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Managing a shared mailbox like support@ or info@ is a common need for growing teams, whether it’s for customer support, sales inquiries, or internal requests. But without the right setup, things can get messy fast: multiple replies to the same email, missed messages, and no clear ownership of who’s handling what.
Google Workspace doesn’t have a built-in shared mailbox feature, but it does offer two native workarounds: delegated access and Google Collaborative Inbox. These options let multiple people access and respond to emails from the same address, but they differ significantly in how well they support team collaboration.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up both options and help you decide which one makes the most sense for your team.
Table of Contents
- What is Google Workspace Shared Inbox?
- Google Workspace Shared Inbox Features
- How to create a shared mailbox in Google Workspace
- Benefits of Using a Google Workspace Shared Inbox
- Limitations of Using Google Workspace Shared Inbox
- Best Practices for Google Workspace Shared Inbox
- An easy-to-use alternative to Google Workspace Shared Mailbox
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Google Workspace Shared Inbox?
A Google Workspace shared inbox is a team email address (like support@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com) that multiple people can access from their own Gmail accounts. Everyone sees the same incoming messages and can reply from the shared address instead of their personal email.
📓Note: Replies sent from a shared inbox show your team email (like support@), not the individual sender. This keeps communication consistent and ensures every team member can see the entire conversation history.
Google Workspace Shared Inbox Features
A shared inbox in Google Workspace comes with several features that help teams stay aligned and avoid duplicate work. Here are the ones you’ll use most often:
- Message Assignment: Assign emails to yourself or someone else so it’s clear who owns a conversation. This reduces confusion and stops two people from replying to the same customer.
- Email Notes: Add short notes while assigning conversations. It’s a quick way to give context without forwarding emails or creating new threads.
- Status Tracking: Mark a conversation as complete, duplicate, or no action needed. This keeps the inbox clean and helps everyone see what still needs attention.
- Topic Categorization: Use labels to group emails by urgency, department, or request type. You can even automate labeling through Gmail filters.
- Access Controls: Google Workspace gives Owners, Managers, and Members different permission levels. This keeps your inbox secure and ensures only the right people can make changes.
💡Pro Tip: Labels and filters are your best friend. Set them up once, and they’ll keep your inbox organized every day.
How to create a shared mailbox in Google Workspace
Like we mentioned earlier, Google Workspace offers two ways to share a mailbox with your team: delegated access and Google Collaborative Inbox.
1. How to set up delegated access in Gmail
- In Gmail (desktop version), go to Settings → Accounts and Imports or Accounts → Grant access to your account.
- Click ‘Add another account,’ enter their Gmail address, and send the invite.
- From there, it will take 5-10 minutes to activate once the delegate accepts an invite.
Delegated access in Google Workspace is useful when a single mailbox needs to be monitored or managed by one or two trusted individuals, and not a full-fledged team.
It works well for scenarios like:
– An executive assistant managing a manager’s mailbox
– A finance lead monitoring a billing@company.com address
– Someone is temporarily covering another teammate’s email
However, it does have some limitations: you can’t assign messages to specific teammates or track who’s replied (or how long it took). Everyone shares the same blanket permissions, creating security blind spots. There’s no way to tag colleagues, flag threads as “in progress,” or escalate urgent requests.
That’s where setting up a Google Collaborative Inbox can help.
2. How to set up a collaborative inbox in Google Groups
A Google collaborative inbox is a feature of Google Groups that allows you to manage shared email IDs like info@ and support@ from a common workspace. Multiple team members can access and respond to emails that arrive in this mailbox. Unlike regular Gmail or delegated accounts, it enables better collaboration with features such as conversation assignment, tagging, and status tracking.
Here’s a quick video tutorial on how you can set up Google Collaborative Inbox.
Step 1: Access Google Groups:
Sign in to your Google Workspace account and visit Google Groups – a platform for creating and managing a collaborative inbox.
Step 2: Create a new group
Click on “Create Group.” Enter the group name, email (like support@yourdomain.com), and description. Remember to choose a descriptive name to reflect the purpose of the shared mailbox.
Step 3: Set permissions
Under privacy settings, you can control who can join the group, view conversations, post messages, and moderate messages.
Step 4: Add members:
Add members to the group and give them the appropriate roles (e.g., manager or member).
💡Keep in mind:
– Owners have complete control over the group — they can manage settings, roles, conversations, and perform all administrative actions.
– Managers handle daily workflows, such as assigning conversations, updating statuses, moderating posts, and keeping discussions on track.
– Members can view, reply to, and participate in conversations, but they usually don’t have permission to assign tasks or change statuses.
Step 5: Enable Google Collaborative Inbox:
Once you’ve added your team, you can enable the Collaborative Inbox option. Click the name of a group. On the left, click Group Settings. Under ‘Enable additional Google Groups features,’ select ‘Collaborative Inbox.’
Step 6: Assign emails to yourself or others in the group:
Whenever you receive an email, you can forward it to the group. From there, you can define ownership by assigning it to yourself or any member of the group.
