How to add free guests to ClickUp instead of paid members. The video walks through the differences between the two roles, step-by-step instructions for inviting guests, and what each can and cannot do in your workspace.
Guests and members are two different types of people that you can bring into your ClickUp account. And yes, there's other types too, like admin and owner. But guests and Members can really trip people up that are new to ClickUp, especially if they're used to something like Asana or Trello, where the member rules are a little bit more conventional. So in this video I'm actually going to flip over to the other screen and demonstrate how you can add guests into ClickUp. Talk about where most people think they're supposed to add guests into ClickUp and just touch on the difference between members and guests. Guests. I guess that's enough talk, isn't it? Let's just get to it. So here we are in a ClickUp account and I'm going to show you how you are supposed to invite guests into your ClickUp account. And hint it's meant to be inconvenient. What you have to do is click on a folder or a list and click on the three dots, go down to Sharing and permissions and go over to this area Here you will see who is already shared on the space. If you click on that, it'll show you whoever's in your space already and has access to this or but what I want to do is add somebody new. So I'm going to click, you know, type a name or email to invite. I'm going to type in a new email address. What will happen. It'll pop up and tell me to click next and then it'll show me the options about how I want to add that person. If I add somebody as a guest. On most plans, depending on, you know, how your plan is arranged, your guests are included, you have free guests in your account, so adding a guest is going to charge me nothing. On the free account, which is what this demo account is on. I On the free account, your guests have full access to everything they can edit and create things. If you are on a paid plan, you can add a guest which is still free, but limit their permissions to certain things. So that can be a reason that some people will decide to go onto that unlimited plan. One thing to note here is that guest is the default option when you're adding somebody this way, but you can also choose to make them a member. The main thing to remember about guests versus Members is that guests are typically always free up to the limits of your account and members are at the same price as you pay for the existing people in your workspace. So if you were on the free plan, that member is also Going to be on the free plan and will be free. But if you are on the unlimited plan and you add a member, that member is going to be added as an unlimited plan member. And it's usually prorated on whatever your plan is. So if it's annual surprise, you're going to get a pretty big bill for adding that member. So just something to keep an eye on. So you can go in here, click Invite, and that person will be added into your space. Woohoo, isn't that great? And you could remove them or change their access if you're on an unlimited plan the same way. This is different than how most people will try to add a member. The default reaction is to go down here and click on people or Invite just like you would. Maybe a sauna. But what you'll see here is that when I'm actually in the people section of settings, where it seems like I should be able to do this, I can convert people to a guest. So I could convert Jen here to a guest and I can see my members and my guests in this demo space and I could convert them back and forth or in this case just resend because they haven't accepted my invite yet. I can do all that stuff, but I actually cannot add a guest from this location. A lot of times what I'll see people do is come in here, click on people and start typing their new things. What I'll see a lot of people do is they'll come in here and they will type in their email address right here. Because this is where it seems like you should put it. And you put the email address in, you'll click Invite and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, wait, wait, why did they add them as a member? Why am I getting billed for them as a member? Because remember, members are billed at your rate, whatever that is, and they'll be accepted here as a member. There's not an easy way that I know of at least to add someone directly as a guest from this area. You can convert someone once they're added, but you don't. I don't think you want those bills just for fun. So I would not do it this way. Instead do it back at the list and folder level. But what happens when you have hundreds of folders that you need to have someone added to? What if, what if you have a bunch of different stuff going on? The answer to that is you have to add them one by one. You cannot add a guest. If I go under here, space settings, there's nothing in here for me to be able to add guests at the space level. The reason for this is ClickUp gets paid based on having people become members. If everyone just added everyone as a guest with full access, ClickUp would put probably not be doing so well financially. So it makes sense that they're making this difficult for you to add guests. The thing to think about here is guests are really designed for, you know, purpose built collaboration. They're collaborating on one project, one section. If you have somebody that you need to add to every single folder in your workspace, maybe a guest isn't even the right role for them and you might want to look at a member instead. But if you do want to have them in everything and you do want them as a guest, you can do that. There is no limits to how many stuff how many things you want to add your guests to. So you will have to add them one by one. What's nice is once someone is a guest in your account, you can actually just click here and they'll show up in the dropdown. This is an older person, but still I could go in here and make this guest shared on it in one click rather than having to type the whole email address. But yeah, it still takes some time. But that is how you add guests in ClickUp. It has not down here in the bottom corner, even though that seems like where it should be. I will add here while you're here. If you have any questions about this or you have suggestions about what other content I should, please do, leave a comment in the area below. And if you haven't, please subscribe. I put out videos like this two times a week about ClickUp and related technologies to help small teams be more efficient and streamlined. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, definitely hit that subscribe button. If you are tired of trying to piece together YouTube videos to figure out how to align your workflows, your processes and your ClickUp account, well, maybe it's time that we talk. I work one on one with a select group of of clients every quarter to help people build out their systems and processes. Find out more at ProcessDriven co.
