Understand the Primary Owner role

The Primary Owner is the most powerful administrative role in Slack. You can become a Primary Owner by creating your own workspace, or if a Primary Owner chooses to transfer ownership of a workspace or Enterprise Grid org to you. Keep reading to learn more about this role, and how to make sure the right person is in it.

Understand Slack’s ownership policies

To understand the Primary Owner role, it’s helpful to get familiar with Slack’s ownership policies. The Primary Owner has ultimate decision-making capabilities, and represents the Customer in administering the workspace.

• If you use your corporate email domain to create a workspace or Enterprise Grid org, your organization is the Customer.
• If your workspace is set up by someone not formally affiliated with an organization, the Customer is the person who created the workspace.

To learn more about how we define the Customer, please review our Terms of Service.

Choose the right Primary Owner

Free, Pro, and Business+ plans

Enterprise Grid plan

The Workspace Primary Owner holds the highest level of permissions in Slack — only this person can delete the workspace or transfer ownership to someone else. There can only be one person in this role at a time, so it’s important to make sure it’s the right one. Here are some recommendations:

• An executive or senior-level manager
• Someone from the IT department who provisions licenses or handles account administration
• If within the policy guidelines of your organization, use a shared service/administrative email account on your company's domain that is managed by authorized personnel

The Org Primary Owner holds the highest level of permissions in Slack — only this person can transfer ownership of the org to someone else. There can only be one person in this role at a time, so it’s important to make sure it’s the right person. Here are some recommendations:

• An executive- or senior-level manager
• Someone from the IT department who provisions licenses or handles account administration
• If within the policy guidelines of your organization, use a shared service/administrative email account on your company's domain that is managed by authorized personnel

Transfer primary ownership

Because organizations change over time, Slack makes it possible to transfer ownership of a workspace or Enterprise Grid org to someone else. We recommend adding a step to your company’s off-boarding process to make sure a departing employee can transfer ownership before they leave.

If the Primary Owner leaves before transferring ownership, we may be able to help, but this is not something we can guarantee. We recommend using the best practices for Primary Owners below to help maintain your workspace. 

Best practices for Primary Owners

As the Primary Owner of a workspace or Enterprise Grid org, use the following tips to help you administer Slack.

Assign Owners, Admins, and billing contacts

• Promote Owners and Admins to help with day-to-day administrative tasks, like managing invitations or channels. Or, assign members to system roles (only available on the Enterprise Grid plan).
• Add billing contacts, like people from the accounting department, to keep them informed of billing activity.

Keep administrative accounts on the corporate domain

• Make sure all of your Owners and Admins use their company email addresses to join your Slack workspace or Enterprise Grid org.
• If your company’s email domain changes, the Primary Owner — and any other affected member — should update their email address in Slack.