How do invites and seats work?

Owners can invite members of any role from **Workspace settings → Members**. **Admins** can invite too, but only Editors and Viewers, and only into an **open seat you've already paid for** - they can't grow the seat pool (that adds a charge, so it stays with the Owner) or invite other Admins. An accepted **Editor or Admin** takes a paid seat; **Viewers are free and unlimited on every plan**, so a Viewer invite is never blocked and never changes your bill. See team billing for the role and seat model.

If the email already belongs to a Canopy account, that person gets a pending invite in their dashboard and can accept or decline it from the app. If they are signed into another workspace, accepting the invite reloads the dashboard and opens the workspace they just joined.

If the email does not have a Canopy account yet, the invite email creates the account or signs them in, then adds them to the workspace.

If someone is already a member and accepts a repeat invite, Canopy keeps one membership row for that workspace. It does not create a duplicate seat.

Free workspaces cannot invite additional members. Upgrade the workspace to Pro when you are ready to collaborate.