Can I change a team member's role?

Valid Email Checker keeps the role model deliberately simple: every user is either an owner (the account holder) or a team_member (someone invited into that owner's account). There are no admin/manager/viewer tiers between those two, and there is no in-dashboard switch that converts a member into an owner or vice versa. The two roles live in different rows of users_metadata with structurally different fields, and changing one to the other is not something the UI exposes. If you genuinely need a role change, support can do it manually after verifying identity.

Why there are only two roles

Most multi-tier role systems exist to gate features that mid-tier users should access but lower-tier users should not. On VEC the surface area is small enough that two clear roles cover the real-world cases:

• Owner. Anyone who pays for the account, manages credits, generates API keys, and controls the team. One per account.
• Team member. Anyone who runs verifications inside that owner's account without touching money or API access. Many per account, no seat cap.

We have looked at adding a 'team-admin' tier — a team member who can invite others but cannot buy credits — and the demand has been low enough to keep it on the roadmap rather than in production. See what can team members do and not do for the exact permission split today.

Promoting a team member to owner

Not self-service. Ownership transfer is a sensitive operation because it hands over the credit balance, the saved payment methods, the subscription, and the API keys. To avoid social-engineering risk, support handles it manually:

1. The current owner emails support@validemailchecker.com asking for an ownership transfer, specifying the team-member email that should become the new owner.
2. Support verifies identity on both sides — usually a short back-and-forth confirming both parties want the change.
3. Support reassigns the owner row and demotes the previous owner to a team_member of the new owner (or removes them, your choice).
4. Both parties get confirmation when the transfer completes.

Demoting an owner to team_member

Same path. If you stop being the principal account-holder but want to remain a verifier on the account, support can demote you in conjunction with transferring ownership to someone else. The reverse direction — being the only owner on the account and trying to demote yourself — does not really make sense; either someone else takes ownership or you close the account.

What does NOT count as a role change

• Suspending and reactivating a team member. That is a status change (team_members.status flips between active and suspended), not a role change. See how to suspend a team member.
• Removing a member and re-inviting them. Their role stays team_member through that whole flow. Re-invitation creates a fresh auth account with a new temporary password but the role is identical.
• Granting API access to a specific team member. Not possible — see why team members cannot generate API keys. The workaround is for the owner to issue a key and share it.