Is Google Collaborative Inbox Right for Your Team?

For decades, emails have remained central to how businesses communicate with customers and resolve their queries.

But managing them as a team can be anything but simple. When your organization starts using shared addresses like support@ or info@, what seems like a straightforward solution often turns into a juggling act. Who’s replying to what? Has anyone already responded? Before long, things get messy.

In the early days, teams relied on a “one-size-fits-all” workaround: sharing login details. It seemed practical at first, but it came with its own set of problems—confusion, missed responses, and the glaring issue of security risks. As email providers began clamping down on account-sharing, teams were left scrambling for a better approach.

Google then stepped in with Collaborative Inbox, a feature designed to help teams manage shared email addresses in a structured way. It introduced features for assigning tasks, tracking email status, and keeping everyone on the same page.

At first glance, it seems like an ideal solution for small teams or businesses looking for a free tool to organize their inbox. But is it really what your team needs?

But is it the right fit for your team? Let’s take a closer look.

Table of Contents

• What is a Google Collaborative Inbox?
• How to Set Up a Google Collaborative Inbox for Your Team?
• Advantages of Using Google Collaborative Inbox
• Disadvantages of Using Google Collaborative Inbox
• 5 Best Alternatives to Google Collaborative Inbox
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 
• Your Team Deserves Better Than Google Collaborative Inbox! 

What is a Google Collaborative Inbox?

A Google Collaborative Inbox is a feature within Google Groups that’s designed to help teams manage and share email conversations more effectively.

Let’s assume you have a shared email address like support@ or info@ where multiple people need to respond to inquiries. Instead of everyone logging into the same email account (which can get messy and insecure),you use a Collaborative Inbox.

Here’s how it works: Emails sent to the group address appear in a shared space where team members can view, assign, and track them. For example, if a customer query comes in, you can assign it to a specific team member to handle. Once it’s resolved, it can be marked as completed, so the team knows it’s taken care of.

It’s a free solution that works within Google Workspace, but it’s pretty basic.

How to Set Up a Google Collaborative Inbox for Your Team?

Step 1: Create a Google Group

First, you need a Google Group, as the Collaborative Inbox feature works within Google Groups.

• Go to the Google Groups page and sign in with your Google Workspace account.
• Click on “Create Group.”

• Next, fill out your group details. Make sure to choose a group name that reflects the purpose of your inbox. Avoid generic names like “Team Inbox” to prevent confusion if you create multiple groups later. (In this image, I have shared an example of how you can add your Group details).
• Click on “Next” to move to the permissions section.

Step 2: Set Permissions for Your Group

Permissions are crucial for deciding who can access and use the inbox.

• Under Who can join the group, select either:
  • “Only invited users” (ideal for internal teams).
  • Or “Anyone in your organization” for broader access within your company.
• Adjust permissions for posting messages and viewing conversations. Below is an example; change it as per your preference:
  • Set “Who can view conversations” to “Group members.”
  • Set “Who can post” to “Group members.”
  • Set “Who can view members” to “Group members.”
• Click Next

Step 3: Add Members to Your Group

This is where you define the roles and set up how members will interact with the group.

• In the Group Members field, add the email addresses of team members who will actively work in the Collaborative Inbox.
• In the Group Managers field, add the email addresses of people who will oversee the group’s activity.
• The Group Owner field is for the person responsible for the overall group. By default, the person creating the group (you) becomes the owner, but you can add others if needed. Owners have the highest level of control and can delete the group if necessary.
• Use the Welcome Message section to send a message to all new group members when they’re added.

• In the Subscription section, set how members receive group emails:
  • Each Email: Members receive every email as it comes in.
  • Digest Email: Members get a summary of emails (once daily).
  • Abridged Email: Members receive a condensed version of email activity.
  • No Email: Members won’t receive any emails directly but can access them in the Collaborative Inbox.

Once you’ve filled out all the details, click Create group to complete this step. You’ll now see the group in your dashboard.

