What is the Difference between Manager and Teammate Role?

A Manager can manage templates, groups, teammates, and signatures inside a workspace they have been added to. A Teammate can edit only their own details and copy their own signature, and cannot touch templates or anyone else's record.

There is a third role above both: Owner. The Owner is the person who created the workspace, and they are the only one who can handle billing or delete the workspace. Most confusion about permissions comes from assuming there are only two roles, so start with all three.

The three roles

Role	Who it is	Scope
Owner	The person who created the workspace	Full control, including billing and deletion
Manager	Someone added to run signatures day to day	Everything inside the workspaces they are added to
Teammate	Everyone else whose signature you manage	Their own record and their own signature

What each role can do

Action	Owner	Manager	Teammate
Create and edit templates	Yes	Yes	No
Create and edit groups	Yes	Yes	No
Add and remove teammates	Yes	Yes	No
Assign roles to teammates	Yes	Yes, Manager and Teammate	No
Install signatures to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365	Yes	Yes	No
Edit their own details	Yes	Yes	Yes
Copy their own signature	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage billing and plan	Yes	No	No
Delete the workspace	Yes	No	No

Two things this table is saying that are easy to miss:

Manager is not a lesser Owner inside the workspace. For everyday signature work, templates, groups, teammates, and installs, a Manager has the same reach as the Owner. The difference is the commercial and destructive actions: billing, plan changes, and deleting the workspace stay with the Owner under Account.
Ownership is not something you pick from the role dropdown. The Owner is whoever created the workspace. A Manager can promote another person to Manager, but that does not transfer ownership.

What a Teammate actually sees

A Teammate who accepts an invite gets a login, not an admin panel. Inside it they can:

Update their own details, the name, job title, department, phone, and photo that fill the dynamic fields in your template.
View and copy their own signature from MY SIGNATURES.

They cannot open TEMPLATES, create a group, add anyone, or change which template applies to them. That is the point. Your brand layout stays fixed while the personal details stay editable by the person who actually knows them.

One consequence worth planning around: because a Teammate cannot edit the template, a request like "can my title be smaller" is a request for you, not something they can do themselves.

Directory admin is a separate thing

A common mix-up is treating the SyncSignature role as the same as the admin rights in your email provider. They are independent.

Task	Permission needed	Where it happens
Create templates and groups	Manager or Owner in SyncSignature	SyncSignature workspace
Connect Google Workspace	Google super admin	Google Workspace Marketplace, then Integrations
Connect Microsoft 365	Microsoft 365 admin who can grant Graph consent	Integrations, then the Microsoft 365 admin center

So a marketing manager can hold the Manager role and run every signature for the company, while the one time directory connection is done by whoever holds the admin account. After that connection exists, the Manager does not need admin rights again.

How to set or change a role

Open TEAMMATES in the workspace.
Select the person whose access you want to change.
Set their role to Manager or Teammate. You can also choose the role at the point of inviting them.
Save. The change applies to that workspace only.

Changing someone from Teammate to Manager does not change their signature. Roles control what a person can administer, groups control what signature they get. They are two separate systems and they do not interact.

Roles across multiple workspaces

Roles are scoped per workspace, which matters most on the Agency plan where each client or brand gets a dedicated workspace. Someone can be a Manager in one workspace and have no access at all to the next one, so a client contact can run their own brand's signatures without seeing any other client's templates, teammates, or data.

This is how you give a client self service without giving them the keys to everything. Add them as a Manager in their workspace only. See multi brand email signature management for how the workspace split works.

Common issues and fixes

Issue	Cause	Fix
A Manager cannot see the billing page	Billing is Owner only	Ask the Owner to make the change under Account
A teammate says they cannot edit their signature layout	Layout comes from the template, which teammates cannot open	Edit the template yourself, every signature in the linked groups updates
A Manager cannot see another client's workspace	Roles are scoped to one workspace	Add them as a Manager in that workspace too
Someone was invited but has no signature	Role and group are separate, and they have no group	Assign a group in TEAMMATES
You need to hand the workspace to someone else	Ownership is not assignable from the role dropdown	Email support with the workspace name and the new owner's address
A teammate edited their title and the signature did not change	The field is static in the template	Set that field to dynamic in TEMPLATES

Import and manage teammates covers adding people before you assign roles.
Invite a teammate to your workspace is where the role is first chosen.
Roles for teammates on the Agency plan covers the multi workspace case.
What are groups explains why a role and a group are not the same thing.

Still stuck? Email support@syncsignature.com and include your workspace name, the teammate's email address, and the role you expected them to have.