Netlify team access for agencies: roles, plans and handover

When a client adds you to their own Netlify team, you get a login of your own for deploys and project settings, while the client keeps ownership of the site, the plan and the bill. No password changes hands, and removing you later takes a few clicks. This guide follows Theo at Northside Studio, who is building a new site for Dana at Harbor Fitness.

Labels below come from Netlify's documentation at the time of writing. Netlify now calls each site a project, though a few screens still say site.

How Netlify teams work

Every project on Netlify belongs to a team, even a team of one. People join the team as members, and each member's role decides what they can do. Only a Team Owner can add or remove members, change roles or edit team settings, so Dana sends the invite from her side. The exact clicks, ready to share with a client, are on our Netlify step by step page.

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The roles that matter for agency work

Netlify's roles and permissions page lists several roles. Three cover almost every agency project:

The others rarely apply. A Git Contributor can trigger deploys but has no access to the Netlify app. Billing Admin is an Enterprise feature for people who only handle billing. Publisher and Internal Builder suit content editing in the Visual Editor and building with AI agents.

Ask for Developer. Netlify describes it as the role that manages deploys and other configuration needs, and an Owner can limit a Developer to specific projects, which suits a team that also runs sites you should not touch. A Developer cannot change the team plan, remove other members, or delete or transfer projects, so the account stays in the client's hands.

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How the client adds you

1. Dana opens the Harbor Fitness team in Netlify and goes to Team settings > Members.
2. She selects Add members and enters Theo's work email.
3. She chooses the Developer role and, if she likes, the projects Theo can reach, then confirms.

Netlify emails Theo an invitation with an Accept invitation button, and the invite also waits in his dashboard the next time he signs in. Dana can change his role or project access later from the same list with Options > Edit member, and the change takes effect immediately.

What the client's plan allows

Seats depend on Dana's plan, so it is worth checking before the kickoff call:

• Free and Personal. Netlify's billing FAQ says these plans cannot add team member seats, so Dana upgrades to Pro or higher first.
• Pro. On the current credit-based Pro plan, team member seats are unlimited and included.
• Legacy plans. On older plans, Owners and Developers are paid seats, so adding you may add to Dana's bill.
• Reviewers. Reviewer seats are free. On the current credit-based plans, the roles page says inviting a Reviewer needs Pro or higher.

Pro or higher also lets Dana require two-factor authentication for the whole team. She goes to Team settings > Access > Two-factor authentication, selects Edit settings and picks Encouraged, which shows a banner to members without it, or Enforced, which restricts team resources until they set it up. Netlify recommends warning members before enforcing. Theo can switch on his own first under User settings > Security > Two-factor authentication, using an authenticator app, and keep the recovery codes somewhere safe.

Moving a project between teams

If Theo started the project in Northside Studio's team, he moves it to Dana's team at launch, so it runs on her plan and under her control. According to Netlify's transfer guide, Theo must be a Team Owner where the project lives now and an Owner or Developer on Dana's team. If the two teams share no Owner or Developer, Netlify asks you to contact its support.

1. Dana adds Theo to her team as a Developer.
2. In the project, Theo goes to Project configuration > General > Project information.
3. He selects Transfer project and picks the Harbor Fitness team.

Read the in-app warnings before confirming. Members who are not on Dana's team lose dashboard access to the project, so invite anyone who still needs it first. A move to a lower plan drops settings for features that plan lacks, and a project on a credit-based team cannot move to a team on a legacy plan. An Owner can also block transfers out of a team, and Enterprise teams start with transfers blocked.

Two related pieces have their own steps. A domain listed on the team's DNS page is moved with Transfer ownership, found under Collaboration when you select the domain. And if the code sits in your GitHub account, move the repository as well, which our GitHub guide covers.

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Handing access back at the end

1. Dana goes to Team settings > Members, finds Theo and selects Options > Remove from team. Every team needs at least one Owner, so Dana stays an Owner herself.
2. On the same page, she checks Git Contributors and removes any from the agency with Options > Delete contributor. Netlify notes that this does not remove them from the Git repository, and anyone still in the repository can trigger a build, so remove them there too.
3. She replaces any API keys or tokens in the project's environment variables that the agency handled.

Our project handover checklist covers the same clean-up for the client's other platforms.

Doing this for every client?

Get Set Keys gives each client one link that walks them through these Netlify steps and checks each one is done. Porter, the AI setup helper on every link, answers their questions straight away and passes anything it can't answer to you. You can reserve a founding place before launch in November 2026.