Step 4: Activate Collaborative Inbox Features

Following these steps will fully activate and optimize your Collaborative Inbox for your team’s workflow.

• On the group page, look for the “GroupSettings” option in the left-hand menu and click on “General.“
• Find the option labeled “Enable additional Google Groups features” and then select “Collaborative Inbox.” Doing this unlocks features like assigning conversations, marking messages as resolved, and tracking email statuses.

Once the Collaborative Inbox is enabled, you’ll see some additional options. Customize them based on your team’s needs.

• Once the Collaborative Inbox is enabled, you’ll see some additional options appear. Customize them based on your team’s needs.
• Turn on Conversation History: It’s helpful to keep track of past conversations. Make sure this option is enabled.

• Define member permissions: Go to “Member Moderation” and adjust your settings. This setting determines who can add, remove, or modify members in the group.
  • For Collaborative Inbox, allow Managers or Owners to manage members.
  • This ensures only trusted individuals can control group access, which is important for maintaining email security and preventing unauthorized access.
  • As for “Who can modify custom roles” assign this ability to Managers or Owners only. This ensures consistency in roles and permissions and prevents members from accidentally changing critical access settings.
  • The “Create Custom Role” option allows you to define unique roles with specific permissions for members. This is particularly useful in Collaborative Inbox setups where different team members have distinct responsibilities.

Why Custom Roles matter:

• They ensure members only have the access they need to perform their specific tasks, reducing errors and confusion.
• Custom roles also make it easier to onboard new members by assigning them limited permissions initially.
• By using custom roles strategically, you can streamline your Collaborative Inbox workflow and make sure that everyone’s responsibilities are clearly defined.

Step 5: Start Using Your Collaborative Inbox

After all these settings, you can now make the best use of your Collaborative Inbox.

• When an email comes in that requires action, you can forward it to your new group email address.

• Once an email appears in the Collaborative Inbox, you. can either click on “Assign to me” to take ownership of that email, or “Assign to someone” and add your team member.

• As they work on their assigned emails, they can update the status by marking it as complete, duplicate, or no action needed directly within the inbox.

• Team members can also leave comments or notes within each email thread. This way, everyone stays informed about ongoing tasks.

Advantages of Using Google Collaborative Inbox

Using a Google Collaborative Inbox can bring several advantages to teams, especially those managing shared email addresses like support@ or info@. Here’s an overview of its key benefits:

1. Centralized Communication

One of the biggest benefits of a Google Collaborative Inbox is that it centralizes all communication in one place. Instead of having emails scattered across multiple personal inboxes, everyone on the team can access the same set of conversations.

For example, let’s say your team receives a lot of customer inquiries. With a Collaborative Inbox, your team members can see all incoming emails without needing to forward them back and forth. This way, nothing gets lost, and everyone stays informed about ongoing conversations.

2. Integration with Gmail and Google Workspace

Since Google Collaborative Inbox integrates seamlessly with Gmail, team members can receive notifications directly in their Gmail accounts. This means they don’t have to constantly check back into the group settings or inbox; they can stay updated on their tasks right from their personal email interface.

Also, the Collaborative Inbox integrates seamlessly with other Google applications like Drive, Docs, and Calendar. For instance, a team member can attach a relevant Google Doc to an email thread, providing necessary context or information.

3. Better Collaboration

The Collaborative Inbox enhances teamwork because it allows members to assign emails to themselves or others. This means that if one team member is busy with a task, the other one can take over an email thread and respond without any confusion about who is handling what.

4. Accountability and Tracking

With features that allow users to mark emails as resolved or duplicates, accountability improves significantly. After resolving a customer issue, the team member can mark it as completed, duplicate, or no action needed – right within the inbox. This gives everyone visibility into what has been addressed and what still needs attention.

Disadvantages of Using Google Collaborative Inbox

Despite the benefits mentioned above, the Google Collaborative Inbox can be rather limiting for slightly larger teams – like Sales and Customer Support – wanting to achieve more than just collaboration.

