--- title: "Workspaces" description: "What a workspace is, how many you get, buying more with the add-on, how to switch between them, and what happens if you downgrade or cancel." canonical: "https://kleiobase.com/docs/workspaces" last_updated: "2026-09-28" --- # Workspaces What a workspace is, how many you get, buying more with the add-on, how to switch between them, and what happens if you downgrade or cancel. A workspace is a completely separate knowledge base inside your account: its own records, people, families, timeline, places, conflicts, Research Companion conversations, insights, and Tree Health Score. Nothing crosses between workspaces: a duplicate match, a research finding, or a companion chat in one workspace never touches another. Use workspaces to keep unrelated research lines apart, such as your own family history, a client's family, or a one-off lookup. ## How many workspaces you get - **Explorer, Researcher, and Archivist** include **1 workspace**. - **Professional** includes **up to 5 workspaces**. - **Any plan** can add more with the **Workspaces add-on**: +1, +3 or +5 extra workspaces, billed monthly or yearly on top of your plan. Only **active** workspaces count toward your limit. Archived (read-only) workspaces are free and unlimited. Every account starts with one workspace (your **default** workspace), created automatically. On Explorer, Researcher, and Archivist that is the only included workspace; the add-on gives you more. On Professional you can create up to 4 more. ## Plan limits are shared across your workspaces, not per workspace Your monthly credits and your Research Companion usage budget belong to your **account**, not to any one workspace. If you have 3 workspaces on Professional, they all draw from the same monthly credit pool. Extra workspaces keep research lines apart but do not add to your allowance. See [Plans & Billing](/docs/plans-and-billing) for how credits and the Companion budget work. ## Creating and managing workspaces Manage your workspaces from **Settings > Workspaces**. Professional accounts use this page to create, rename, and switch their default; if you downgrade and still have more than one workspace, this page stays available too, so you can rename any of them or delete the ones you no longer need (a read-only workspace can't be made the default; see [Deleting a workspace](#deleting-a-workspace) below): - **New workspace** - create another isolated knowledge base, up to your plan's limit. - **Rename** - change a workspace's name at any time, including a read-only one. - **Set as default** - make a different workspace the one you land in and the one that can never be locked. Your default workspace cannot be archived. - **Delete** - permanently erase a workspace you no longer need. See [Deleting a workspace](#deleting-a-workspace) below. ## Adding more workspaces Open **Settings > Workspaces** and pick a pack under **Add workspaces to your plan**. The extra workspaces are added as soon as checkout completes and stack on top of what your plan includes. Each pack is its own subscription, and packs add up: buy +1 today and +3 later and you have 4 extra workspaces. You can mix monthly and yearly packs. To stop a pack, use **Cancel** next to it in **Settings > Billing**; cancel any pack separately. A cancelled pack stays usable until the end of the period you paid for. To switch a pack between monthly and yearly, cancel it and buy the other one. ## Archiving and restoring a workspace In **Settings > Workspaces**, **Archive** makes any workspace except your default read-only and frees its slot, so you can create or restore another. If you archive the workspace you are in, you are moved to your default. **Restore** makes an archived workspace active again, as long as you have a free slot; if you do not, archive another workspace or add more workspaces first. Workspaces you archive yourself stay archived until you restore them, even if you buy more workspaces later. ## Switching between workspaces If you have more than one workspace, a switcher appears at the top of the sidebar (and in the menu on mobile) showing your current workspace's name. Open it and pick another workspace to switch. Your current workspace is saved on your account, not in your browser, so switching takes effect immediately on every tab and every device you are signed into. If you were partway through an upload or a Companion conversation in another workspace, it stays there waiting for you when you switch back. ## What happens if you downgrade or cancel the add-on Nothing is ever deleted. If you drop from Professional to a plan that only includes 1 workspace, or your Workspaces add-on ends after cancellation and its paid period runs out, and your workspace count is now above your plan's included limit: - Your **default workspace** keeps working normally, with full read and write access. - Every **other workspace** beyond your new limit locks to **read-only**, indefinitely. You can still open it, browse everything in it, and export it in full. You cannot upload new records, confirm new profiles, or make any other change to it until you either come back within your plan's limit, buy the add-on again, or upgrade. - If you happened to be working inside a workspace that just became read-only, you are moved back to your default workspace