This article is about changing the Account Owner for customers on our Free and Growth plans.
The Account Owner is a team member with the highest level of permissions. There may be times when you need to change who in your team will be the Account Owner.
Before you begin
- Changing the Account Owner will change ownership over the entire account.
- If you only need another team member to manage billing, consider delegating billing permissions, which will let you remain the Account Owner.
- Ensure the intended new Account Owner is already added as a user on your account.
- When the Account Owner is changed, the previous Account Owner will still be a user on your account without Account Owner permissions. You'll need to revoke their access to your account to remove them as a user.
- Resetting the current Account Owner's password is the quickest method to make an ownership change. If the current Account Owner is unavailable and doesn't use two-factor authentication, check with your IT department about accessing their emails. You can use their email to reset the password. After logging in with the new password, refer to the section below on how to proceed if the Account Owner is still available.
- This change will not result in any lost data.
This article steps through the process for changing your Account Owner.
- Your Account Owner is unavailable
- Your Account Owner is still available to make the change
- Why can't I change Account Owner?
Your Account Owner is unavailable
When your current Account Owner is unavailable to make the ownership change, our Support team can make the change following verification using the steps below.
1. Make a note of the oldest Site in your account and its Site ID.
Your oldest Site and its ID can be found on your Sites page by looking for the lowest Site ID number on the left of the Site name.
2. After identifying your oldest Site and its ID, complete one of the following two possible verification methods:
Upload an HTML file to your oldest Site
1. Create a contentsquare.txt file that contains the oldest Site ID you identified above and today’s date.
The entry in the contentsquare.txt file should use the format:cs=[Oldest_Site_ID]-DDMMYYYY
For example, if today was 25 December 2023 and the oldest Site ID is 123456, the entry would be:cs=123456-25122023
2. Upload the contentsquare.txt file to the domain of the oldest Site you identified above.
For example, if Contentsquare were completing an ownership check for https://contentsquare.com, the uploaded file could be accessed when visiting https://contentsquare.com/contentsquare.txt
3. To finish the verification, contact Support.
Add a DNS TXT entry on your oldest Site
Instructions for adding a DNS TXT are typically found on your domain registrar's website. You can also check out our guide How do I verify my domain using DNS TXT to change the Account Owner for a list of popular domain registrars.
1. On your oldest Site identified above, add a DNS TXT entry with the Site ID and today’s date.
The DNS TXT entry should use the format:cs=[Oldest_Site_ID]-DDMMYYYY
For example, if today was 25 December 2023 and the oldest Site ID is 123456, the entry would be:cs=123456-25122023
2. To finish the verification, contact Support.
Your Account Owner is still available to make the change
1. As the current Account Owner, visit your Preferences page.
2. Click Change Account Owner.
3. Select the new Account Owner from the dropdown, enter the current Account Owner's password, then click Continue.
Why can't I change the Account Owner?
If you are unable to follow the steps above, it can be because:
- The account is not on the Free plan: If the new owner is already an Account Owner of another account, then changing ownership to the new owner will merge the accounts under the single Account Owner. The accounts need to be downgraded to the Free plan before changing ownership.
- You're unable to add a DNS TXT entry to verify the account: For DNS TXT entries, you may need to ask the person in charge of managing the hosting and domain names for your organisation to complete this step. You can also refer to our guide on How do I verify my domain using DNS TXT to change the Account Owner for more help with this.