About the Owner Role
When you or your designated representative activates an account with WP Engine, we collect some basic information from you, including the account name, the name and email address of the individual performing the activation, and your billing details (any credit or debit card information is handled by a third-party payment processor). The name and email address you provide to us at that time becomes the primary user on the account, or the Owner. Regardless of who the legal owner of the account may be (the individual performing the activation or the company they represent), the Owner is the designated administrative user with full rights to the account and all of its installs.
The Owner can create additional users through the User Portal with various rights to manage the account on your behalf. Contact information for Billing notifications can be updated under the My Account page of the User Portal, and contact information for Technical notifications can be updated in the Technical Contacts tab of the Users page. An Owner can even create additional Owners with full administrative privileges, but be careful. Owners not only have the ability to create new sites and add users, but they can also delete sites and users. You should make sure that anyone designated as an Owner on your account is trustworthy and will only act at your direction or in your interest.
You should also make sure that the Owner account is at all times updated and accessible. If an employee designated as the Owner leaves your company, you need to update your WP Engine account before they leave. If your developer or agency signs up with WP Engine on your behalf, make sure to update your account with us before you cut ties with that developer or agency.
Removing an Owner
To remove an Owner from your account (or to downgrade their privileges), there are a few steps you must take. First, you must have at least one Owner at all times, so you should have at least two Owners set up if you want to remove one of them. The new Owner can then edit the privileges of the old Owner, or remove the user altogether. As a final step, to confirm the removal, the new Owner should email [email protected] with details of the ownership change. This process will not be complete until you confirm the change by notifying us.
Finally, if the person designated as the Owner becomes unavailable for any reason, and if you don’t have a secondary Owner on your account, you will lose the ability to manage certain aspects of your account. If that happens, there are very limited ways that we can help (see this article), so keeping your user information up-to-date with us is extremely important.