How to Add Contributors and Team Members to a Substack Without Sharing a Login

Can several people work on one Substack without sharing a login? #

Yes. According to Substack's Help Center (read 3 October 2026), you can add multiple contributors to a publication from its Team page, and each person is invited by email address and signs in with their own Substack account. The Terms of Use treat sharing an account or password, or letting someone else log in as you, as a security problem, so invitations are the route to use.

An invited person needs a Substack account: the Help Center says collaborators should have set up their Substack profile, and that someone who does not receive the invitation email can accept it under Settings > Publications in their own account.

Which Team role does what? #

Visibility is separate from role. Someone listed as public appears as a contributor on your publication's About page; set them to Private and they stay out of the People section there.

How do you invite, change or remove someone? #

1. Open your publication's Settings and click Team.
2. Click Invite, type the person's email address and click Send invite.
3. New collaborators start as Private and Byline, which lists them as an author without access to your posts. To let them edit drafts, click the role and choose Contributor (or Admin).
4. Ask the person to accept from the email, or under Settings > Publications in their own account if the email does not arrive.
5. To change a role later, click it and choose Byline, Contributor or Admin. To remove someone, click the three dots and choose Remove.
6. For a shared byline on one post, make sure bylines are enabled in the publication's Settings, add a title to a new draft, click the + sign that appears and select the collaborator.

What do Substack's terms say about shared logins and working for others? #

• Shared logins. The Terms of Use list allowing someone else to log in as you, or sharing your account or password, among conduct that jeopardizes account security.
• Working for others. The Terms say you agree to use Substack for your own personal or organizational use, and not on behalf of or for the benefit of any third party. If you manage a client's newsletter, read that sentence closely, keep the publication under the client's own account and join it through a Team role. Ask Substack Support if your arrangement is unclear. The same pattern, where the client owns the account and the agency is added to it, is covered in the agency access guide.
• Responsibility. The Publisher Agreement says you are responsible for all your activity in connection with Substack and for the publications you distribute, so give Admin sparingly.
• Each person's own security. Two-factor authentication is set per account: turn on recovery questions first, then two-factor authentication, under Settings, Security section.

How should an agency or small team set this up? #

1. Have the client create the account and the publication, so it sits under the client's own email address.
2. Ask each of your people to set up their own Substack account and profile first; the Help Center's byline page lists a completed profile as a prerequisite for adding collaborators.
3. Invite them from Settings > Team with the lowest role that fits: Byline first, then Contributor, and Admin only for the person who must change settings.
4. Agree who keeps the owner login, the recovery questions and the authenticator app, and write it down.
5. Keep a one-page record of who holds which role, and review the Team page after every staffing change.

How do you off-board someone or hand a publication over? #

1. Remove the person from the Team (three dots > Remove) on their last day, and note who held which role.
2. If the owner is changing, open the publication's Settings, scroll to the Danger Zone, click Transfer ownership, enter the new owner's email and click Send transfer request. You and the recipient must both confirm by email; the Help Center says the recipient's confirmation email expires after 6 hours, after which you send a new request. Once complete, the new owner has full administrative control, including settings, subscribers and billing.
3. Plan payments: each publication needs its own Stripe account, though both can pay out to the same bank account.
4. Take a copy first. Settings > Exports > Create new export produces a zip with your posts, subscriber list and related statistics, and Substack emails you when it is ready.
5. Reopen the Team page after any change and confirm it lists only the people who should have access.

What if it fails? #

• The invitation never arrives. Check spam, then ask the person to look under Settings > Publications. If an error says the user cannot be invited to the publication, the Help Center says the person may have subscribed to your publication and then unsubscribed.
• The transfer stays Pending. Both of you must confirm from the emails; check spam, and resend if 6 hours have passed.
• The owner lost access. The Help Center's recovery page sends people who lost their email address to Substack Support, and says recovery questions make restoring access much more likely. See also why Substack keeps logging you out.
• Not sure which role to give. Start with Byline, which cannot open Posts or Settings, and raise it only when needed.

Where ADSSPEED fits #

ADSSPEED is a desktop app for Windows and macOS that manages many browser profiles. A team that handles several publications can give each account it manages its own browser profile, which keeps its own cookies and settings, and open, stop and organise profiles in bulk. Profile data is kept on your own computer. ADSSPEED does not replace Team roles: every person still signs in with their own Substack account, and access is still granted and removed inside Substack. Setup is in installing ADSSPEED on Windows. ADSSPEED is not affiliated with Substack.