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External users are collaborators from outside your organization, Box users with accounts that were not created directly from within your own Box Admin Console and do not use email addresses that are associated with your email domain(s). From an administrative perspective, these are people who have been invited to collaborate on your company’s content.  External users can be granted the same collaborator access and sharing rights as managed users, but your management capabilities over external user accounts over the content they own and their security settings are limited to the folders to which you they have been invited to collaborate. An Admin or Co-Admin can invite an external user to join your Box organization and become a managed user controlled by your organization. External users do not require you to purchase Box Service account licenses. However, for account plans that do not have unlimited collaborators, such as Starter and Business plans, external user accounts in excess of your permitted number of collaborators will contribute to your purchased user seat count.

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Upload limits for external users

Upload size limits follow the folder owner, not the person uploading. When an external user uploads to a folder you own, the maximum file size is your plan’s limit. When a managed user uploads to a folder owned by an external user, the external user’s plan limit applies.

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Admin actions

As an Admin, you can do the following with external users:
Last modified on August 6, 2026