Inviting your team
Add people to your workspace, set what they can do, and remove them cleanly when they move on.
Reviewed 24 Oct 2026Available from the Pro plan
What inviting someone does
An invitation adds a person to your workspace, so they see the same links, domains, and analytics you do, with the level of access you choose for them.
It does not give them their own copy of anything. A workspace has one shared set of links, and everyone in it is working on the same set.
This is the Team page (a standalone entry in the sidebar, not a tab inside another section), where members, roles, and pending invitations all live together.
Sending an invitation
From the Team page, select Invite member, enter an email address and choose the role they should have. To invite a group in one go, choose Invite multiple at once and paste several addresses.
They get an email with a link. If they do not have a ShortZen account they are taken through sign-up first, and the invitation is waiting for them at the end.
An invitation lapses 7 days after it is sent. Its link stops working (someone following it afterwards is told the invitation may have expired) and it stops holding a seat, but it stays on the list marked Expired. Resend, on the row, issues a new link and starts another 7 days; the old link stops working the moment you do. Sending a fresh invitation to the same address is refused while the expired one is there: resend it, or cancel it first. Until it is accepted, each invitation is a row in the member table, saying how long it has left. One whose sender has since left the workspace cannot be accepted either; its row says so, and resending it makes you its sender. What happened to past invitations (accepted, declined or withdrawn) is under Invitation history, at the foot of the table.
Invitations are bound to the address you sent them to
Seats
Pending invitations hold a seat (they are reserving a place), so a send that would go over the plan is refused. On the top plan the seats are editors, and a viewer, who can look but not change anything, takes one of the plan's 10 viewer seats instead. While viewer seats are free, Invite member stays open for viewers when the editor seats are full. At capacity, Invite member stays in the header and is disabled with the reason, and a sentence under the roster says the same thing for everyone in the workspace.
- Team seats, by plan
- Free 1 · Starter 1 · Pro 3 · Business 10
At capacity, cancel an invitation that is not going to be accepted, remove someone who has moved on, or upgrade.
Choosing the right role
| Give them | When they |
|---|---|
| Admin | Run the workspace day to day and need to manage other people. |
| Member | Create and edit links as part of their job. |
| Viewer | Only need to look: stakeholders and anyone reporting on the numbers. Sees the whole workspace, so prefer a shared report for a client. |
Roles are easy to change afterwards, so start people lower than you think and raise them when they need it.
Removing someone
Removing a member takes away their access immediately and frees their seat. Everything they created stays: it belongs to the workspace, not to them.
Members can also leave a workspace themselves: Leave workspace, on their own row on Team or at the foot of Settings › Workspace. The owner cannot, and cannot be removed: ownership must be transferred first.
Seeing what people did
Each member row on Team shows when they were last seen: the last time they opened the dashboard, to the hour. It is not a live presence indicator. On the Business plan, the Audit Logs page collects workspace activity across everyone.
Step by step
Bring a new member into the workspace
For: Workspace owners and admins
Before you start
- A plan that includes team invitations.
- At least one free seat.
- Their work email address.
Steps
Open Team and look at Invite member.
If it is available there is a seat. If it is not, hover it to see why before you promise anyone anything.
Select Invite member at the top of the page.
It stays visible when inviting is unavailable. Hover it to see why.
Enter their email address exactly as they use it.
The invitation only works for this address.
Choose their role.
Member for someone doing the work, Viewer for someone watching it. Admin only if they will be managing other people.
Send.
They appear as a row in the member table and a seat is now reserved.
Tell them to expect the email and to check spam.
The single most common reason an invitation "did not arrive".
When they accept, confirm they have moved from pending to members with the right role.
Have them confirm they are in the correct workspace using the workspace switcher at the top of the sidebar (in the header on a phone).
Someone who belongs to several workspaces can easily be looking at the wrong one and conclude your links are missing.
What you should see
The new person is a member of the workspace with the access they need, seeing the same links and analytics as everyone else.
How to check it worked
- They appear under members with the intended role.
- They can see the workspace's links when logged in.
- They appear as a pending row, holding a seat until they accept.
Edge cases
- You are at your seat limit.
- Invite member stays in the header, disabled, with the reason. A sentence under the roster says the same. Cancel a stale invitation, remove a former member, or upgrade.
- They already have a ShortZen account.
- They log in and accept. The new workspace appears in their switcher alongside their own.
- You invited the wrong address.
- Cancel the pending invitation. That releases the seat immediately.
- Your plan does not include invitations.
- The Team page shows an upgrade notice in place of the form. Team invitations start on Pro.
If something goes wrong
- They did not receive the email.
- Check spam and confirm the address has no typo, then use Resend on their row in the member table. It keeps the same invitation, issues a new link, and gives it another 7 days. Do not cancel first: Cancel deletes the invitation outright, and there is then nothing left to resend: you would have to invite them again from scratch.
- The link says it is for another account.
- They are logged in with a different email than the one you invited. On that page they choose Log out and switch account, then log in with the invited address; the link picks up where it left off.
- They accepted but see no links.
- Accepting switches them into your workspace. If that step did not complete they can still be in their own workspace; have them pick yours from the workspace switcher at the top of the sidebar.
- They have the wrong role.
- Change it on the Team page; there is no need to remove and re-invite. A demotion applies at once, a promotion within about a minute.