Transferring ownership of a publication or workspace

Whether you’re acquiring a publication or you’re transferring a publication to another workspace within beehiiv, doing so involves transferring the ownership by either moving it from one workspace to another or changing ownership within the same workspace. This process requires careful planning to ensure a smooth transition for all parties involved. To get familiar with the different team member roles before diving in, check out our workspace user roles and permissions overview.

Transferring ownership involves several key steps, including gathering necessary information and obtaining permissions from both new and current owners of the publication or workspace. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process for transferring ownership both between workspaces and within the same workspace, along with the details to include when contacting our team to help complete the transfer.

Before transferring a publication to a new workspace, it’s helpful to understand how this might impact its functionality and billing:

• Workspace-level limits and features: Publications inherit the billing plan, features, and limits of the destination workspace. You can review what’s included in each plan on our Pricing page.
• Subscriber tiers and pricing: Plan tiers are determined by the total number of active subscribers across all publications in a workspace. Transferring a publication may increase the active subscriber count and require a tier upgrade. For more details, visit our Plan types and subscriber plan tier pricing article.

Once you’ve reviewed the steps for your scenario below, you can get started by reaching out to our Chatbot Assistant Buzz in the bottom-right corner of this article or through the Help page in your account.

If the current Owner would like to transfer ownership, or a current workspace Admin would like to assume ownership, we’ll need to collect some information and verify the request from both the current Owner and the assuming Admin via their associated email addresses. 

• Email address of the current workspace Owner.
• Email address of the workspace Admin who will be assuming ownership.

Once we receive your request, we’ll follow up to collect written confirmation from both the current Owner and the assuming Owner.

After we’ve received confirmation from both parties, we’ll escalate the request and complete the ownership transfer. Once finalized, we’ll notify you so you can make any additional updates, such as changing billing details or other ownership-related settings.

If you are the Owner of multiple workspaces and you’d like to transfer a publication from one workspace to another, we’ll need to collect some information and receive verification from both Owner emails to move forward with the transfer.

• Account Owner email associated with the workspace receiving the publication.
• Account Owner email associated with the workspace currently owning the publication.
• Name of the publication(s) being transferred.

After we receive both emails, we’ll follow up to request written confirmation from each account Owner — both from the workspace currently housing the publication(s) and from the one receiving them.

We’ll then outline any remaining steps to ensure the transfer goes smoothly, as well as confirming there are no outstanding monetary considerations, such as paid subscriptions, Boosts, Ad Network earnings, or payouts, that need to be addressed before the transfer.

Once all requirements are met, we’ll escalate the request to complete the transfer. We’ll confirm via email once it’s finalized, so you can take care of any additional updates, like changing billing information or adjusting ownership settings.

If you are selling or acquiring a publication from a workspace you do not own — and both Owners agree to transfer the publication — we’ll need to collect some information and verify approval from both Owner emails to begin the process.

• Account Owner email associated with the workspace receiving the publication.
• Account Owner email associated with the workspace currently owning the publication.
• Name of the publication(s) being transferred.

After receiving both emails, we’ll follow up to request written confirmation from each account Owner — both from the workspace currently housing the publication(s) and from the one receiving them.

We’ll then outline any remaining steps to ensure the transfer goes smoothly, as well as confirming there are no outstanding monetary considerations, such as paid subscriptions, Boosts, Ad Network earnings, or payouts, that need to be addressed before the transfer.

Once those items are confirmed, we’ll escalate the request to complete the transfer. We’ll send a final confirmation once it’s done, so you can make any necessary updates, like adjusting billing information or handling any other ownership changes.

Why is all this information required?
This information is crucial for a secure transfer and helps avoid disruptions in the operation of the publication, ensuring a smooth transition for both the readers and those managing the newsletter.
Can we merge multiple publications into one?
No, publications cannot be merged, they can only be transferred from one workspace to another. However, after transferring a publication, you can manually copy and paste content into an existing publication.
Will all team members and Admins transfer with the publication?
Only publication team member roles will transfer. Workspace team members will not move with the publication and will need to be reinvited by the new Owner. For more details, refer to our article on adding additional team members.
What if the original Owner has left or is no longer available?
We will need confirmation from the account Owner email associated with that party. Please make every attempt to provide us with confirmation from that email. If it's not possible, our support team may require additional verification steps to complete the transfer.
What if the original Owner has lost access to their email?
Please refer to our 'Lost access to account email’ article for guidance on regaining access to that email.
What if the new Owner does not have a beehiiv account?
As a first step, start by adding the new Owner’s email as a workspace Admin. This will prompt them to create a beehiiv account. After that, you can submit a request to transfer ownership. For more details, refer to our article on adding additional team members.
What if I want to replace my current Owner account email with the new Owner’s email?

If you no longer wish to be listed in the workspace as the Owner, you can update your account’s Owner email instead of submitting a transfer request. Please refer to our 'How to change your beehiiv account email’ article for more information. Before making changes, be sure to review and remove any sensitive information, such as billing details, from the account.

If you'd like assistance, you can access our Chatbot Assistant Buzz in the bottom-right corner of this article or visit the Help page in your account.