What the number in the team badge counts, why pending invitations hold seats, how to free space when the limit is full, and which plan the limit comes from.
When you say "just one more person" and get a "team limit is full" warning, the cause is usually not the number of people but a forgotten invitation. The team limit is a simple number, but you need to know what it counts. This article explains how seats are calculated, where the number appears, and what to do when the limit is full.
What a seat is and what counts
The team limit is the number of seats in a portfolio. A seat is taken by either of these:
Every member of the team — including the portfolio owner. If you work alone, one seat is already taken.
Every pending invitation — invitations that were sent but not yet accepted hold a seat too. When one is accepted it turns into a membership; the seat count does not change.
The second rule surprises people, but it is necessary: otherwise a five-seat portfolio could send ten invitations and end up over the limit once everyone accepted.
💡 Sending a second invitation to the same address renews the pending one instead of taking another seat. So you can resend to a colleague who cannot find the email even when the limit is full.
Where you see the number
The same number appears in three places in the panel:
Portfolio settings › Team — The badge to the right of the title: Team 3/10, or Team 3 · unlimited when there is no limit.
Portfolio settings › Usage — The Team row in the Plan limits section. Under the section it says the limits come from the portfolio owner's plan.
My account › My portfolios — The Team column on each portfolio's row; with several portfolios you can see at a glance which one has room.
Which plan the limit comes from
The limit comes from the portfolio owner's plan and applies per portfolio. The plans of the people who join do not enter the calculation at all; My account › My portfolios says as much: portfolios you are a member of use their owners' plans.
That has two practical consequences:
An admin upgrading their own plan does not add seats to your portfolio. The portfolio owner upgrades.
If you opened several portfolios on the same plan, the limit applies to each one separately; free seats in one portfolio do nothing for another.
What you see when the limit is full
A warning strip appears at the top of the Invite a member section on the Team screen and states how many people the limit allows: "This portfolio's team limit is full (… people). The portfolio owner can upgrade the plan." The Upgrade plan button on the right of the strip is drawn only for the portfolio owner.
If you press Send invitation anyway, no invitation is created and the same warning appears as an error notice.
In a rare case the warning can also arrive after you sent an invitation: if two admins invited someone for the last seat at the same moment, the second invitation is withdrawn. Refreshing the list and trying again is enough.
⚠️ Note: Seats are counted again while an invitation is being accepted. If the plan shrank after the invitation went out, or someone else joined in the meantime, the person sees the same limit warning when they try to join. So rather than letting an invitation sit for days, ask for it to be accepted soon.
Ways to free space
To make room without upgrading, work through these in order:
Clear out pending invitations. If a row has been waiting for months under Pending invitations, press Cancel; the seat is freed immediately.
Remove people who no longer work with you. Only the portfolio owner can do this. See Removing a team member.
Consider merging two portfolios. The same team sitting in two separate portfolios holds seats in both. Moving the accounts into one portfolio lowers the total seat need.
Upgrade the plan. If none of the above is enough, the portfolio owner raises the plan from My account › Plan and invoices.
What happens when the plan shrinks
If your plan shrinks or the limit drops, existing members are not deleted; the system only blocks new additions. So with an 8-person team and a limit that drops to 5, all eight keep working — but you cannot invite a ninth until someone leaves. The counter then reads something like 8/5, above the limit. That is not an error.
A concrete example
A café chain's owner is on a 5-seat plan. The team holds the owner, two admins and one agent (4 seats), plus a pending invitation sent two months ago to a candidate who was never hired (the 5th seat). Trying to invite a new agent produces the limit warning.
What they should do: press Cancel on the old row under Pending invitations. The seat frees up and the new invitation goes out without trouble. No upgrade is needed.
Common mistakes
Not counting pending invitations. Nearly every mismatch in the counter comes from here.
Not counting yourself. The portfolio owner holds a seat too; a 3-seat plan means "you plus 2 people".
Expecting the wrong person to upgrade. Only the portfolio owner can upgrade; an admin's plan does not affect this portfolio.
Confusing it with the account limit.Team counts people, Accounts counts connected Instagram and WhatsApp accounts. They are separate rows. See Plan limit warnings.