Sharing an email inbox with other people on your team makes it possible to maintain transparency with email conversations and keep everyone up to date on policies, customer support interactions, and more. If you use Google Workspace for other business tasks, it can be helpful to use what you’re already familiar with and paying for to manage a shared inbox. We’ll walk you through how to create a shared mailbox in Google Workspace.

In this article:

• Does Google Workspace Have a Shared Mailbox Feature?
• How to Create a Shared Mailbox in Google Workspace: 4 Steps
• Google Workspace Shared Inbox Alternative
• Frequently Asked Questions

Does Google Workspace Have a Shared Mailbox Feature?

There are a couple of ways you can use Google Workspace’s features, such as Google Groups, to create a shared mailbox, which we’ll explain in detail below. With a shared inbox, you and other members of your Google Workspace team can keep track of email correspondence, track replies, collaborate on responses, and organize emails with labels.

How to Create a Shared Mailbox in Google Workspace: 4 Steps

There are two ways you can have a shared mailbox in Google Workspace. The first is by delegating members for inbox collaboration, which lets other people have access to your Gmail account to read, organize, reply to, and delete messages. This can be helpful if you have a virtual assistant or someone on your team who you’d like to help you manage your inbox.

To delegate someone to share your inbox with you, click the gear icon in the upper right corner of Gmail, followed by ‘See all settings.’ Then, click the ‘Accounts and Import’ tab.

Click ‘Add another account’ in the ‘Grant access to your account’ section, and type the email address of the person you want to grant access to. You can also add a group email address if your organization allows.

Note that this isn’t the same as a collaborative inbox, which gives an entire group one email address and inbox that all members can collaborate in. Follow the steps below to set up a collaborative inbox within Google Workspace.

Step 1: Create a Google Group

Sign in to the Google account that controls your Google Workspace account. Then, visit Google Groups. Click ‘+Create group’ to form your group. Type a group name, group email, and group description into the pop-up box. Click ‘Next’ when you’re finished.

Step 2: Set Permissions

On the next screen, Google asks you to adjust the privacy settings for your group. Here, you can change who can join and search for your group and which members can view or post within the group.

Click ‘Next’ to continue.

Step 3: Add Group Members

Add members to the group by typing their email addresses into the ‘Group members’ box. You can add multiple members at one time using this method. If you want to invite members, choose this option using the toggle button. To add members directly rather than invite them, change the toggle button to ‘Directly add members.’

Click ‘Create group’ to finalize your group and send invites or direct welcomes to your group members.

Step 4: Enable Collaborative Inbox Features

Visit your group and click on ‘Group settings’ in the left-hand sidebar.

Under ‘Enable additional Google Groups features,’ select ‘Collaborative Inbox.’

Members of your group with the necessary permissions will now be able to:

• Claim a conversation to respond to.
• Assign a conversation to another group member.
• Mark the status of a conversation as complete, duplicate, or no action needed.
• Search for conversations based on who they’re assigned to or what their status is.

Google Workspace Shared Inbox Alternative

While you can create a shared inbox using groups in Google Workspace, it’s not the most efficient and feature-rich way to collaborate on team-focused or customer-focused support and conversations. SupportBee is an alternative to top support software, including Zendesk and Freshdesk, designed for the modern collaborative work environment.

With SupportBee’s shared inbox, you and your team can truly collaborate on support tickets and conversations with real-time message delivery, commenting and tagging, and ticket assignments.

Learn how SupportBee’s shared inbox works with a 14-day free trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a shared mailbox and a group in Google Workspace?

You can create a Google group to send emails to, allowing you to send the same email to everyone in that group at one time without needing to add every contact individually to the ‘To’ field. Meanwhile, a shared inbox using a Google group lets everyone within that group collaborate within the mailbox itself.

For example, members of the shared inbox can all view and respond to emails within that inbox, but members of a Google group without a shared inbox can only read and respond to an email sent to their personal inbox.

Is Google Workspace free?

A Google Workspace Essentials account is free, offering access to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides and 15 GB of storage for free. However, to take advantage of more Google Workspace features, like a secure business email, larger video meetings, and additional storage, you’ll need to purchase a plan. Google Workspace plans start at $6 per user, per month.

How can I make a collaborative inbox without using Google Workspace?

SupportBee offers a shared inbox specifically designed for customer support teams to work together to manage and respond to support tickets. Support tickets show up within the collaborative inbox soon after they’re sent, so agents can quickly provide customers with the help they need. Team members can draft replies and tag someone else to review the reply before sending it, adding a layer of quality control to a customer support system.