Personal and company workspaces

A workspace is the billing and access boundary. It has a plan, a storage cap, members, viewer domains and, on paid plans, custom domains. Every user belongs to exactly one workspace.

Personal workspaces

The first time you sign in, Fermium creates a personal workspace for you on the Free plan. It is named after your email's local part ("Ada's workspace") with a slug derived from it, and you are its only member. You can rename it under Settings, then General.

If your email is on a company domain rather than a public provider, the domain is remembered on the personal workspace as a viewer domain, so an upgrade to a paid plan claims it immediately. A personal workspace does not claim the domain: nobody else is routed into it while it is on the Free plan.

Company workspaces

A company workspace is a workspace on a paid plan (Team, Business or Enterprise) that lists one or more viewer domains such as acme.com. A viewer domain claims that domain for membership: when someone signs in for the first time with an email on it, they join the workspace instead of getting a personal one.

Viewer domains never grant access to documents. A member opens a Restricted document only through a grant to them, a group they belong to, or the whole workspace. See Access.

Only paid workspaces claim domains, and a domain can be claimed by one workspace at a time. Adding a viewer domain that another paid workspace already claims fails with a 409.

How auto-join works

On first sign-in, the server looks at the email domain:

• If a paid workspace lists that domain as a viewer domain and has room under its member cap, the new user joins it.
• Otherwise the user gets a personal workspace.

Existing users are not moved automatically when a company later claims their domain; they keep their personal workspace. A workspace owner or admin can bring them in with an invite, which also works for people whose email domain the workspace does not claim. An operator can move a user on request (email hello@fermium.app).

Public email providers (gmail.com, outlook.com, icloud.com, proton.me and others) can never be viewer domains; otherwise anyone with a Gmail address could join.

Adding viewer domains

Under Settings, then Domains, or with PATCH /api/billing/workspace and a viewer_domains list. Rules:

• at least one current member must have an email on the domain, so you cannot claim a company you are not part of;
• the domain is not a public provider;
• the domain is not claimed by another paid workspace.

You can list several domains: your own, a subsidiary's, a contractor's. New sign-ups on any of them join the workspace.

Going from personal to company

Start a Team or Business plan from Settings, then Billing. The plan applies to your current workspace, the remembered viewer domain becomes active, and colleagues who sign in afterwards land in the same workspace. Nothing about your documents changes; their URLs and settings stay as they were.

Upgrading in place versus a pre-created workspace

If your company wants a workspace set up before anyone signs in, with the domain claimed and the plan set, email hello@fermium.app. An operator can pre-create it so the first colleague who signs in lands in it directly.