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Sub-users

What a sub-user is, how to add one, what the seat counter means, and why every account starts with a system-managed default user.

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A sub-user is a proxy identity: a username and password your tools authenticate with, plus a set of products it may use. They exist so that one account can hold several identities without sharing one credential everywhere.

The sub-user list is on /dashboard/subusers, and also on each active product page's Users tab.

Why use them

Three reasons, in order of practical importance.

Isolation. A tool, a colleague or a client gets its own credential. Revoking one does not disturb the others.

Attribution. Usage per sub-user shows which job is consuming traffic.

Allocation. Traffic can be reserved for a specific sub-user so a busy job cannot consume another's share. See Traffic Allocation.

The seat counter

The page shows seats used against seats available, in the form used/total, for example 2/50. The total is the maximum number of sub-users the account may hold. Creating one consumes a seat; deleting one frees it. Every account starts with a limit of five sub-users. If you need more, ask support to raise it. The same number is the cap on live API tokens, so a higher limit raises both.

The default user

Every account has a sub-user named default. It is created and maintained by the system rather than by you.

  • It holds access to every product the account is entitled to.
  • It cannot be deleted.
  • It counts toward the seat total like any other user.

It exists so that a new account always has a working credential, before you have configured anything. You can use it, but most people create a named sub-user per job so that usage is attributable and revocable.

Adding a sub-user

  1. Open /dashboard/subusers, or the Users tab on a product page.
  2. Select Add new.
  3. Give the sub-user a name.
  4. Select which services it may access.
  5. Confirm.

Two notes on step 4.

  • On the account-wide page you choose from all the services the account is entitled to.
  • On a product page, creation is scoped to that product, so the service is pre-selected and cannot be added elsewhere.

Newly created sub-users appear immediately and may briefly show as still provisioning, during which they are disabled for endpoint generation.

What each list shows

The two lists are not the same view.

  • The account-wide list at /dashboard/subusers shows every sub-user and every service it holds. The All, Residential and Mobile chips narrow it to one product.
  • A product page's Users tab is scoped to that product. It lists only the sub-users that hold it, one row each, and its tab label counts those users only, so Users (1/5) on the Residential page means one sub-user holds residential, out of a seat cap of five. There are no filter chips here, because there is nothing else to switch to.

That distinction is what makes allocation readable per product: the rows you see, the allocation each one holds and the traffic left on that product all describe the same product.

Where the sub-user appears

Once created, a sub-user can be selected as the Proxy username in the Endpoint Generator, which is what makes its credentials usable in an endpoint.

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