Step 7: Edit and update status:
Once the email is assigned, you and your team can update its status. Choose between ‘mark as complete,’ ‘mark as duplicate,’ or ‘no action needed.’
Now, members of your group can access, assign, and respond to emails collectively. This is a good step toward centralizing communication, but it comes with trade-offs. Though the setup is straightforward, Google Collaborative Inbox has some limitations.
- There’s no way to track who’s working on what. You don’t have a separate team view where you can apply filters and see specific emails by owners or status.
- If you reply to a customer email using your personal ID, you’ll always need to CC the group email, or it won’t appear in the group mailbox. And if you want to discuss something with a teammate, you have to forward or CC the email, which clutters everyone’s mailbox.
- There’s no built-in dashboard to track metrics like response times, volume trends, SLA compliance, or individual performance.
- You can’t create automated workflow rules or trigger notifications based on conditions like keywords in the email or sender.
And that’s why we want to discuss this alternative.
Benefits of Using a Google Workspace Shared Inbox
A Google Workspace shared inbox keeps all internal communications in one place. This reduces back-and-forth and makes work more predictable. Here are the main benefits:
- Improved Collaboration and Teamwork: A shared inbox removes communication silos by bringing your entire team together in one workspace. Team members can see the status of every email, understand who’s handling what, and avoid confusion about responsibilities.
- Reduced Response Times: By assigning emails to the right person, your team can address inquiries more quickly without delays caused by forwarding or searching through multiple inboxes. Faster responses lead to better customer satisfaction and improved support efficiency.
- Better Email Organization: Centralized email management keeps all customer interactions and business inquiries in one place, making it easier to search, track, and manage high volumes of messages. Your team no longer needs to navigate scattered conversations or worry about lost emails.
- Clear Accountability and Transparency: With message assignments and status tracking, it’s always clear who’s responsible for each email and where it stands in the resolution process. This transparency prevents duplicate responses, missed emails, and helps your team stay organized while maintaining accountability.
Limitations of Using Google Workspace Shared Inbox
While both collaborative inbox and delegated access offer a practical starting point for team email management, they come with significant limitations. Here are a few:
- Lack of Native Analytics Features: Google Workspace’s Collaborative Inbox doesn’t include built-in analytics or reporting dashboards to track performance metrics. Your team can’t measure critical insights like response times, resolution times, email volume trends, or individual agent performance. This makes it difficult to identify bottlenecks or improve team efficiency.
- Limited Visibility of Individual Work: There’s no clear way to see who’s working on what or filter conversations by specific team member assignments within Gmail. This lack of transparency makes it challenging for managers to track workload distribution and understand which team members are handling specific types of inquiries.
- Lack of Collaboration Features: Google Collaborative Inbox has minimal collaboration capabilities. You can’t easily draft responses together, create shared templates, or leave internal notes without forwarding or CC-ing emails. Additionally, there are no automated workflow rules, SLAs, or tagging systems to streamline email management.
- Increased Time-to-Answer: Without clear task delegation, team members may hesitate to respond to emails, assuming someone else will handle them. This can sometimes slow down response times. The lack of automation and workflow organization results in increased manual work and delays in addressing customer inquiries.
Best Practices for Google Workspace Shared Inbox
A shared inbox only works well when the team follows clear processes. These best practices keep your inbox structured and predictable:
- Set Clear Naming Conventions: Use descriptive, standardized naming conventions for your shared email address and email subject lines to ensure team members can quickly identify the purpose and urgency of each inquiry. For example, use formats like “support@company.com” or “sales_inquiries@company.com” to make the mailbox function immediately clear. Consistent naming also improves searchability and prevents emails from getting lost or duplicated.
- Define Roles and Responsibilities: Assign specific team members to handle certain types of inquiries, customer segments, or priority levels. Clearly communicate who handles what to avoid confusion, prevent duplicate responses, and ensure faster resolution. Having backup team members for each role guarantees coverage during absences and maintains continuity.
- Use Labels and Tags for Organization: Create custom labels and tags to categorize incoming emails by priority, type, or department. Implement consistent tagging so your team can quickly filter and find specific conversations without scrolling through the entire inbox. Organize tags by color for visual clarity and easier identification.
- Establish Response Time Standards and SLAs: Set clear response time targets for different types of inquiries based on your industry and customer expectations. For example, define that urgent requests receive responses within 2 hours, standard inquiries within 24 hours, and general questions within 48 hours. Regular monitoring against these targets helps identify bottlenecks and keeps your team accountable.
- Create and Use Email Templates: Develop reusable email templates for common customer inquiries to save time and ensure professional responses. Customize templates for various scenarios such as troubleshooting, billing questions, and general inquiries so that your team members can quickly generate accurate responses.
- Monitor Team Performance and Metrics: Regularly review email volumes, response times, and assign rates to identify areas for improvement. While Google Workspace’s native analytics are limited, tracking these metrics helps your team understand workload distribution and performance trends. Use these insights to refine processes and provide feedback to team members.
Maintain Access Control and Security: Limit who can access the shared inbox based on role requirements, and regularly audit access to ensure only authorized team members have permissions. Document access guidelines and hold team members accountable for their shared inbox activity. Regularly review and update group memberships to maintain security.
