I am getting design support from a collaborator, so I had to remove my current admin for a moment, but apparently the basic plan does not allow even adding 1 more user? Unless I upgrade to the next level plan which is double the cost? This is feels very slimy.
Sounds like you have been misled or have some misunderstandings about collaborator accounts. They do not count towards your user limit. See https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/users/users-plan-requirements#staff-account-limits
IMO, I don’t think it’s slimy at all. Basic Plan gives you pretty much everything you need to get your business growing. When you scale, you can invest in a better plan. I personally think people are expecting too much of Shopify. Not defending them in the slightest, but someone demanding the $5/mo Starter Plan come with full features that all the other plans have, or this one where you are saying that Basic not having additional users is “slimy”, sends the wrong message.
The Basic plan limits staff accounts to 1 only. Collaborator accounts don’t count toward this limit. If you removed your only admin, you can’t add another staff member without upgrading. Use collaborator access for design help instead of staff accounts to avoid extra cost.
Hey @I-Ching_Sun
You never needed to remove your admin at all. Collaborators, which is how a designer should get access, don’t count toward your staff limit, so they sit completely separate from the single staff slot on Basic, which is why the others called it a misunderstanding rather than Shopify being slimy.
The right way to bring your designer in is collaborator access, not a staff account: go to Settings, Users and permissions, scroll to Collaborators, turn on the request code option, and give your designer that code (or they request access from their Partner dashboard), then you approve only the permissions they actually need. It’s free, doesn’t touch your staff limit, and needs no upgrade.
Hope that helps! If it did, a Like and Marking it as Solution goes a long way and helps others find the fix faster too.
Best,
Moeed
If your store is older, then yes, previously it was allowed to have more than 1 admin user on a Basic plan.
Some time ago Shopify has limited Basic plan to a single admin user, but allowed stores to keep all existing accounts.
Now you’ve removed this extra account and unfortunately, you would not be able to re-add it.
Possibly, support will be able to do that, but this is unlikely.
Thank you everyone for the clarification. I did not know that there is now a collaborator access. I will reach out to support to to possibly restore my admin user.