Licensing and seats

How Swopi Teams counts paid seats — a seat = an active member with a business card. The Support (Service Desk) role has admin rights but has no business card and is outside billing. Best practices and protection against circumvention.

This page explains what counts as a paid seat in Swopi Teams and which accounts are free. It applies generally to all enterprise customers.

#A seat = an active member with a business card

Swopi Teams is billed per active member with a digital business card. The seat count is continuously synchronized with the live state of members — as people are provisioned and deprovisioned, seats are occupied and freed.

Role Business card Paid seat
Admin Yes Yes
Manager Yes Yes
Member Yes Yes
Support / Service Desk No No

#Service Desk accounts are free

People who only administer Swopi to support their colleagues and do not use a business card themselves (service desk, helpdesk, IT operators) belong to the Support role. These accounts:

  • have admin-level administrative permissions (managing members, business cards, devices),
  • do not have their own digital business card,
  • do not count toward paid seats.

This is by design and aligns with best practice: you pay for the people who use the product (those with a business card), not for those who administer it on your behalf.

#How to mark an account as Support

Map the relevant people to the App Role Swopi.Support (or the Support group), exactly the same way as any other role — see Role mapping. The role is applied at SSO login and the seat counter automatically excludes them.

#Protection against circumvention (why you can't make everyone Support)

The Support role is designed so that it cannot be abused to circumvent the subscription:

  • Support has no business card and none of the product's user value — it cannot share a business card, collect leads as a user, or use NFC/QR sharing. Making everyone Support therefore means that no one can actually use Swopi — it is self-defeating, not a saving.
  • Role assignment is auditable — Support is assigned the same way as other roles (App Role / group), so through Access Packages it is visible who received it and when, with the option of regular review.
  • Contractual framework and monitoring — the number of Support accounts is part of the contract (typically a small number of actual administrators). Swopi monitors the ratio of Support accounts to paid seats and addresses any disproportionate growth with the customer.

#Deactivation frees a seat

When a member is deactivated (via SCIM active=false, or by removal in the Users section), the seat is freed immediately and billing stops. Reactivation occupies the seat again.


Sales inquiries: support@swopi.co