Types of Roles

Contentstack provides five user roles: "Owner", "Admin", "Developer", "Content Manager", and "Custom Role".

Let’s understand these roles in detail.

Each stack can have only one Owner. Creating a stack in Contentstack makes you the Owner of the stack. The Owner has the following rights:

• Complete rights to the content and settings of a stack in addition to the combined rights of an "Admin", “Developer” and a “Content Manager.”
• Right to delete a stack
• Can create delivery and management tokens
• Transfer the ownership of the stack to another user.

The Admin role has the following rights:

• Create, update, delete, publish, unpublish entries and assets
• Create, update, delete languages, environment, content types and custom roles
• Invite users to and remove users from the stack
• Create delivery and management tokens
• View audit log and publish queue

The Admin role has more rights than a Developer and fewer than the Owner. To know the difference, refer to the Stack Admin vs Stack Owner section.

A “Developer” is a person who creates the structure of the site or defines the way content will appear on the site. Hence, this role has the right to:

• View audit log
• Create Roles
• Invite users
• Create/edit/delete languages, environments, and content types
• Create/edit/delete/publish/unpublish entries and assets
• Can create delivery and management tokens
• View Publish Queue

To know the difference between the Admin and Developer roles, refer to the Stack Admin vs Stack Developer section.

A “Content Manager” is a user who works with/on the content of a stack. Thus, this role has the right to:

• Create/edit/delete/publish entries and assets
• View publishing queue

Note: Content Managers cannot view/edit content types or access stack settings. This role is partially editable, i.e., you can define the environment(s) and locale(s) this role has access to.

In addition to the predefined system roles (“Admin,” “Developer,” and “Content Manager”), you can add custom roles by defining specific permissions, and assign this role to the users of a stack.

The best part about custom roles is that you have fine-grained control over permissions. You can assign permissions at entry, field, and asset level. For example, “ABC” role can READ only two entries of a content type, or EDIT only the SEO fields, or cannot READ any assets.

To create a Custom role, follow the steps mentioned in the Create a Role section.

Note: While you can create multiple custom roles within a specific stack, please be aware that there is a maximum limit for customers as per plan outlined in the contract. We advise reviewing your contract details to understand the specific limitations applicable to your plan.

The following is a tabular summary that outlines the Stack roles and their permissions - making it easier for users to understand what each role entails - and how it operates within the context of stacks:

Note: It's important to note that custom roles for stacks allow for highly specific permissions that can be tailored to fit various needs, while Organization roles are predefined and cannot be customized.

Here are some relevant API requests that you can use when working with our Content Management APIs:

Create a Stack

Delete a Stack

Update a stack

Transfer Ownership