You may find yourself asking, what is the difference between users and seats? Thats a valid question! The difference comes down to the context in which they refer.

What is a Seat?

A seat is a billing term that refers to the capacity of your current subscription. Think of it as the maximum number of users that can exist in your Workspace at any given time. Typically, the number of seats in your subscription will match the number of active and invited users in your Workspace. However, you can have more seats in your subscription than you do users.

Whenever you invite new users to your Workspace, an ‘Update Plan’ popup will appear if you don’t have enough seats in your subscription to add the new users. By increasing the number of seats, you agree to increase your monthly spend and pay a proration charge for the remainder of the current billing period.

The number of seats in your subscription is only ever decreased if you manually edit it in billing settings. As such, when deactivating or deleting users, you free up seats that can be used again to invite new users without having to update your subscription.

What is a User?

A user represents a person’s functional access to your Workspace. Having an active user profile in a Workspace is what allows you to view and contribute to the Workspace’s data. Like a game of musical chairs, every user needs a seat to be able to keep playing (or working, in this case 😉).

Every user has a Gruntify account, which is their log-in method (be it email/password, Microsoft, Google, or Apple account). A Gruntify account is a user in each Workspace it is a part of, meaning one person may represent multiple users across multiple Workspaces. Regardless of whether a person is in multiple Workspaces or just one, they will need a seat for every active user profile that they have.

A deactivated or deleted user profile in a Workspace does not consume a seat, even if the Gruntify account continues to have access to other Workspaces. However, an invited user does consume a seat, even if the invitee has not yet created a Gruntify account.

In Summary

The key difference between users and seats lies in their context: seats refer to the billing capacity of your subscription, determining how many users can be accommodated in your Workspace, while users are the individuals who have access to and interact with your Workspace. Each active or invited user needs a seat, but the number of seats can be adjusted based on your subscription needs. Deactivating or deleting users frees up seats, allowing you to invite new users without additional costs - unless you decide to manually decrease your seat count.

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