When you create a new account with DatoCMS, you are creating a personal account. A personal account is your own individual account, registered with the DatoCMS platform. It can hold personal projects and billing information.
Projects on DatoCMS can also be tied to an organization. Organizations are useful for sharing the ownership of projects with other accounts.
Similar to personal accounts, organizations can also purchase paid plans and hold separate billing information.
There's no limit to the number of organizations you can create or be invited to.
You can create an organization by clicking on the scope selector in the top left of the nav bar. When you create a new organization, you will be prompted to give that team a name. This is the name your organization will have on your dashboard, and what other members will use to access your organization.
At any time, you can move all projects, your plan, credit card and billing information linked to your personal account to a new organization. This can be especially useful for all those personal accounts created before organizations were available in DatoCMS.
To convert your personal account into an organization, go to the Edit Account tab, and select the option "Move projects and billing information to a new organization".
Your personal account will be switched to a free Developer plan, and the new organization will hold all of your existing projects and billing information.
You will also become the first owner of the newly created organization.
To help your editors find the CMS URL or to provide a more white-labeled solution, you can customize the URL of your project’s CMS.
To do so, first ensure that the CNAME record of your chosen domain points to admin.datocms.com. Then, go to your dashboard, click on your project, and select “Add custom domain” in the Custom domain section.
Organizations are made up of members, and each member of an organization can be assigned a role. These roles define what you can and cannot do within an organization on DatoCMS.
DatoCMS currently offers two roles for your organization members. Let's review them:
Owners have full access privileges to the entire organization. An owner can manage billing, change subscription plan, invite other members to the organization, manage all projects' settings, and enter every project with full privileges. They are also the only members who can destroy the organization.
To maintain ownership continuity for your organization, you should have at least two people with owner permissions. Adding additional owners will not remove any existing ownership.
Viewers cannot perform any action, but have complete read-only access to the organization. This role can be useful for people on your team who deal with finance/invoices/administration, so that they can download invoices and track costs, without making accidental changes to existing projects, or the organization itself.
The table below summarizes the available authorizations for each role:
| Permission | Owner | Viewer |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only access to everything | ✅ | ✅ |
| Enter all projects with full proviledges | ✅ | |
| Create/edit/delete projects | ✅ | |
| Transfer projects | ✅ | |
| Manage members/roles | ✅ | |
| Manage plan and billing | ✅ | |
| Rename/delete organization | ✅ |
Organizations that have been accepted through our partner program have access to additional roles to manage their projects across clients, as you can check out here
To invite new members to your organization, select the organization from the scope selector, then open the Members tab. Enter the email address of the person you would like to invite, select their role, and click the "Invite" button.
As the organization Owner, you can add new members, remove existing members, and change their roles. Members who have accepted an invitation to the team will be displayed as members with their assigned roles.
Let's recap the ways in which one can enter a DatoCMS project.
The owner account always enters the project with full privileges.
Accounts invited as collaborators within the project enter with the permissions of the specific role they have been given.
Members of the organization with the Owner role enter the project with full privileges.
Accounts invited as collaborators within the project, enter with the permissions of the specific role they have been assigned.
Within an organization, there is a further possibility worth emphasizing: if a member of the organization has also been invited as a collaborator, the role as collaborator takes precedence: they do not enter with full privileges, but with the permissions of the specific role they have been assigned as collaborator.
Take, for instance, a case in which someone is responsible for billing matters but will not interact with content. In this case, it would be reasonable for them to be an organization owner (so as to modify billing information) but to also be invited to the project as collaborator using a role with few privileges — probably read-only.
Also consider a user who is totally in charge of a marketing website, but should not have power within the organization itself. This user should be invited as collaborator with full privileges to the project, but should be a simple Viewer at the organization level, if they are even to belong to the organization at all.
To leave an organization, select the organization from the scope selector, then open the Members tab. Find your account in the list of members, and then press the "Leave the organization" button.
You can't leave an organization if you are the last remaining owner. To leave an organization, first assign the owner role to at least one organization member.
If you are the only remaining member, you should delete the team instead.
If you find yourself unable to access your account due to issues with two-factor authentication (2FA), there are immediate steps you can take to regain access.
You have two options:
Locate your One-Time Password (OTP) backup codes that were provided at the time you set up 2FA. These codes can be used in place of the 2FA code to log into your account.
If you have lost your OTP backup codes as well, or have used them all, please contact our support team for assistance.
Alternatively, if you do not have any personal projects and your account belongs to only one organization (meaning you are either a member of the organization or a collaborator on one of its projects), you may request a 2FA reset through your organization.
To start this process, at the Authentication Code prompt, click on "Lost access to two-factor authentication." Then, select "Request 2FA reset."
The owners of your organization will be notified by email and within the Dashboard, where they can either accept or refuse your request.
After one of the organization's owners approves your request, you will be notified via email that 2FA has been disabled on your account . This will allow you to log back into the Dashboard and set up 2FA from scratch for projects that require it.