Asana guests and members are the two classes of people in an Asana organization, and the difference decides who has to be paid for. “Who you pay for is decided by where the subscription sits – meaning which Asana space – and which people are part of that space. Members of that space will count towards your bill.”[1] Membership of an organization follows the company’s email domain. “A guest is a user in an organization who does not share the organization’s email domain.”[2] Guests are free in organizations, so a domain-based count is the main way to estimate an Asana licence position. The Subscriber Terms add rules on employees, contractors and seat sharing that sit above the billing logic.[3]
Editions
Guest access exists on all tiers, including Personal and the legacy Premium, Business and Legacy Enterprise tiers.[2] Paid plans include “Unlimited free guests”. Enterprise adds guest invitation permissions, which “control who can invite external collaborators”. The comparison table also lists automatic removal of guests after a period of inactivity as a feature.[4] Enterprise and Enterprise+ also offer a third class of user, the View only license. View-only users can see work they are given access to but “cannot collaborate or take any actions, such as commenting on or editing objects”.[6]
Metrics
| Person | Counts towards seats? | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Organization member (company email domain) | Yes, when the plan covers the organization or the member’s team or division | [1] |
| Guest in an organization, team or division | No | [1] |
| Anyone in a workspace, member or guest | Yes | [1] |
| Employee of the customer or an affiliate given guest access | Must have an End User Subscription | [3] |
| View-only user (Enterprise) | Holds a view-only licence, not a full seat | [6] |
| Member whose licence is paused | No, until they log in again | [8] |
The contractual unit is the End User (seat): any individual authorised to use the Services under the customer’s account, “including Customer’s or its Affiliates’ employees, consultants, contractors, or agents”.[3] The billing unit for external collaborators is the Guest.
Counting / floors
Where the subscription sits
Organizations. “Organizations connect all the people at your company using Asana in a single space based on your company’s shared email domain.” For an organization-level plan, “it covers every member of the organization, meaning every organization member is considered in each billing cycle.”[1] Every person who signs up with a company email address therefore adds to the count, whether or not they use paid features. Catalog proof: Organization plans cover every member of the email domain.
Teams. A plan can be bought for a single team inside the organization. Seats are then assigned to people on that team who do not already have a licence. The Help Center gives the example of “a specific 15-person team who need access to Starter features”.[1]
Divisions. “With a division plan, where a single subscription covers multiple teams, every member of those teams counts towards the seat limit. Someone who is part of many teams in a single division is only counted against the subscription’s seat limit once.” In divisions, licences travel with the user. When licensed users share work or invite others, “Asana may automatically assign a paid seat to those collaborators”.[1] Sharing work in a division can therefore add paid seats.
Workspaces. Workspaces have no common email domain, and there the guest exemption does not apply: “Unlike organizations, anyone collaborating in a workspace counts towards the paid plan, whether full members or guests.”[1] Catalog proof: In workspaces guests count towards the paid plan.
Guests are free in organizations
“Note that guests do not count towards your bill, and do not take up a space on your subscription’s seat limit.” The Help Center’s example is a team of 10 organization members and 2 guests, for which “a 10-seat subscription on their specific Asana team will suffice”.[1] The Guests FAQ says the same for organization upgrades: “Guests do not contribute toward your overall membership count when upgrading an entire organization.”[2] Guests see only what is shared with them. They cannot create rules, task templates, custom field settings or teams, cannot become admins, and cannot upgrade an organization.[2] Catalog proof: Guests do not count towards the bill or seat limit in organizations.
Employees may not be guests
The free-guest rule has a contractual limit. Under §2.4(b) of the Subscriber Terms, the customer may not exploit the Services by “allowing its employees or employees of its Affiliates to access the Services as guests instead of acquiring End User Subscriptions for such employees”.[3] The Guests FAQ repeats the rule under “Acceptable use terms for guests”. It describes guest accounts as intended “to collaborate with external business partners such as clients, contractors or customers”.[2] Staff who use personal or non-corporate email addresses, or employees of an affiliate on a different domain, may appear as guests in the system but must still be licensed. A breach of §2.4 allows termination “with immediate effect upon receipt of notice”.[3] Catalog proof: Employees may not be given guest access instead of seats; Breach of the service restrictions allows immediate termination.
Converting guests and members
A guest cannot simply be converted into a member, or the other way round. A guest becomes a member only by adding an email address under the organization’s domain to their Asana account.[2] Removing a guest from a team or division does not remove them from the organization. They can still appear in the assignee list until they are removed from the organization itself.[2]
Users in several organizations
A person can be a member in one organization and a guest in another. “Members of paid organizations using guest access in other organizations will still occupy a license in their home organization.”[2] Catalog proof: Members of other paid organizations still use a licence at home.
No seat sharing, reassignment allowed
Under §2.4(e), seats may not be “shared or used by more than one individual End User”. The exception is that “End User seats may be reassigned to new End Users replacing individuals who no longer use the Services for any purpose”.[3] Reassignment on staff turnover is therefore allowed, while a shared login for a team is not. The User Terms of Service separately require each user not to “allow others to access the Service using your Asana account”.[5] Catalog proof: Seats may not be shared but may be reassigned.
Internal users above paid seats
When internal users exceed paid seats, the account is resized to the matching seat bucket and invoiced or charged.[7] Inactive members can be paused, up to 10% of the subscription size, instead of being removed.[8] See Asana plans, seats and billing.
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Counting is per person and per Asana space.[1]
Cloud / BYOL
Not applicable. Asana is a hosted service.[4]
Programs
The User Terms of Service separate “Free Users”, who use the free version, from “Managed Users”, who use Asana under a paid plan bought by a customer. For Managed Users, the customer’s agreement with Asana governs, and the customer controls their access.[5] A member who joins an employer’s organization is a Managed User of that employer’s subscription.[5] Catalog proof: Managed Users are governed by the Customer Agreement.
Out of scope
- Client portal users of Asana Client Management and ticket submitters in Asana Service Management, which have their own access models.
- Service accounts and AI Teammates, which are not End Users in the guest and member sense. AI usage is covered in Asana AI requests and AI Studio credits.