1. Google Collaborative Inbox’s interface is complex to navigate

The Google Collaborative Inbox UI looks nothing like Gmail. It was not designed to work as an email client in the first place. It’s an entirely new interface that looks completely different from any other Google application.

Your team will have to spend a lot of time just getting used to it. The UI is not intuitive like Gmail (I love Gmail. I am sure you do too!).

On top of that, they will have to keep swapping between their Gmail inbox and the Google Collaborative Inbox — there is a good chance a few emails will fall through the cracks.

I recently stumbled upon a Reddit thread titled, “Struggling with Google Groups Collaborative Inboxes – Am I Doing It Wrong?” The user was asking:

This really highlights one of the biggest limitations of Google Collaborative Inbox—it doesn’t allow you to reply directly from the group email address within the platform. The workaround involves configuring Gmail settings for each user, but let’s be honest—it’s tedious and far from intuitive.

Thankfully, there are tools today that make managing shared inboxes so much easier. For example, Hiver integrates directly into Gmail and lets you reply to customers right from the shared inbox—no complicated setup, no switching tools. Plus, it comes with added perks like assigning emails, tracking statuses, and internal collaboration.

2. There is no way to sync your emails seamlessly

When your team uses Google Collaborative inbox for a scenario like, say, customer support, ensuring that your emails are always synced and up-to-date is of utmost importance.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen with the Google Collaborative Inbox. To maintain inbox sync, your team members would have to always remember to CC the Google Collaborative inbox email ID while replying to their customers.

If they skip doing this or even inadvertently forget to do this, theemail will not show up in the Collab inbox. And this could be a critical point of failure because your team members won’t even know of the existence of these emails. This, of course, would lead to a loss of accountability and perhaps a barrage of unhappy customers.

3. Internal communication becomes a hassle

No matter which team you are a part of – sales or customer service, seamless team collaboration is crucial to getting work done effectively.

Sometimes you’ll even have to collaborate with other departments for various reasons. However, for Google’s Collaborative Inbox users, neither internal nor cross-functional collaboration is easy. You mostly have to rely on long email threads, CCs, and forwards. Too many emails!

4. You will have a hard time finding the status of emails

Let’s assume you’re doing customer support from Gmail, and you start using the Google Collaborative Inbox.

An email arrives, and one of your teammates replies to the customer from their personal inbox. Unless that person has copied the group email address in the reply, you will not be aware of that. Nobody on the team will know that the email has been replied to.

Let’s say that person did remember to copy the group email address in the reply, but the customer does a ‘reply’ and not ‘reply all’ — it again comes to just one person. You and the rest of the team will always be in the dark about the status of emails.

5. There’s enormous room for duplication of work

When you and your team don’t know if an email has been replied to, there is a good chance someone else might start working on it.

Imagine you’re running a sales team using the Collaborative Inbox in Google Workspace, and two sales executives end up replying to the same prospect. You’ve ruined your first impression right there. For all you know, you’d lose the client for being unprofessional.

The same applies to customer support teams. An email arrives, and two people start working on it at the same time. And then, both of them reply to the same customer — you’re essentially saying the same thing to the customer twice.

Even when you’ve assigned the email to an individual, the rest of the team would not know about it. To them, the email looks unattended unless they see a reply.

I came across another Reddit user’s issue about using Google Groups as a Collaborative Inbox. Here’s what they said:

This is a common challenge with Google Collaborative Inbox. Since responses often come from individual email addresses (not the group address),it can cause confusion and messy threading in personal inboxes. Unfortunately, Google Groups doesn’t offer an out-of-the-box way to fix this.

However, tools like Hiver solve this problem seamlessly. All responses are sent directly from the shared inbox address (e.g., [email protected]),ensuring there’s no confusion or separate threads popping up in individual inboxes. It keeps communication clear and centralized for the entire team.

6. You’ll not be able to measure team performance

When you run your support or sales from the Google Collaborative Inbox, it is absolutely important that you know how well is the team dealing with emails.

