Teams & members
Invite other people into your Openship workspace, give them the right role, and understand the difference between your personal space and a shared team.
Openship starts out as a space for one person: you. But most real work happens with other people — a teammate who deploys the app, a designer who just needs to look, a co-founder who owns the whole thing with you. This guide shows how to bring people in and decide what each of them can do.
Think of your workspace like a shared office. You can hand someone a key (invite them), and each key opens different doors (their role). Some keys open everything; some only open one room.
What you need first
- An Openship account with a workspace you can see in the dashboard.
- The email address of the person you want to invite.
- You must be the owner or an admin of the workspace to invite people. (More on roles below.)
Invite someone
Open the Team settings
In the dashboard, go to Settings and choose the Team tab from the sidebar. This page lists everyone who currently has access, plus any invitations that haven't been accepted yet.
Screenshot
Press "Invite member"
Click Invite member in the top-right. A small window opens titled Invite a member.
Don't see the button?
Only owners and admins can invite people. If you're a plain member, the button is hidden — ask an owner or admin to send the invite for you.
Enter their email and pick a role
Type the person's email address. Then choose a role — one of the cards below the email box. Each role is explained in the next section; Member is the usual choice for a teammate who will build and deploy.
Send the invite
Press Send invite. Openship emails that address a link to join this organization. The new person shows up under Pending invitations until they accept.
Screenshot
Self-hosting Openship?
On a self-hosted install you'll also see a Send via choice in the invite window: Your mail server (the mail server you run yourself) or Openship Cloud. Pick "Your mail server" only if you've set one up; otherwise "Openship Cloud" sends the invite for you. On Openship Cloud this choice doesn't appear — invites always go out for you.
What each role can do
A role is just a bundle of permissions. Openship has four, from most powerful to least:
- Owner — the person who created the workspace. Can do everything, including changing other people's roles and removing members. You can't invite someone straight in as owner — but an owner can promote an existing member to owner later, from the role dropdown on the Team tab.
- Admin — everything a member can do, plus manage members (send and cancel invites, remove people). On Openship Cloud, admins can also manage billing.
- Member — full read and write access to everything in the workspace: create projects, deploy, edit environment variables, and so on. A member cannot manage other people.
- Restricted — starts with no access. When you invite a restricted member you pick exactly which resources (specific projects, servers, and so on) they're allowed to reach. Use this for someone who should only touch one or two things.
Changing a role later
Only the owner can change someone's role. On the Team tab, each member (except you) has a role dropdown next to their name — pick a new role and it applies right away. Owners and admins can also remove a member with the trash icon; Openship asks you to confirm first. You can't change or remove yourself.
For the full rules on how permissions and per-resource access are enforced, see Permissions & roles.
Accept an invite
This is what the invited person does after you send it.
Open the link in the email
The invite email contains a link. Clicking it opens a page that says You're invited (or Join [workspace name] once you're signed in).
Sign in or create an account
If you're not logged in yet, the page offers Sign in and Create account. Use the same email address the invite was sent to — Openship checks that they match.
Screenshot
Press Accept
Once signed in with the right email, the page shows the workspace name and the role you're joining as, with Decline and Accept buttons. Press Accept. You'll see You're in, and Openship sends you to the dashboard for that workspace.
Personal vs team workspaces
Every Openship workspace is called an organization. When you first sign up, Openship creates a personal workspace just for you — your own projects, servers, and domains, with no one else in it.
You have two ways to work with other people:
- Invite them into your personal workspace. Fine for a small group — everyone shares the same projects and servers. Use the Invite member button described above.
- Create a separate team organization. A clean, shared space that stays isolated from your personal projects. On the Team tab (while viewing your personal workspace) you'll see a Create a team organization card — press Create team, give it a name, and Openship switches you into the new shared workspace. Its projects and members are completely separate from your personal ones.
You can belong to more than one organization and switch between them. A team organization has its own members and roles, exactly as described above.
Which should I pick?
If it's just you and one or two trusted people, inviting into your personal workspace is simplest. If you want a shared space that isn't tangled up with your own experiments — or you expect the group to grow — create a team organization.
If something goes wrong
“This invite is for … You're logged in as …”
The invite was sent to one email but you're signed in with a different one. Sign out, then sign back in (or create an account) using the exact address the invitation was sent to. If you've lost the link, ask an owner or admin to cancel the old invite and send a fresh one to the right address.
The invite email never arrived
Check the spam folder first. If you're self-hosting and chose Your mail server as the send method but haven't set one up, switch the invite to Openship Cloud and send again. The invitee can also be handed the link directly — it's the same link that's in the email.
“Failed to send invite”
Usually this means you don't have permission (only owners and admins can invite) or the person is already a member. Confirm your own role on the Team tab, and check the Active members and Pending invitations lists to see if they're already there.