If you bought a Fortress Communicator Team, Business, or Enterprise plan, you are a Plan Owner. This article is for you. It covers how seat-based plans work, how to add and remove people, and the day-to-day administration of your team.
How seat-based plans work
Seat-based plans are billed per seat, per month. A seat is one Fortress account that you control as the Plan Owner. Each seat gets the full feature set of the tier you bought — there is no “seat-light” vs “seat-premium” distinction within a plan.
| Plan | Seat range | Per-seat price | Annual minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | 5–24 seats | $14.99/mo | 5 seats |
| Business | 25–99 seats | $18.99/mo | 25 seats |
| Enterprise | 100+ seats | $27.99/mo | 100 seats |
A Team-10 plan, for example, is 10 seats at $14.99 = $149.90 per month. You can grow inside a tier (add an 11th seat to a Team plan, pay $14.99 more next month) or move up a tier when you cross a threshold (a 25th seat triggers Business).
Accessing the Plan Owner Portal
Seat administration happens in the Plan Owner Portal at community.fortressdms.com/portal/my-team. Sign in with the same Apple ID you used to buy the plan. The portal lists every seat in your organization, the email each invitation was sent to, and the current state (Active, Invited, Suspended).
Coming soon. The Plan Owner Portal is in the final stages of rollout. If you do not see /portal/my-team yet, email support@fortressdms.com with the change you want to make and we will apply it manually until the portal goes fully live for your tenant.
Inviting teammates
- From the Plan Owner Portal, click Invite teammate.
- Enter the person’s name and email address. The email is the destination for the invitation link; it does not have to match the Apple ID they will sign in with.
- Click Send invitation. The portal queues an email that contains a one-time invitation link.
- The teammate clicks the link on their iPhone, the link opens the App Store to the Fortress Communicator listing (or directly into the app if it is already installed), and they go through Sign in with Apple.
- On first sign-in their account is automatically associated with your organization. They appear in your Directory tab and in everyone else’s Directory tab.
Resending or revoking pending invitations
Pending invitations — ones where the teammate has not yet tapped the link — appear in the portal with a Pending badge. Two actions are available:
- Resend — re-emails the invitation. Useful when the original landed in a spam folder.
- Revoke — invalidates the link. If the teammate clicks the revoked link, they see a message that the invitation has been withdrawn.
Revoking a pending invitation does not affect your seat count for billing — the seat was never activated.
Suspending an active seat
When somebody leaves the organization, suspend their seat. Suspension does three things:
- The seat is signed out of the Fortress app on every device. The next launch shows the Sign in with Apple welcome screen.
- Inbound calls and messages to the seat are redirected to the auto-attendant (Team / Business / Enterprise default) or to the Plan Owner’s voicemail (configurable).
- The seat is removed from every Directory tab in your organization.
A suspended seat still counts against your billed seat count until you remove it. This is intentional: if you suspend a seat the same day you hire a replacement, you can re-assign the seat to the new hire without interrupting your bundle math.
Removing a seat permanently
Click Remove seat in the portal. This:
- Frees the seat slot, reducing your billed seat count on the next Apple renewal.
- Permanently deletes the user’s call history, voicemail, and Private Chat conversations stored under their account.
- Releases any phone number assigned to that seat back into your organization’s pool, or deactivates it if you do not reassign it within 30 days.
Removal is irreversible. Once you click Remove seat, the data on that seat is gone. If you are not sure whether you will rehire, Suspend the seat instead — you can always remove later.
Rotating someone’s credentials
Fortress accounts are tied to Apple IDs via Sign in with Apple. We do not store a password to rotate. If a teammate’s phone is lost or their Apple ID is compromised, the workflow is:
- Have the teammate revoke Sign in with Apple for Fortress Communicator from Apple’s appleid.apple.com.
- From the Plan Owner Portal, click Reissue invitation on the seat. This generates a new invitation link and forces re-authentication.
- The teammate signs back in with Apple from the new device. Their device key is regenerated; safety numbers with their contacts will need to be re-verified.
Per-seat billing visibility
The Plan Owner Portal shows usage per seat: minutes used this month, SMS sent, MMS sent, video room time. This is informational only — billing is per seat, not per usage, on Team/Business/Enterprise — but it helps you see who is actually using the product.
Seat-cap enforcement
Your plan has a seat cap (5–24 for Team, 25–99 for Business, 100+ for Enterprise). When you try to invite a seat that would put you over the cap, the portal blocks the invitation and offers a one-click upgrade path:
- Team → Business — applies on next Apple renewal; new seats open up immediately at the Business tier price.
- Business → Enterprise — same flow, with a touchpoint to our sales team for procurement contracts.
This is exactly the kind of walkthrough we needed when we onboarded our second shift supervisors last quarter — we accidentally went over our seat cap and had no idea why billing flagged us. One thing I’d add: it would help to have a warning notification before you hit the cap, not just after. Does the system support that kind of alert?
This is exactly what I needed after we onboarded three new deputies last month and accidentally went over our seat limit without realizing it. Quick question — when you suspend a leaver, does that seat free up immediately or is there a billing cycle delay before it counts against your cap again?
We just went through a staffing transition where three officers left within the same month, and nobody had a clear process for suspending their access promptly — this would have saved us a headache. One thing I’d love to see covered is what happens to open cases or assigned records when a seat gets suspended mid-shift cycle.
This is exactly the kind of walkthrough we needed when we onboarded three new records clerks last spring — we accidentally went over our seat cap and had no idea until billing flagged it. Good to see the suspend-vs-delete distinction spelled out clearly, that tripped us up before.
We just went through a staffing transition after losing two booking officers and weren’t sure if we’d get dinged for the unused seats during the gap. Good to know suspension is an option rather than just deleting accounts — we’d have lost all their historical entries otherwise. Would’ve saved me a phone call to support last month if I’d seen this first.
We ran into this exact headache last spring when three deputies left within the same month and we weren’t sure if their old accounts were counting against our seat cap. Good to see a straightforward breakdown — the part about suspending leavers rather than just leaving accounts idle is something our admin definitely needed to read.