Inside a Google Collaborative Inbox, if you’re looking to monitor team performance, all you’d know is the number of emails received and sent.

You have no way of knowing how your team deals with emails. For example, if you use the Google Collaborative Inbox to manage support, you will have no answers to (a) the average first response time, (b) the average time to close a ticket, or (c) who in your team needs more training.

5 Best Alternatives to Google Collaborative Inbox

By now, it’s clear that Google Collaborative Inbox has its limitations. The hard truth? It’s not really designed for handling sales, support, or anything that requires true team collaboration. That’s why so many people are constantly on the lookout for better alternatives.

I even came across a Reddit thread where someone asked:

It’s a valid question because teams need tools that actually help them work together seamlessly. So, I’ve put together a list of some of the best alternatives to Google Collaborative Inbox—and why they stand out. But first, let’s do a quick comparison.

1. Hiver

Hiver is a customer support tool that works directly inside Gmail and Outlook, turning it into a shared inbox for teams. It’s a much easier and more advanced alternative to Google Collaborative Inbox. With Hiver, you can assign emails to team members, leave internal notes, track the status of conversations, and even manage shared inboxes like support@ or info@ without leaving your inbox. It’s built to make email collaboration simple and efficient, especially for teams handling customer support or sales.

Key Features:

• Effortlessly delegate emails to your team (without forwarding): Hiver lets you delegate emails to your teammates without having to forward them. All it takes is two clicks from the Gmail sidebar. Your teammate can start replying to that email thread the moment you assign it to them. You do not even have to CC them.
• Know email status in a jiffy: Hiver tells you the status of every email in your shared mailbox: open, pending, or closed. It is again visible to everyone who is a part of the shared inbox. Unlike the Collaborative Inbox, you will have access to replies your team sends even when you’re not copied on them.
• Prevent ugly collisions and work duplication: Inside a Hiver shared inbox, emails are classified into distinct groups: unassigned, mine, team, pending, and closed. When you enter a shared inbox, the default view is ‘unassigned,’ which will only contain emails that nobody has started working on. You can go ahead and assign them to your team. There is no room for confusion or duplication of work.
• Make internal discussions easy: Hiver lets your team communicate with each other using Email Notes, which are like chat messages that appear right beside the email thread.

Using notes, you can communicate with anyone across your company. Notes come in handy for a host of things:

• You want to broadcast a question to everyone in your team. Start the note with ‘@all’, and anyone in the group can now reply to your note.
• You want to reach out to a specific person. Start the note with @name, and only that person will get notified. You can then exchange messages with that person like you would on personal chat.
• You want to add some context or learning to the email which you think might come in handy in the future. Just write it down as a note, and it will stay alongside the email.

Basically, you and your team write fewer emails when you use Hiver’s Notes. You can completely eliminate internal emails if you use Notes the right way.

• Powerful reporting and analytics: When you run sales or customer service from Gmail, it is absolutely pertinent that you keep a keen eye on how well your team is dealing with emails. Inside Hiver’s analytics, you have access to all vital customer support metrics (right inside your inbox).

Plus, you can do a lot more!

• Automate key actions like assigning emails and live chat messages based on preset rules.
• Save combinations of email filters as views (such as all emails from Austria that Cynthia is yet to work on).
• Save canned responses as email templates. Share them with your team to provide faster resolutions.
• Collaborate on your email responses by sharing email drafts. Write a response, and have a colleague review it in real time.
• Integrate apps like Slack, Asana, and Zapier and enhance productivity.
• Use Hiver’s AI email summarizer to condense long emails into short, clear notes, making hand-offs between agents quick and seamless.
• Improveyour team’s efficiency with Harvey, Hiver’s AI bot, by automatically closing conversations with simple ‘thank you’ responses.

Take an interactive tour of Hiver

Pricing:

Hiver has three paid plans to choose from: Lite at $19/user per month, Pro at $49/user per month, and Elite at $79/user per month. There’s also a forever-free plan and a 7-day free trial so you can explore all the features before deciding.

