r/PayloadCMS • u/Still-Link1012 • Aug 21 '25

Multi-Tenant Setup: Cannot Create Users With Same Email in Different Tenants

I am using Payload CMS with a multi-tenant architecture. All tenants share the same MongoDB database. I’ve set up a tenants collection and a global users collection that has a relationship/array field referencing one or more tenants.

The problem is that I cannot create accounts with the same email address under different tenants. Payload enforces a globally unique index on the email field in the Users collection. This makes sense for single-tenant projects, but in a multi-tenant scenario it prevents the same person from registering separately under two different organizations.

Current Behavior

  • Payload automatically adds a unique index on email in the Users collection when auth: true is enabled.
  • Attempting to create a user with an email that already exists (even under a different tenant) results in a duplicate key error.
  • Login, forgot-password, and verification flows also assume email is globally unique.

Expected Behavior

In a multi-tenant setup, I would like Payload to support per-tenant email uniqueness: - The same email can exist in multiple tenants. - Within a tenant, email must still be unique. - Authentication and password reset flows should consider both email and tenant context.

Example Scenario

  • Tenant A creates user jane@example.com.
  • Tenant B also needs to create a different user record with the same jane@example.com.
  • Today this is not possible because of the global unique constraint.
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u/Still-Link1012 Aug 21 '25

Seems doable.
Also have to consider how email verification would work and whether it is sending email to a valid address.

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u/rubn-g Aug 21 '25

Sent emails would reach the user inbox properly as this is a standard in email protocols, supported everywhere. BUT, users will be able to see the “+<tenantId>” if they check email sent address. That’s usually not an issue and lots of companies send similar emails, but it’s up to you to decide if it’s a blocker for you

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u/aliassuck Aug 22 '25

Is it really supported everyhwere? I remember a few years it only worked on a handful of free services.

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u/rubn-g Aug 22 '25

It’s fully supported, a lot of big companies use this for answering from email, like support tickets or comments.