How to change paid seats to guest seats?

[Missy]

Now that we are able to have five free guest seats for every paid seat, I'd like to swap out some of my paid seats to guests. These are seats for clients that didn't really need full access anyway.

From what I can tell, I can't just change the seat type in Settings; I have to delete the users and re-invite them as guests. Is that correct?

If so, what happens to the cards they are assigned to or are watching? Will those issues automatically re-associate with the new guest account if we recreate them using the same email address? What's the best way to handle this conversion without disrupting our clients or requiring them to reconfigure everything?

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @Missy ,

In Jira Cloud Standard, converting paid users to guests is a great way to save costs. The key is changing the "Product Role" in Atlassian Admin and restricting their access scope.

Key Rules & Limits

• 1:5 Ratio: 5 free guests for every 1 paid seat.

• Single Project: Guests are restricted to ONE project only.

• External Only: The user's email domain must differ from your organization's domain.

Official Reference

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/manage-guest-access-in-jira/

BTW：Atlassian official docs state: "Changing a user's role does not delete their profile or history."

As long as you convert them by changing their role rather than deleting the account, all assignments and watches will be preserved automatically because their Account ID remains the same. This is the smoothest way to handle the transition.

[Ollie Guan]

Use a personal email (e.g., Gmail) to verify the transition:

1. Setup: Invite as a User, assign issues, and add as a Watcher.

2. Convert: In admin.atlassian.com, change role to Guest and remove from the jira-software-users group.

3. Grant Access: In Project Settings > People, add the user to a Guest role.

4. Verify: Log in as the test user to confirm all assignments/watches remain, then check Billing to ensure the seat is released.

Goal: Confirms the Account ID stays linked to history while the paid license is successfully freed.

[Missy]

Thank you very much for this info, Ollie!

As the article you linked mentions, "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."

These users are outside of my organization, but they had to be added as fully licensed users to access their project to collaborate with us. I can change their permissions, but they still had to be fully licensed users. So it seems like I have to delete them and re-invite them so they can be actual free guests. Is that not correct? Am I confused? Jira is so confusing to me. 

[Missy]

Just in case it's helpful to mention, we have 16 users within my organization and 16 clients that have external email domains.

That's a lot of deleting and re-inviting. When I delete these user accounts, what happens to the issues they are currently assigned to? Do I need to manually reassign all open issues to other team members before deleting them, or does Jira handle this automatically? Will the issues remain unassigned, or is there another way this is handled?

I don't want to disrupt things with our clients, so I was hoping there was another way to convert these 16 paid users to guests. 

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @Missy ,

Try testing this with just one client account first. Remove their access, add them back as a Guest, and verify they can see their previous issues without consuming a seat. Once confirmed, proceed with the remaining 15.

Since they already have external domains, follow these steps to avoid the "delete and re-invite" cycle:

Bulk Remove Access

• Go to admin.atlassian.com → Users.

• Select the 16 clients.

• Remove their Jira Software access. They are now "unlicensed" and free up your seats.

Add as Guest in Project

• Navigate to the client's Jira project → Project settings → People.

• Click Add people and enter their emails.

• Crucial: Select Guest in the Role dropdown.

[Missy]

Hello again! 

I removed access to the Jira software app for one client, and then I changed her from a Guest to a Guest-collaborator in the project. Jira still shows that I have the same amount of active users despite removing her access from Jira software. It also shows her as 'Invited' and not 'Active' in the Users section.

I'm not sure that this method worked, but I emailed her and asked her to try to log in as usual. We'll see! It's worth a shot!

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Missy 

Which Atlassian App are you having an issue with?

Best,

Fadoua