2. Microsoft Outlook Shared Mailbox

Microsoft Outlook Shared Mailbox is a great way for a team to manage and send emails from a public address like [email protected]. When someone replies to an email from the shared mailbox, it looks like it’s coming from the shared address, not their personal email. In classic Outlook, you can even use the shared mailbox as a team calendar. It’s also perfect for setting up a “noreply” email account.

This tool integrates into the Microsoft ecosystem, making it an excellent choice for those already using Office 365. It simplifies managing customer inquiries and internal communications without requiring separate logins for each user.

Key Features:

• Shared Calendar Access: The shared mailbox includes a calendar that all members can access. This feature enables team members to create, view, and manage appointments collectively, ensuring everyone stays informed about scheduled events and meetings.
• Centralized Contact List: Members of a shared mailbox can access a common contact list. This feature simplifies communication by allowing users to share important contacts with the entire team, reducing the need for individual contact management.
• Automatic Replies Management: Although only Microsoft 365 admins can set up automatic replies for a shared mailbox, this feature allows for consistent communication during periods when team members are unavailable. It ensures that anyone contacting the shared email address receives timely responses, even when no one is actively monitoring the inbox.

Pricing:

Microsoft 365 shared mailboxes come with business plans that include email, like Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and they’re free to use. However, there are storage limits to keep in mind:

• Without a license: You get 50 GB of storage.
• With an Exchange Online Plan 2 license: The storage limit goes up to 100 GB.
• With an Exchange Online Plan 1 license and an Exchange Online Archiving add-on: You get auto-expanding archiving for extra storage when needed.

3. Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service platform that acts as a great alternative to Google Collaborative Inbox. While Google Collaborative Inbox helps teams manage shared emails, Zendesk goes a step further by offering a complete solution for handling customer support across various channels.

At its core, Zendesk uses a ticketing system that helps support teams keep track of customer questions and issues. When a customer reaches out—whether by email, chat, or social media—Zendesk creates a ticket that agents can follow up on. This way, everyone on the team can see what’s been done and what still needs attention, making it easier to provide consistent and timely support.

Key Features:

• Messaging: Build stronger customer relationships by connecting with them through personalized, timely interactions. Provide instant help on your website, mobile apps, social media, or other business channels. With Zendesk bots, you can deflect common questions by offering instant 24/7 answers across all your service channels, so customers never have to wait.
• AI and Automation: Handle high demand effortlessly with AI-powered tools. Agents get an intelligent assistant built into their workflow, offering full context and guidance for faster resolutions. Zendesk AI streamlines tasks, reduces workload, and improves efficiency by keeping everything visible and organized.
• Routing and Intelligence: Ensure every request reaches the right agent based on their availability, workload, and skills. Conversations are routed efficiently—whether it’s by request type, priority, or channel—so agents can focus on solving issues effectively. Admins can easily set up scalable routing rules to keep everything running smoothly.

Pricing:

Zendesk offers four pricing plans to suit different business needs. The Suite Team plan starts at £45 per agent/month, while the Suite Growth plan is priced at £75 per agent/month. For more advanced features, the Suite Professional plan costs £89 per agent/month. If you’re looking for a customized solution, the Suite Enterprise plan is available—just get in touch with their sales team.

4. Front

Front offers a collaborative platform to manage emails – and it’s interface is very similar to that of any inbox. Teams can share, assign, and collaborate on emails with ease. This is especially useful for those that want to avoid using CCs and BCCs in emails, which lead to clutter.

Unlike Google Collaborative Inbox, which focuses primarily on shared email management, Front integrates various communication channels—such as email, chat, SMS, and social media—into a single, unified inbox. 

Key Features:

• Collaborative Drafting: Teams can collaborate on responses directly within Front by using shared drafts. This allows multiple team members to work together on a reply without needing to switch to another tool, streamlining the process.
• Internal Comments: Front enables team members to comment internally on customer messages. This feature allows for behind-the-scenes collaboration without the customer seeing any internal discussions, ensuring that responses are well-informed and accurate.
• Clear Ownership Assignment: Front assigns ownership of messages to specific team members based on their availability and expertise. This feature clarifies who is responsible for each inquiry, reducing confusion and ensuring that every message gets a timely follow-up.