automatically. - Deleting is a change too. Records, people and families *inside* a read-only workspace cannot be deleted individually, by you or by anything else, so the ones you can see stay exactly as you left them. One exception: anything already sitting in [trash](/docs/knowledge-base#trash) before the workspace locked is still automatically and permanently deleted 30 days after it was trashed, on the normal schedule, whether or not the workspace is currently read-only. Locking a workspace does not pause that clock. (You can still delete the whole workspace at once; see [Deleting a workspace](#deleting-a-workspace) below.) ### What it looks like in a read-only workspace Nothing is hidden or greyed out. You can open every page, search, read every record, and start an export exactly as before. When you try something that would change the workspace (adding a record, editing a person, merging a duplicate, asking the Research Companion), the action stops and explains that the workspace is read-only, with the option to upgrade. The change does not start, so nothing is half-saved. The one thing you can still change is the workspace's **name**, so you can keep your workspaces straight while they are locked. ### If the wrong workspace ends up read-only Which workspace stays writable is decided by which one is marked as your **default** when the downgrade takes effect, not by the one you were last working in. So if your research lives in a workspace you never set as the default, that is the one that locks. Nothing is lost either way: a read-only workspace stays fully readable and exportable. Before downgrading, the tidy fix is to open **Settings > Workspaces** and use **Set as default** on the workspace you work in. If you only notice afterwards, email support@kleiobase.com and we will move the default for you. We can do this up to **twice in any calendar month** per account. It is there to fix a mistake rather than to rotate which workspace is writable. If you need more than one writable workspace at a time, that is what Professional is for. Upgrading back to Professional, or buying more workspaces, restores the workspaces that were locked by the downgrade, oldest first, up to your new limit. Workspaces you archived yourself are not restored automatically. Your full account export (**Settings > Import / Export**) always covers every workspace you have, including read-only ones, so downgrading never shrinks what you can take with you. See [Importing & Exporting Data](/docs/importing-and-exporting). ## Deleting a workspace If you no longer need a workspace, you can permanently delete it and everything in it. The control lives at **Settings > Workspaces**, next to the workspace you want to remove. **You can delete a read-only workspace.** Its contents stay frozen while it's locked (see above), but you can still delete the workspace itself, the same as any other workspace. **Your default workspace cannot be deleted.** If the workspace you want to remove is currently your default, use **Set as default** on a different workspace first, then come back and delete the one you no longer want. A read-only workspace can't be made the default, so if every other workspace is currently locked after a downgrade, you can't make this change yourself; see [If the wrong workspace ends up read-only](#if-the-wrong-workspace-ends-up-read-only) above for the support-assisted option. This is the only workspace deletion doesn't reach; there's also a small limit on how many deletion requests you can start per hour, to prevent abuse. Deleting a workspace takes two steps, on purpose, since it cannot be undone: 1. **Type the workspace's name** exactly as it appears, to confirm you have the right one, then start the deletion. 2. **Click the confirmation link we email you.** For your security, the link only works if you also **re-enter your password** (or **re-sign in** with the identity provider you use, if you don't have a password), and it **expires after 30 minutes**. If it expires, go back to Settings > Workspaces and start again. **What deletion does.** The moment you confirm, everything in that workspace is erased immediately: its records, people, families, places, timeline, conflicts, Research Companion conversations, insights, Tree Health Score, and every file stored in it (record images, imported GEDCOM files, imported media, Research Companion attachments, profile photos, and any exports you generated from it). There is no undo, no trash, and no way to recover it afterward, so treat the confirmation step as final. **What deletion does not touch.** Your other workspaces are completely unaffected, and so is the rest of your account: billing, your profile, and your full account export (which always covers every workspace you still have) are untouched by deleting one workspace. ## Related reading - [Plans & Billing](/docs/plans-and-billing) - the four plans, pooled credits, and the Research Companion budget. - [Getting Started](/docs/getting-started) - the core upload-to-knowledge-base workflow, which happens inside whichever workspace is active. - [Importing & Exporting Data](/docs/importing-and-exporting) - exporting your data, across every workspace. - [Using KleioBase professionally](/docs/professional-use) - keeping client work in its own workspace. Canonical: https://kleiobase.com/docs/workspaces