Ever kept every admin job in your community to yourself because the only way to hand one over was to hand over all of them? That's the glue problem in a small form. You stay the bottleneck, not because you want to, but because nothing smaller exists to give away.
ESTAGE community roles fix that. A community role decides what someone can do inside your community, so the person keeping the feed clean doesn't need to edit your billing settings, and the person writing your courses doesn't need to ban anyone. Here's how roles work, what the four built-in roles cover, and the few rules worth knowing before you hand one out. If you're new to the platform, start with what ESTAGE is and come back.
Disclosure: I partner with ESTAGE and have an affiliate relationship with them. There are no affiliate links in this post. Every feature here comes from ESTAGE's own docs at knowledge.estage.com, checked in October 2026.
Why One Big Admin Switch Stops Working
A single admin level is simple, and with one trusted co-founder it's often enough. It gets harder once the community grows past what one or two people can carry. I've written about how to build a membership community without burning out, and handing off work is a big part of that. Sooner or later you need someone on member reports, someone on the course library, and someone running live events.
None of those people need the keys to everything. Your moderator doesn't need your legal pages, the terms and privacy text members accepted when they joined. Your course writer doesn't need custom scripts that run on every page of the community. Roles let you match access to the job.
Where Community Roles Live
You build roles in Community Settings → Roles, and you give them to people from the member list or from a member's profile. A community can hold up to 20 roles.
The Four Built-In Roles
Every community starts with four roles. They're ordinary roles, not fixtures: you can rename them, change which permissions they carry, or delete them.
- Admin: for a partner you trust with the whole community. Covers everything except assigning roles.
- Moderator: for keeping the feed clean and letting people in. Covers reports, hiding posts, bans, restrictions, and viewing and approving members.
- Editor: for whoever writes your courses and resources. Covers creating, editing and deleting courses, resources and videos, plus viewing members.
- Host: for running streams, calls and the schedule. Covers creating and running live events, muting and removing participants, and viewing members.
Look at what each role leaves out as much as what it covers. Bans aren't on the built-in Editor's list. Courses aren't on the built-in Moderator's list. That separation is the point: each helper gets the part of the job they actually do.
Building a Custom Role
If none of the four fits, go to Settings → Roles → New role. You get the whole permission list as a checkbox tree, grouped and ordered the same way your settings menu is, so you're reading a map you already know.
There are 39 individual permissions across nine areas. The docs list them under four headings:
- Community settings: name, about and branding, theme, channels and categories, custom emojis, access groups and privacy, legal pages, navigation and sidebar, SEO and social preview, custom scripts, the promo banner, analytics, levels and rewards, and awarding points by hand.
- Content: courses and challenges, resources and opportunities, and videos (each with create, edit and delete), plus moderation (reviewing reports, hiding and removing posts and comments, banning and unbanning members, restrictions) and live events (viewing, creating and running streams and events, muting and removing participants).
- People: viewing the member list, approving and declining join requests, removing members, and assigning roles.
- Add-ons: permissions for the Amplify and Licences add-ons. These only appear if your community has the add-on, so you never see a tick for a feature you don't have.
Each role shows how many permissions it carries out of the total, so a glance tells you whether a role is narrow or nearly everything.
Permissions worth a second look
A few permissions deserve a pause before you hand them out:
- Levels and rewards, and awarding points by hand. These are two ticks: one edits levels, badges and reward rules, the other awards points by hand. Points feed levels, and levels can gate posting and channels.
- Custom scripts. Arbitrary JavaScript on every page.
- Banning members. Removes their access to the whole community.
- Hiding and removing posts and comments. This reaches every member's posts, not only the helper's own.
- Removing members. Their posts, comments, likes and chats go with them.
- Deleting courses. ESTAGE's docs call this a real grant, because deleting a course takes the lessons and your members' progress with it.
Before you tick Delete on courses: ask yourself whether you'd be fine with this person removing a course, its lessons, and every member's progress in it. If not, give them create and edit only.
