Account types

There are three kinds of account, and the difference between them is mostly about billing: who pays, and how the bill is split.

• Standalone is an account that stands on its own, with its own resources, users and payment method. Signing up gives you this type, and for a single organization or team it is all you need.
• Parent is an account that exists to hold others. It has no resources of its own; it collects the billing for its subaccounts and reports on them, together or one by one.
• Subaccount is a working account under a parent. It behaves like a standalone account, except that its charges go to the parent.

A parent and its subaccounts suit anyone who needs one bill and several separate workspaces: partners and resellers with a set of customers, enterprises with departments that should not see each other's configuration, and service providers running an environment per customer.

Comparison of account types

The three types differ in what they hold, how they are billed, and how their users and support plans are managed:

	Standalone	Parent	Subaccount
Holds resources — bot connections, voice channels, routing	Yes	No	Yes
Billing	Its own	Aggregated for all its subaccounts	Own usage and reports, charged to the parent
Payment methods	Prepaid, postpaid, Azure Marketplace	Prepaid, postpaid	The parent's
Users	Managed on the account	Managed on the account	Managed per subaccount
Support plan	On the account	On the account, and applies to its subaccounts	Inherited from the parent

Change an account type

An account can change type after it is created:

• A standalone account becomes a parent when you create a parent above it, and in doing so turns itself into that parent's first subaccount. Trial and Azure Marketplace accounts cannot do this.
• A standalone account becomes a subaccount when a parent adopts it. It keeps everything it has; only the billing moves.

Both changes are one-way. A subaccount cannot be detached from its parent afterwards.