User roles and permissions

What Owners, Admins, Editors, Managers and Limited Managers can do, and which role to choose.

Written By Sebastian

Last updated About 5 hours ago

Every user has one of five roles. The role decides what someone can do. Teams decide which documents they see. Only Owners see every document in the account.

Available on all plans · Owners and Admins assign roles

The roles at a glance

	Owner	Admin	Editor	Manager	Limited Manager
Sees documents	All documents	Team documents, own and invited	Team documents, own and invited	Team documents, own and invited	Team documents, own and invited
Upload documents, create from templates, fill fields, sign	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, but by default edit only their own uploads, unless invited
Create documents from scratch and edit their text; upload and edit Word documents	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Edit text in documents created from templates	Yes	Yes	Yes	No; can fill dynamic fields	No
Bulk import	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Create and manage templates	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Join documents on their own	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No, must be invited
Account settings: users, teams, tags, metadata, document types	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Delete documents (others can archive)	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Export documents and metadata	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
API keys and webhooks	Yes	No	No	No	No
Add or change Owners	Yes	No	No	No	No

[CHECK: billing access for Admins]

Which role should I choose?

Work from the simplest need upwards:

Uploads documents, but should only edit their own uploads or documents they're invited to? Limited Manager.
Uploads and edits Word documents, writes documents from scratch, fills template fields and signs? Manager.
Also edits text in template-based documents, builds templates or imports documents in bulk? Editor.
Manages users, teams, metadata, settings, or needs to delete documents? Admin.
Needs to see every document in the account, always? Owner.

Good to know

Roles can't be customised. If no role fits exactly, choose the closest one and use teams to control which documents someone sees.
An account always has at least one Owner. Keep two Owners so you're never locked out.
Admins don't automatically see all documents. They see the documents of their teams. Make an Admin a member of every team, or give them the Owner role, if they need to see everything.
Admins can't invite, edit or remove Owners, and can't assign the Owner role.
Admins can also manage your internal parties under My Parties.
Managers can upload and edit Word files and create and edit documents from scratch. They can also create documents from their teams' templates and fill dynamic fields, but cannot edit the text of template-based documents.
Limited Managers can upload documents. By default they can only edit their own uploads. They can't use Join document, but you can invite them to edit other documents.
Every role uses a paid seat. There is no free view-only role.
People outside your company never need a role. Invite them to a single document instead.

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The roles at a glance

Which role should I choose?

Good to know

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