Giving Someone a Role, and Taking It Back
Open the member list, or the person's profile, and choose Assign a role. The picker shows each role with the number of permissions it carries, marks the role they hold now, and doesn't apply anything until you press Save. So you can see what you're about to do, and stop if it's wrong.
To take authority away, pick No role.
What Stays With the Owner
The community owner always holds everything and is never limited by a role. Assigning roles stays with the owner alone. That's why the built-in Admin covers everything except that one tick.
The reasoning is simple, and I think it's right. Anyone who can grant a role can grant their own, and then every other limit on them is only a suggestion. Separately, nobody can change their own role unless they're the community owner.
If someone can hand out roles, they can hand one to themselves. That's why assigning roles stays with the owner.
Rules Worth Knowing Before You Start
- Editing a role reaches everyone holding it, immediately. Narrowing Moderator narrows every moderator at once, not only new ones.
- You can't delete a role that members still hold. Move them off it first. The message tells you how many people are on it.
- Granted roles keep working if a permission later becomes unavailable. Nothing is taken away behind your back because a subscription lapsed.
- Nobody is narrowed automatically. Everyone who can administer your community today keeps that access until you give them a role. If you already have helpers with full access, assigning them a narrower role is the step that actually changes anything.
Community Roles vs Project Roles
These are two separate systems. A community role decides what someone can do inside your community. A project role decides what a collaborator can do in the Genesis builder: pages, publishing, payments. Someone can hold one, both, or neither.
Project roles have their own built-in set (Admin, Contributor and Marketer) and live under Project Settings → Roles. So if the person who writes your courses also edits your website, decide each role on its own.
Why This Matters in a Hub You Own
Being the glue isn't only about juggling tools. It's also about being the only person allowed to touch anything. Roles are a small feature with a structural point: you can give away the jobs without giving away the house, and the people helping you work inside the same place your members already are.
If you're still comparing community platforms, I covered how ESTAGE's community side compares in ESTAGE vs Skool. The full permission list is in ESTAGE's community roles and permissions docs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the built-in community roles in ESTAGE?
Every ESTAGE community starts with four roles: Admin, Moderator, Editor and Host. Admin covers everything except assigning roles. Moderator covers reports, hiding posts, bans, restrictions, and viewing and approving members. Editor covers creating, editing and deleting courses, resources and videos. Host covers creating and running live events and muting and removing participants. You can rename, edit or delete all four.
Who can assign community roles in ESTAGE?
Only the community owner. Assigning roles is the one permission the built-in Admin role doesn't include, because anyone who can grant roles could grant one to themselves.
Can a member change their own role?
No. In an ESTAGE community, nobody can change their own role unless they're the community owner, and the owner is never limited by a role.
Can I create custom community roles?
Yes. Go to Settings → Roles → New role to build a role from a checkbox tree of 39 individual permissions (some only appear with add-ons) across nine areas, ordered the same way as your settings menu. A community can hold up to 20 roles.
Are community roles the same as project roles?
No. Community roles decide what someone can do inside your community. Project roles decide what a collaborator can do in the Genesis builder, such as pages, publishing and payments. They're separate systems, and one person can hold one, both, or neither.
What happens when I edit an existing role?
The change reaches everyone holding that role, immediately. If you narrow the Moderator role, every moderator in the community is narrowed at once.
Can I delete a role that members still hold?
No. You need to move those members to another role, or to No role, first. The message tells you how many people are on the role.
Do my current admins lose access when I start using roles?
No. Everyone who can administer your community keeps that access until you give them a role. Assigning a role is what changes their access, and an update never takes it away on its own.
Where to Go From Here
Start small. List the community jobs you're still doing yourself, pick the built-in role closest to each one, and untick anything that person doesn't need. Then assign it from the member list and check the picker before you press Save.
If you want to see how other coaches split up the work in a hub they own, Join The Community.