As your community grows, you cannot โ and should not โ do everything yourself. MateFlow uses a simple, predictable permission model built on three member roles, plus per-space roles and member tiers that control what people can access. This guide explains each role, what it can do, how to assign roles, and how tiers relate to access.
The three community roles
Every member has exactly one community-wide role: member, moderator, or admin.
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Member | The default role. Members join spaces, post, comment, RSVP to events, and take courses. |
| Moderator | Everything a member can do, plus manage content and handle reports โ dismissing, warning, removing content, locking threads, and banning from a space. |
| Admin | Full access to all community settings โ members, spaces, moderation, monetization, automations, branding, and billing. |
Give the moderator role to trusted members who help keep discussions healthy, and reserve admin for people you trust with the whole community.
Assigning a role
To change someone's role:
- Open the Members area in your admin dashboard.
- Find the member (use search or filter by current role) and open their profile.
- Open the Update member role dialog, pick the new role โ Admin, Moderator, or Member โ and save.
The change takes effect immediately, and like other administrative actions it is recorded so you always have a history of who granted what.
Space roles: scoped permissions
Roles also exist per space, mirroring the community roles (admin, moderator, member) but scoped to a single space. This lets you appoint a moderator for one space without giving them community-wide power. Within each space you can also fine-tune what ordinary members may do โ for example whether members are allowed to post, reply, repost, or create events โ so a space can be anything from a broadcast-only announcement space to a fully open discussion.
Inviting people with a role
You can assign a role at the moment someone joins. From the invite screen you can:
- Send email invitations to specific addresses with a chosen role.
- Generate a shareable invite link tied to a role, with an expiry, and revoke it at any time.
This is handy for onboarding a batch of moderators or granting trusted partners elevated access from day one.
How member tiers relate to access
Roles decide what a member can manage; tiers decide what a member can access. A tier binds to one or more spaces and grants an access level to each:
- View โ read-only access to the space.
- Participate โ full read and post access.
- Exclusive โ access reserved for that tier's members.
Tiers are how you gate premium spaces, courses, or events behind a paid plan or membership level: assign a tier to a member (or grant it automatically when they subscribe) and they unlock exactly the spaces that tier covers. Because tiers are separate from roles, a paying member can have rich access without any moderation power, and a moderator can help run the community without being on a paid tier.
Next steps
- Manage roles and settings on the Admin page.
- Set up paid access levels with monetization and structure your community into spaces.
- Give new moderators a running start with a community onboarding checklist.
- Understand where roles apply by reading spaces vs channels.