regular member in another.
- Declining a cross-organization invitation explicitly rejects it, preventing accidental cross-organization access from an unintended click.
- Pending invitations disappear from the Users tab as soon as any role filter is applied, even the None filter.
- On the Email Volume plan, adding team members does not increase the mailbox limit — only a higher active contacts tier does.
- The organization owner appears in every workspace and cannot be removed from any of them.
- The two removal surfaces treat mailboxes differently: removing a user from a workspace deletes their connected email accounts, while removing a team member from Team Management deletes only the manually connected ones and reassigns mailboxes and domains purchased through Reply to the team owner.
- Team Edition has to be enabled *before* a member is deleted for their data to survive — turning it on afterwards does not bring anything back.
- In Private mode a prospect cannot sit in two regular members' sequences at once, so a prospect must leave one member's sequence before entering another's; Public mode allows both at the same time.
- Prospect ownership in Private mode cannot be changed while the prospect is in a sequence — change the sequence owner or remove the prospect from the sequence first.
- In Public mode the team owner can always reassign a prospect or sequence; whether the record's own owner can do the same is stated inconsistently across sources, so use the team owner account if a reassignment is refused.
- A person who already created a trial Reply account cannot be invited to a team until support deletes that trial account.

## FAQ

### Can the organization owner be changed?

No. Each organization has exactly one owner, assigned automatically at account creation.
The role cannot be transferred or removed — the only way to remove it is deleting the
organization along with all teams and members.

### Can Team Edition be turned off after enabling it?

No. Enabling Team Edition merges contacts, sequences, schedules, and templates across the
team and cannot be reverted. Reply recommends starting in Public mode and switching to
Private later if more control is needed.

### What is the difference between Team-wide and Workspace roles?

A Team-wide Role applies one permission set across multiple workspaces at once — editing
it updates every workspace using it. A Workspace Role exists in a single workspace and
changes there never affect others. Both share the same permission categories — see
[Permissions](/reference/permissions).

### What happens to a user's data when they are removed from a workspace?

Their contacts, sequences, schedules, unfinished tasks, and templates transfer to the
organization owner in the same team; connected email accounts and completed tasks are
deleted permanently. This cannot be undone and can take several days for large accounts.

### Do workspaces share any data?

No — contacts, sequences, and email accounts are isolated per workspace, including for
users who belong to several workspaces or organizations. Within a single team, Team
Edition shares data according to its mode, and the team blacklist works across the team.

### What is the difference between Public and Private mode?

Public mode shares prospects and sequences with the whole team: any member can create,
edit, and delete prospects, add and remove them from sequences, change sequence settings,
and change the status of prospects in other members' sequences, and the same prospect can
run in several sequences at once. Private mode limits a regular member to the prospects
and sequences they own, keeps lists, folders, filters, integrations, and settings private
to their creator, and allows only one regular member's sequence per prospect at a time.
Templates, schedules, and reports are shared in both.

### Which mode should a team start with?

Public. Reply recommends starting there and switching to Private later if more control is
needed, so the team can get everything set up first. Private suits teams that need to
route prospects deliberately — by inbound or outbound flow, region, segment, or seniority
— and teams running account-based outreach where it matters which member contacts which
accounts.

### What happens when I remove a team member from Team Management?

Their Reply account is deleted and they cannot be added back. With Team Edition enabled,
the team owner inherits their contacts, sequences, schedules, templates, and uncompleted
tasks, while completed tasks are deleted; manually connected mailboxes are disconnected,
but mailboxes and domains purchased through Reply are reassigned to the owner and keep
running. With Team Edition disabled, all of the member's data is permanently removed.

### Can I manage a teammate's mailbox?

If you are not the team owner, only in Team Edition Public mode. In the Email Accounts
section, clear the **1 owner** filter to see every mailbox, then reconnect it, open its
**WarmUp settings**, or remove it. A mailbox marked default belongs to its owner — only
that teammate can change their own default.

### Who can assign the Admin and Regular team roles?

The team account admin, from **Team Management → Members**, once the invited person has
accepted. Selecting or editing those roles works only while Team Edition is disabled; with
Team Edition on, Public or Private mode governs access instead.

## Related

- [Permissions](/reference/permissions)
- [Limits](/reference/limits)
- [Tasks](/specifications/tasks)
- [Contact management](/capabilities/contact-management)
- [Contact deduplication](/behavior/contact-deduplication)
- [Email accounts](/specifications/email-accounts) · [Connect a mailbox](/how-to/connect-a-mailbox)
- [Configure account settings](/how-to/configure-account-settings)

## Build with Reply

- REST API: [docs.reply.io](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) — the source of truth for the current API surface
- MCP: [agents.reply.io/mcp](https://agents.reply.io/mcp) — agents look up team members and reassign contact ownership within a workspace