Use Cases

Real-world scenarios showing how flexible member invitations and subscription management work in practice.

Scenario 1 — Growing a team beyond your plan's seat count

Context: You run an SME account on the 5-seat plan. All 5 seats are taken. You want to bring in a freelancer for a short project.

Solution: Invite the freelancer with the seat toggle off (self-funded). They subscribe to a personal Colistor plan and join your account without consuming any of your seats. When the project ends, you remove them from the account.

Steps:

1. Open the Members page.
2. Click Invite Member.
3. Enter the freelancer's email, set their role to Member or Viewer.
4. Toggle "Use an account seat" to OFF.
5. Click Send Invitation.

The freelancer receives the invitation email. Once they activate their personal subscription and accept, they can access the circles you've added them to.

Scenario 2 — Family account where some members prefer their own subscription

Context: You run a Family account. Your teenage child wants their own Colistor account for personal use and is happy to pay for it themselves.

Solution: Invite them with the seat toggle off. They subscribe to a personal plan and join your Family account as a self-funded member. Your 6-seat plan seats remain available for other family members.

Scenario 3 — Inviting a client or external collaborator

Context: You want to share a circle with a client so they can view project progress.

Solution: Invite them as a Viewer with the seat toggle off. Explain to them that they'll need a personal subscription (even the free tier works for read-only access). They join without touching your team's seat allocation.

Tip: Tell the client to expect an invitation email and let them know they'll need to subscribe before they can see circle content. The subscription prompt appears the first time they log in after accepting.

Scenario 4 — Seat pool management after a plan downgrade

Context: You downgrade from the 6-seat Family plan to the Free plan (1 seat). You have 5 other members who were seat-funded.

What happens: The 5 excess members retain their account membership but their seat funding is removed. They each see a "No Active Subscription" badge on the Members page. They need to either subscribe personally, or be re-assigned to the 1 remaining seat (owner's choice).

What you do as owner:

1. Go to the Members page and review the amber warning banner.
2. Use Assign seat next to the most important member to give them the one available seat.
3. Let the remaining members know they need to activate a personal subscription to restore access.

Scenario 5 — Re-assigning a seat when a member leaves

Context: A team member moves to a different department and no longer needs access. You want to free their seat for a new hire.

Steps:

1. Open the Members page.
2. Find the departing member — they will have an "Account Seat" (indigo) badge.
3. Click Remove seat to free the seat.
4. Optionally click Remove to remove them from the account entirely.
5. Invite the new hire — the freed seat will be available for assignment.

⚠️ Seat removal takes effect on the affected member's next login. If they are currently logged in, their session continues until they log out.

Scenario 6 — A self-funded member activates their subscription

Context: You invited a collaborator as self-funded two weeks ago. They've just activated their personal subscription and want to know when they'll get access.

Answer: Access is granted automatically on their next login. No admin action is required. Once they log in again, their session is rebuilt with the subscription check passing, and all circles they belong to will be loaded normally.