Agencies need at least four access levels: full administrators, publishers who can schedule and post, contributors who draft but cannot publish, and reviewers or clients who approve without operational access. The critical requirement is scoping every role per client, so access to one workspace never implies access to another.
Permissions questions get asked as a feature checklist and should be asked as a workflow question: who on this account needs to do what, and what should each of them be unable to do by accident?
Administrators manage connections, billing, and user access; this should be a small group, since it is the level that can undo everything else. Publishers create and schedule content and push it live, which covers most account managers. Contributors draft content that someone else releases, which suits junior staff, freelancers, and contractors during a trial period. Reviewers and clients need to see and approve without touching connections or settings, and this is the level most agencies underuse; bringing clients into an approval role turns feedback from an email thread into a tracked step.
Scoping. Any role model that grants access globally rather than per client is a liability for an agency, because a freelancer hired for one client should be structurally unable to reach the other nineteen. Cloud Campaign's workspace model provides that boundary: access is granted per client workspace, and unlimited users on every plan mean there is never a financial reason to hand someone broader access than their job requires, which is how over-permissioning usually happens.
Default new team members to the lowest level that lets them work, and promote deliberately rather than starting everyone as an admin because it is easier. Give contractors contributor access on named clients only, and set a reminder to review it when the engagement ends. Add client-side reviewers generously, since approval participation improves both quality and the relationship. Audit assignments quarterly, which is also when leftover access from departures tends to surface.
Whatever governance document an agency writes should map onto real permission settings. A policy saying juniors cannot publish means nothing if everyone holds a publishing role, and clients evaluating an agency's security posture will ask to see the mapping rather than the policy.
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