Lost Site Admin Access for Free Jira Cloud Instance – Need Help Regaining Admin Rights

[Kanhu]

Hello Atlassian Community,

We are experiencing an issue with our free Jira Cloud instance. 

Our only site admin has left the organization, and we do not have access to their email address. As a result, we are unable to:

• Add or invite new users (we are under the 10-user limit)
• Remove or deactivate the departed user
• Contact Atlassian Support directly (since we are not site admins)
• Create a new Jira Cloud instance (receiving errors)

We have project admin rights but not site admin rights, so we are unable to manage users or perform administrative tasks.

Attempts so far:

• Tried to reset the password for the departed admin (no access to their email)
• Searched for admin recovery options, but all require site admin access
• Unable to submit a support ticket as a non-admin

Request:
Could an Atlassian staff member please assist us in regaining site admin access for our Jira Cloud instance?
If any verification is needed, we are happy to provide further information.

Thank you for your help!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @klenka 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

When you say the only "site" admin left your company, was that person also your only Organization admin? Site administration is a lower level of admin access than Organization admin. Did that person establish your Jira subscription for you? Creating the Jira subscription would have also created the Organization and made the creator the Organization admin.

To see if anybody else is an Organization admin they can try logging in to https://admin.atlassian.com to see if they can access the Organization admin features.

Did the person use a personal email address or a company managed email address? If the person used a personal email address, Atlassian's public response in the past has been that you must work with that individual to have them login and grant administrator permissions to other people. When the administrator account is a personal email address it is difficult to prove that the individual is not the owner of the subscription and content.

You should be able to open a support case through the Licensing support page. Make sure to click the "need additional help" option to be able to support the ticket.

https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/purchasing-licensing#/

[Kanhu]

Hi @Trudy Claspill 

I am not sure if he has created any organization.
A few months ago a free jira cloud instance was created by a teammate that is no longer part of our company. And we do not have access to their email address. Since, he has not made us the site admin, we are not able to add new users.

Also, if we try to create a new jira cloud instance using our email id, we get error - "Something went wrong on our end. Please try again. If this keeps happening, contact support. (Issue ID for Atlassian use: 2be65c801be4466eaff8e838f024c1d9)".

Thanks for your help, able to create the support case using the link you shared above.