Aline offers several seat types so you can give each teammate the right level of access for their role. This guide explains the differences between Admin, Full, Basic (Support) and Viewer seats, what each one can and cannot do, and where to manage them.
Overview
In this article you will learn:
What each seat type can do
Which actions require a paid seat — including launching workflows and approving tasks
How seat types differ from document-level roles
Where to add, change and reactivate users
🎯 At a Glance
Admin / Full Seat: Full functionality (AI, workflows, playbooks, redlining, reporting)
Basic (Support) Seat: Core workflow tools plus limited AI usage
Viewer Seat (Free): Read-only access to permitted documents
Video walkthrough — plays on the live article.
What Needs a Paid Seat
These are the questions that come up most often, so they are answered up front:
Launching a workflow requires at least a Basic seat. Workflows use AI, so a Viewer cannot launch one.
A Viewer cannot attach a document through the web-based intake form, and cannot launch the workflow even without attaching one.
The same restriction applies in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Using the assistant in Teams or Slack does not bypass the seat requirement.
Anyone who has to approve a task needs a Basic seat. Approving is an action inside a workflow, not a read-only view.
If someone genuinely only needs to submit a request, share a public launch page instead of buying them a seat. See Building an Intake Form, Step by Step.
Admin Seat (Full Seat)
Admins have the highest level of access.
What Admins can do — everything in the platform, including:
Launch workflows
Use Aline AI
Create and run playbooks
Redline documents
Create reports
Manage users, groups, labels, integrations and billing
What Admins can see — all documents in the workspace by default.
💡 Admin and Full seats share the same feature access — the main difference is visibility permissions.
Full Seat (Non-Admin Full User)
Full users have access to the full Aline feature set, but may have more limited document visibility depending on permissions.
What Full Users can do:
Launch workflows
Use Aline AI
Create playbooks
Redline documents
Create reports
What Full Users can see — only documents they have been granted access to, based on labels and groups. See Setting Permissions for Groups via Labels.
Basic Seat (Support Seat)
Basic users have core platform functionality with limited AI usage.
What Basic Users can do:
Launch workflows
Complete and approve tasks assigned to them
Draft documents
Use Aline AI, within a limited token allowance
Key difference: Basic users have many of the same workflow and drafting capabilities as Full users, but their AI allowance is small. It is enough for workflow tasks and occasional chat questions, not for running reports or playbooks across a repository. See Understanding Token Usage in Aline.
Viewer Seat (Free)
Viewer seats are free and designed for read-only access.
What Viewers can do:
View documents they have permission to access
Receive documents as a carbon copy recipient at the end of a signing phase
What Viewers cannot do:
Launch workflows — including from Slack, Microsoft Teams, or the web intake form
Attach a document to a web-based intake form
Approve or complete workflow tasks
Edit documents using AI
Create or run playbooks
Run reports
⚠️ Viewer users can only see what they have been explicitly granted permission to view.
Seat Types vs. Document Roles
Seat type and document role are two different things, and mixing them up is the most common source of confusion.
A seat type decides what someone can do in the platform — launch, run AI, build playbooks, report.
A document role decides what someone can do to a specific document — Editor, Suggester, Commenter or Viewer. A collaborator added to a single document as a Suggester can redline that document without holding a paid seat.
⚠️ When AI conditionally routes a task to someone, that person is given view access only. If they also need to suggest or redline, add them to the workflow as a collaborator explicitly.
Step 1: Where to View and Add Users
Click the circle with your initial at the bottom left of the screen, then click Settings.
Select Billing to subscribe, change your plan, add seats or review seat types and billing options.
Select Users to see the people in your workspace and their current seat type.
Step 2: Add Additional Users
Go to Settings → Users.
Click Add Users.
Select the seat type(s) you want to add: Admin / Full, Basic (Support), or Viewer.
Review your updated billing summary.
Complete checkout to confirm your seat changes.
Step 3: Reactivate a Deactivated User
Go to Settings → Users.
Click the user you want to reactivate.
Click the three vertical dots on the right-hand side and choose Reactivate.
💡 Best Practices
Work out who has to act in a workflow — launch, approve, complete a task — before you buy seats. Those people need at least Basic.
Use a public launch page for requesters who only ever submit, rather than buying them seats.
Use labels and groups, not seat types, to control who sees which documents.
Give external counterparties document-level Suggester access rather than a seat.
📚 Related Articles
❓ Need Help?
Click the Support button in Aline to reach our team.