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Guest account

Guest account

Owned by Kamil Zarychta
Last updated: Jan 14, 2025
5 min read

let's search Atlassian comunity for posts about guest account

answer questions from users looking for alternatives to the limited functionality of the guest account in confluence

 

A guest account is a user account designed for external collaborators, such as contractors, partners, or clients, who only need access to specific spaces in Confluence. Guests:

  • Have restricted access to the instance.

  • Can only see the spaces they are explicitly invited to.

  • Cannot discover or access other content outside the granted permissions.

  • Only organization or site admins can invite guests.

  • Guests are added through user management and require separate space access configuration.

  • Space admins manage guest permissions in the "Guests" tab of space permissions.

  • Guests have limited default space permissions, excluding space admin, export space, and restrictions.

  • Licensing Limits: Organizations can invite up to 5 guests per licensed Confluence user. However, the total number of users (licensed users plus guests) cannot exceed the site's user limit, which is currently 50,000.

  • Internal Users as Guests: While the guest feature is primarily intended for external collaborators, it's possible to assign internal users as guests. However, if these users have the same email domain as your organization and are part of a managed account, they may count towards your licensed user limit.

 

What can guests see and do in Confluence? | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support

Invite guests to Confluence | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support

Guests are free of charge (up to 5 guests per paid user). Total number of users (paid + guests) can't exceed the current Confluence site user limit.

 

Important policy information
You may not convert current or former paid users to guests. The purpose behind the guest feature is to invite users outside of your organization.

Atlassian reserves the right to restrict your access to the feature if you’re not using it in compliance with this purpose and the guidelines outlined in Atlassian documentation. Atlassian also reserves the right to change the ratio of guests to paid users.

Guests are not currently supported in Confluence mobile apps. For more information, see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-76382.

Guests in Confluence

We have teammates that are using Confluence only for reading purposes, they dont create or edit Spaces and Pages. That would be great to somehow decrease the billing amount for such kind of users.

Would it be possible to convert those user into the Guests. Or at least  new hires, who dont need full access and will just be reading the content in our Confluence,  register as Guests and not pay for them.

As per the documentation regarding Guest Users for Confluence, you cannot convert users who have a paid license to Guest users.

Also note that a Guest user would have access to only one Space in Confluence, and you would have to individually add a Guest user to a space. Access to Spaces for Guest users cannot be managed by setting up user groups of Guests and granting access to Spaces based on the groups.

Note also on the above page that Atlassian has said the intent of the Guest user is to grant access to people who are external to your company.

Guest access any restrictions?

Let's say that there is a company that has 20 licensed users in Confluence Standard. These 20 people mainly fill 2 spaces: An internal space and an anonymous shared space for customers (FAQ etc).

If I understand it correctly, then one could create 100 (free) Guest users (20 x 5).

There are also 80 warehouse workers. These warehouse workers only need to have access to the internal space and check a few things there from time to time.

My question now is: Would it violate any rules or restrictions to give the 80 warehouse workers guest access (as they work in the same company as the 20 licensed users) or would that be ok?

 

So, if the warehouse workers were ever licensed subscribers, you wouldn't be able to add them as guests. If they were never users in your instance, then it likely will fall into this grey area. If Atlassian detects that the Guest users are all in the same domain as the paid users, you'll likely get a message from them stating that the behavior is not in the spirit of the feature

Setting Default Permissions for Guest Accounts in Confluence Cloud

Guest account has no such capabilities. External Share for Confluence has !!!

guest users in confluence cloud

Roll out the welcome mat — guests are available in Confluence Cloud

Frequently Asked Questions - SSO, IP whitelisting, marketplace apps, audit logs

Collaborate with anyone, anywhere with Confluence guests: GA release now live

nice video from K15t about Guest Account feature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cONDy0jQLrU&ab_channel=K15t

requirement to share multiple spaces

Collaborate with anyone, anywhere with Confluence guests: GA release now live

How does adding GUEST users affects the license cost on Confluence?