An easy-to-use alternative to Google Workspace Shared Mailbox
Google Groups can help you get started with a shared mailbox, but it quickly feels limiting as your team grows or volume picks up.
Hiver fixes the limitations of Google Groups, without forcing your team to learn complicated software. It helps your team manage email IDs like info@ and support@ from the extremely familiar Gmail interface. You can toggle between your shared mailbox and your personal inbox without switching tabs or tools.
That’s because when you install Hiver, your shared mailbox appears on the left side panel. Anyone in your team can access it and see how many emails are pending, in progress, and resolved.
Some of Hiver’s standout features include:
- Internal notes and @mentions to have quick discussions without forwarding or CC-ing emails.
- Email tags to automatically organize and prioritize incoming messages,
- Auto-assignment to route queries to the right team member without any manual intervention. You can do this by using the round-robin method or rule‑based workflows.
- Shared drafts and email templates to edit responses in real-time and ensure that your team sends out accurate, consistent replies
- AI copilot to help you craft responses to customer emails by using your knowledge base as source content. It also helps summarize long conversations, auto-close “thank you” or non‑actionable emails, and suggest email templates.
- Reports and analytics help you drill down into metrics like response time, resolution time, and ticket volume. Also, custom reports let you extract data by tags, statuses, or custom fields for precise insights.
- Third-party integrations to connect with 100+ apps—Salesforce, Slack, Jira, QuickBooks, Zapier, WhatsApp, Aircall, and more—to automate workflows and sync customer data in real-time.
- Creating and managing a knowledge base to deflect common questions.
Here’s why Hiver is better than Google Workspace shared inbox:
Unified team collaboration and ownership clarity: Beyond basic message assignment, Hiver gives you complete visibility into who’s handling what with real-time status tracking, internal notes and @mentions, and shared drafts for co-editing responses. Team members never wonder if an email’s been addressed, and managers can instantly see workload distribution and performance.
Intelligent automation and smart routing: Set up rules-based workflows to automatically triage and route emails based on keywords, CRM account ownership, skill level, or priority. AI triaging automatically categorizes inquiries by type (billing, refund, technical support, etc.), ensuring complex issues reach the right specialist instantly. Round-robin assignment ensures fair workload distribution, preventing bottlenecks.
Advanced analytics and performance visibility: Track critical metrics like first response time, resolution time, SLA performance, and workload distribution by agent, tag, or channel. Custom dashboards let you drill down into specific metrics, and scheduled exports keep stakeholders informed. Unlike Google Workspace’s limited analytics, Hiver provides the data you need to enhance team performance.
AI-assistance: Hiver’s AI Copilot helps agents draft responses in your brand’s tone by pulling information from your knowledge base, SOPs, and conversation history. AI Agents automatically respond to routine inquiries, reducing manual workload and freeing agents to focus on complex requests. AI Sentiment Analysis flags escalations early, ensuring high-priority issues get immediate attention.
Seamless integrations: Connect 100+ apps, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Jira, Stripe, and NetSuite, to bring customer context directly into conversations. Agents no longer need to tab-hop between tools; they have all the information they need in a single, unified interface.
Free plan available: Hiver’s free plan includes core email management capabilities. Onboarding, implementation, training, and 24/7 support are included with every plan at no hidden costs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Does Google Workspace have shared mailboxes?
Not in the traditional sense—but Google Workspace offers a Collaborative Inbox feature through Google Groups. It allows your team to assign, track, and respond to emails sent to addresses like support@ or info@ from a shared workspace.
2. Can I have 2 emails on Google Workspace?
Yes, you can have multiple email addresses on Google Workspace in a few ways. You can either create separate user accounts for each email or use email aliases under a single user account (e.g., jane@company.com and help@company.com). Aliases don’t require additional licenses, but separate accounts do.
3. What is the difference between a Google Group and a shared mailbox?
Google Groups can function as mailing lists, discussion forums, or file-sharing hubs. A shared mailbox, on the other hand, is designed specifically for team-based email management, where members can assign conversations, track status, and respond collaboratively.
4. Do I have to pay for Google Workspace?
Yes. Google Workspace is a paid service after its 14-day free trial. While Gmail and Google apps are free for personal use, Workspace plans offer custom email domains, larger storage, admin controls, and collaboration tools like shared inboxes. Pricing starts at $6/user/month for the Business Starter plan, with advanced features available in higher tiers.
5. Can I create a shared mailbox without Google Workspace?
Yes, it’s possible to create a shared mailbox without relying on Google Workspace alone. You can use external tools like Front or Help Scout, which offer dedicated shared inbox solutions. However, these platforms come with their own interfaces, meaning your team would need to learn a new system.
If you’d prefer to stay within Gmail, Hiver is a simpler alternative. It turns your existing Gmail account into a full-fledged shared mailbox, allowing teams to manage group emails like info@ and support@—without ever leaving the familiar Gmail interface.
Start using Hiver today
- Collaborate with ease
- Manage high email volume
- Leverage AI for stellar service
