# 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 — written against Reply's product documentation on 2026-08-03, not yet confirmed against the running 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) |
| **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 |

## 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.

**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. Enabling it
requires being the Team owner: **Team Management → Permissions → Enable management**,
choose **Public** or **Private** mode, then **Next**. Reply recommends starting with
Public and switching to Private later if needed. Once enabled, Team Edition cannot be
reverted.

| Mode | Who sees what |
| --- | --- |
| Public | Prospects and sequences are shared: members can create, update, and delete prospects, add and remove them from sequences, change sequence settings, remove sequences, and view each prospect's communication history. Only the team owner or the record's owner can change ownership; any member can change the status of prospects in other owners' sequences; only the sequence owner can add or remove mailboxes in a sequence (the team owner can sign in as that member to do it) |
| Private | Sequences and contacts are visible only to team owners, who can reassign ownership; templates, schedules, and reports are accessible to every member; contact lists, folders, filters, integrations, and settings are visible only to the users who created them. When a prospect is reassigned, the full communication history — past sequences, replies, statuses — is preserved |

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.

### 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.

## 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.

## 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 |

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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)

## 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