Roles 🪪

Roles help you control what each person on your team can see and do. They can be as simple as naming people "Researchers" or "PMs" for different types of collaborators, or defining permissions across studies, incentives, and pool by role in far fewer clicks than selecting people individually on the People page.  This article explains:

• What roles are
• How roles differ from seats (this is the tricky part)
• How to create and manage custom roles

What is a role?

A role is a bundle of permissions assigned to a person, and it's always based on one of three underlying roles in Ethnio:

For example:

• Admin → broad access across the account
• Team Member → can run studies but not manage billing
• Collaborator → limited access, often view-only or scoped

You can also create custom roles to match how your team actually works, like:

• Research Assistant (RA)
• UX Researcher
• Recruiter

Roles vs Seats

This is can be a bit confusing, so let’s make it simple:

🧩 Roles = unlimited on all plans

💺 Seats = determined by your plan

You can think of it like this:

• A role is a job title with rules
• A seat is one of the main things included in your plan, like one account owner, two admins, five team members, etc

You can create as many job titles as you want, but you only have a limited number of seats to fill those roles.

Example

Let’s say your plan includes:

• 10 Team Member seats
• 40 Collaborator seats

You could create:

• 5 different custom roles based on Team Member
• 5 different custom roles based on Collaborator

No problem. But when you assign people:

• Every person assigned to a Team Member–based role uses a Team Member seat
• Every person assigned to a Collaborator–based role uses a Collaborator seat

Why this matters

You might run into this situation:

“I created a new role but can’t add more people to it”

That usually means:

• You’ve run out of seats for that role type, not roles

Quick reference

Creating a custom role ➕

You can create unlimited custom roles on all Ethnio plans.

Step 1: Choose a base role

Every custom role starts from a base:

• Admin
• Team Member
• Collaborator

This determines:

• The maximum level of access
• Which seat type it will use

Example:

• A role based on Collaborator will always use a Collaborator seat

Step 2: Customize the role

You can:

• Name the role
• Add an icon and color for easy recognition
• Add a description

This helps teams quickly understand who does what.

Step 3: Add people

You can assign people during setup or later.

Important:

• Each person you assign consumes a seat based on the base role
• If you run out of seats, you’ll need to upgrade or free one up

Step 4: Set permissions

Permissions can include:

• Creating studies
• Accessing incentives
• Viewing or editing participant data
• Using guardrails (like forcing templates)

You can fine-tune access depending on how controlled or flexible you want workflows to be.

Editing roles later 📝

You can always:

• Edit the role
• Change permissions
• Add or remove people

From the Roles page, open the menu and choose:

• Edit role
• Add/remove people
• Edit permissions

Common roles and their use cases

Here are a few practical ways teams use roles:

Research Assistant (RA)

• Can create studies
• Must use templates (guardrails on)

UX Researcher

• Full study access
• Limited admin access

Designer or PM

• View-only access
• No PII

Troubleshooting

“Why can’t I add more people to this role?”

You’ve likely hit your seat limit for that base role.

“Can I create more roles?”

Yes, unlimited.

“Can I change a role’s base type?”

No. You’ll need to create a new role with a different base.

If you remember one thing

Roles define what people can do.

Seats define how many people you can have.

Once that clicks, everything else makes sense.