Pricing:

The Starter plan begins at $19 per seat/month, while the Growth plan is available for $59 per seat/month. Their most popular option, the Scale plan, costs $99 per seat/month. For more advanced features and customization, you can contact their team to learn about the Premier plan.

5. Help Scout

Help Scout is a customer service platform designed to facilitate collaboration among teams while providing exceptional support to customers. As an alternative to Google Collaborative Inbox, Help Scout offers a more robust and user-friendly solution for managing customer communications.

Help Scout emphasizes a customer-first approach, ensuring that human interaction remains central to the support experience. While it incorporates AI tools to assist teams in crafting better responses and answering common questions faster, the platform prioritizes personal engagement over automation. 

Key Features:

• AI Answers: Help Scout includes an AI-powered self-service assistant that provides instant answers to common customer questions. This feature taps into your knowledge base to help customers find information 24/7, reducing the volume of inquiries your support team needs to handle directly.
• Collaboration: The platform supports collaboration among team members through shared notes and internal comments on customer tickets. This allows agents to discuss emails/queries without the customer seeing the internal conversation, ensuring well-informed responses.
• AI Summarize: This AI feature quickly generates bullet point summaries of lengthy email threads, enhancing efficiency for service teams. It is accessible to users on Plus and Pro plans, with the exception of those requiring HIPAA compliance.

Pricing:

Help Scout offers a free plan that supports up to 50 contacts per month with unlimited users. For larger teams or more advanced features, their paid plans start at $55/month per user for the Standard plan and $83/month per user for the Plus plan.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How much does Google Collaborative Inbox cost?

Google Collaborative Inbox is free for users with a Google Workspace account. If you already subscribe to Google Workspace, you can use this feature without any additional charges. However, if you want a custom domain for your group email address, you will need a paid Google Workspace plan.

2. What is the difference between Google Groups and Shared Inbox?

Google Groups is a service that allows users to create groups for discussions and sharing information. A Shared Inbox, specifically within Google Groups as a Collaborative Inbox, enables team members to manage emails sent to a group email address collectively. While Google Groups can serve various purposes (like forums or mailing lists),a Shared Inbox focuses on collaborative email management.

3. Can I assign conversations to specific team members in Google Collaborative Inbox?

Yes, one of the main features of Google Collaborative Inbox is the ability to assign conversations (or topics) to specific group members. This helps streamline workflow by ensuring that each inquiry is directed to the most appropriate person for follow-up.

4. Is there a limit on the number of members in a Google Collaborative Inbox?

There is no specific limit on the number of members who can be added to a Google Collaborative Inbox; however, the overall limits depend on your Google Workspace plan. Generally, larger plans allow for more users and greater storage capacity.

5. Does Google Collaborative Inbox integrate with other tools?

Google Collaborative Inbox has limited integration capabilities compared to dedicated customer support tools. While it works well within the Google Workspace ecosystem, it does not offer extensive integrations with third-party applications like CRMs or help desk software, which may limit its functionality for some teams.ShareRewrite

6. Is Google Collaborative Inbox suitable for customer support or sales teams?

While it can handle basic team email management, it has significant limitations for customer support or sales. Features like reporting, automation, and integration with other tools are missing, which makes it less effective for teams that need robust collaboration. Alternatives like Hiver, Zendesk, or Front are better suited for these use cases.

Your Team Deserves Better Than Google Collaborative Inbox! 

In a nutshell, Google Collaborative Inbox might not cut it if you’re using it for teams like sales and customer support. You need a tool that offers:

• An intuitive user interface
• Powerful collaboration features
• Complete visibility into everyday workload
• Insights into team performance

If you’re willing to give Hiver a shot and would like to learn how you can best manage shared inboxes, sign up for a 7-day free trial.