Introduction
Guests let people outside your team, like clients, contractors, and external collaborators, work with your team's content without getting access to your whole workspace. This article covers what guests can do, how they're added, and how admins can see and control them.
🔷 Note: Guests have file-level access only. They must be explicitly invited to every gamma they can access, and they do not count as billable seats. The Guests tab, including pending invitations and revoking access, is available on all plans. Only the Guest invites restriction requires Enterprise.
What are the workspace roles?
Every person associated with your workspace has one of three roles:
Admins manage the workspace itself, including people, settings, security, and billing, on top of everything a member can do.
Members have workspace-level access. They can create gammas, browse and search everything shared with the workspace, and collaborate freely. Members take up paid seats.
Guests have file-level access only. They must be explicitly invited to every gamma they can access. Gammas are not inherited from the workspace like they are for members. Guests don't take up paid seats.
A guest's access is limited in scope, not capability: a guest with editor access on a gamma can do everything a member with editor access can do on that gamma. But guests can't create new gammas, browse folders or the template library, see your member list, or access workspace settings. Guests with full access to a gamma can invite others to it, including new guests, unless the Enterprise guest invite restriction is turned on.
How do guests get added?
Anyone with full access to a gamma can invite people to it, including people outside your workspace. Sharing is gated by access to the gamma, not workspace membership.
What happens next depends on whether the person already has a Gamma account:
They already have an account. They get access immediately and appear in the Guests section of your members page.
They don't have an account yet. They receive an email invitation and appear in Pending invitations until they sign up. Invitation links don't expire.
When someone signs up through an invitation link, they move from Pending invitations to Guests.
How do admins see and manage guests?
Admins (but not members) can view and manage guests from Settings → Members → Guests. You'll find two lists:
Guests: everyone who has guest access to gammas in your workspace. Hover over a guest's row to see which gammas they can access. If a gamma isn't shared with the entire workspace, its title is hidden and appears as Presentation (private).
Pending invitations: external email addresses that have been invited to a gamma in your workspace but haven't signed up yet. Each row shows the gammas they were invited to and who invited them.
To remove a guest's access, select Revoke access on their row. This removes their access to every gamma they've been invited to in the workspace and cancels any invitations they haven't accepted.
To cancel pending invitations, select Revoke on a row in Pending invitations. This cancels all pending invitations for that email address, and the invitation links stop working immediately.
🔷 Note: Revoking access or invitations doesn't ban someone — they can be invited again later.
Changing someone's role
Admins can convert people between roles as relationships change:
Member ↔ admin grants or removes workspace management abilities. Their access to content doesn't change. Every workspace must have at least one admin, and the billing admin can't be demoted.
Guest → member - select Invite to workspace on the person's row in the Guests list. When they accept the workspace invitation, they become a member and take up a paid seat. Their existing file permissions are unchanged. This is useful, for example, when a contractor becomes a full-time employee.
Removing a member gives you two options: remove all access (their access to the workspace and all gammas in it), or convert them to a guest, which keeps their access to gammas they created or were added to directly — they lose access to the rest of the workspace, including gammas they could access only through a folder. Either option frees up their paid seat.
Removing a guest — select Revoke access in the Guests list. This removes their access to all gammas in your workspace and cancels any pending invitations.
Controlling who can invite guests
Admins of Enterprise workspaces can restrict who can invite guests with the Guest invites setting, found in Settings → Sharing & access. It's on by default, allowing anyone with full access to a gamma to invite people outside the workspace.
When an admin turns Guest invites off, only admins can invite new guests. Admins invite them by sharing a gamma - there's no separate Add guest button. If a member tries to invite someone new while the setting is off, the share panel explains that only workspace admins can invite new people from outside the workspace.
🔷 Note: The Guest invites restriction is available on the Enterprise plan.
How this affects link sharing
Turning off Guest invites also turns off the workspace's link sharing setting and locks it while guest invites are off. This prevents people from using new "anyone with the link" URLs to get around the invitation restriction. Link sharing stays off until an admin deliberately re-enables it.
Existing access stays in place
Turning off guest invites doesn't revoke existing access, cancel invitations, or disable existing public links:
Guests keep their access. Members can still share additional gammas with them.
Pending invitations still work until an admin revokes them from Pending invitations.
Public links keep working. If a link allows editing or commenting, someone who opens it can still become a guest.
When you turn the setting off, Gamma shows how many gammas have existing public links. Enterprise admins can view and revoke public links in Settings → Public links.
FAQs & Common Issues
Do guests count as billable seats?
No, guests don't take up paid seats. Only members consume paid seats.
Converting a guest to a member uses a seat. Removing a member or converting them to a guest frees one up.
Can guests access folders or templates?
Guests can't be added to folders or browse your folder structure or template library.
Guests can't create gammas in the workspace, so they can't generate from a template. They can only view a template they've been directly shared on.
What's the difference between removing someone and deprovisioning their account?
Removing (from Settings → Members) takes someone out of your workspace. You can remove all their access, or convert them to a guest to preserve their access to gammas they created or were directly invited to.
Deprovisioning is available on Enterprise workspaces with SCIM. Deprovisioning someone via SCIM disables their account entirely and removes them from your workspace. There's no separate deactivate action in the product.
Do guests have to sign in with SSO?
If your workspace has SSO enabled, sign-in requirements follow the email domain, not the role.
Guests with an email on your verified company domain are required to sign in with SSO, just like members.
External members and external guests, meaning people whose email domain isn't verified by your organization (like a client or contractor on their own email), aren't required to use SSO, since SSO can't be enforced on unverified domains.
Someone shared files with an external person before we restricted guest invites. Do they still have access?
Yes. Invite restrictions only prevent new guests from being added.
To revoke an existing guest's access, use Revoke access in the Guests section of your members page.
If they haven't signed up yet, use Revoke in Pending invitations — their invitation links keep working until you revoke them.
What happens if we restrict guest invites on Enterprise, then downgrade?
The restriction stays in place after you downgrade.
You can turn guest invites back on with any plan. However, turning them off again requires Enterprise. Gamma warns you before you make this change.