Shared Mailbox in Google Workspace: Every Option Compared

Google Workspace does not have a shared mailbox button in the same sense Outlook does. There is no single Admin console option that creates a mailbox several people can open, reply from, and coordinate around with full ownership. Teams that need to run support@, sales@, or hello@ end up improvising — sometimes poorly, with a forwarded alias that loses history and drops threads once volume picks up.

The good news is that four real approaches exist inside Workspace, each with a clear set of tradeoffs on ownership, thread assignment, reply history, and license cost. Knowing which one fits your use case saves time in setup and prevents the inbox from becoming the kind of responsibility gap where everyone assumes someone else is handling it.

This guide walks through each option — how to set it up, where it breaks down, and which kind of team it actually suits — so you can make a deliberate choice rather than inherit whatever was configured years ago.

The short answer: four approaches, four tradeoff profiles#

The four approaches are account delegation, a standard Google Group, a Collaborative Inbox, and a dedicated user account. Each sits at a different point on a complexity-versus-capability curve, and none of them is obviously wrong — they are tools for different situations.

Delegation gives one person, or a small group, transparent access to someone else's mailbox. It is the standard EA-to-executive setup: the delegate can read, reply, and send on behalf of the original address without a separate login. Quick to configure, adds no license cost, but does not scale to five people all covering the same inbox simultaneously.

A standard Google Group routes mail to many inboxes at once. Every member receives a copy, nobody is assigned anything, and replies come from each member's individual address. There is no unified sent history and no way to see whether a message has been handled. It works for announcements and distribution lists, but it fails as a team inbox because it provides no coordination.

A Collaborative Inbox is a Google Group with a coordination layer added. Conversations can be assigned to a specific member and marked as resolved. For a small, low-volume team it provides just enough structure. Assignment is manual, there is no automation, and the Groups interface is not Gmail — members must check a separate view, which reduces adoption under pressure.

A dedicated user account is the bluntest tool: a full Google Workspace mailbox, such as [email protected], that several people access via delegated access rather than a shared password. It has the richest inbox model — full history, one unified sent folder, proper threading — but it requires a Workspace seat license and still has no native thread assignment or collision detection.

Before you start#

Three things to confirm before you configure any of these options:

• Admin access: Creating a Google Group or Collaborative Inbox requires access to the Google Admin console or the Groups management page. Delegation can be user-managed only if an admin has first enabled that option domain-wide under Gmail settings. Provisioning a new dedicated account also requires admin access.
• A clear use case: Delegation works for one-to-one or one-to-a-few coverage relationships. A Group or Collaborative Inbox works when mail should reach several people at once under a shared address. A dedicated account works when the team needs a single unified view and is willing to spend the license.
• License budget: A Google Group and delegation within existing accounts add no extra license cost. A dedicated account — a full Google Workspace user for the shared address — requires a seat license at your edition's per-user rate. If cost is the constraint, a Collaborative Inbox on a group address gives the most coordination for zero additional spend.

Steps: how to set up each option#

The four options are independent. Pick the one that matches your use case and follow its steps. The platform differences table in the next section covers the tradeoffs if you are still deciding between them.

1. 1

   1. Set up account delegation

   In the Admin console, go to Apps, then Google Workspace, then Gmail, then User settings. Find the mail delegation setting and confirm it is enabled for the domain. Once enabled, the mailbox owner logs into Gmail, opens Settings, selects See all settings, goes to the Accounts tab, and clicks Grant access to your account. They enter the delegate's email address and save. The delegate receives an invitation email and must accept it within one week — the invitation expires. After acceptance, the delegate can switch to the shared mailbox from the account switcher at the top right of Gmail. They can read, reply, and send on behalf of the original address. One account can support up to 1,000 delegates, though the practical limit for a team replying in real time is lower.

2. 2

   2. Create a standard Google Group for team mail

   In the Admin console, go to Directory, then Groups, then Create group. Give the group a name and set its email address — for example, [email protected]. Under Who can post, decide whether only internal members can send to the group or whether external senders can reach it. Most team-facing inboxes need external posting enabled. Under delivery settings, choose Each email so members receive messages in their personal Gmail inbox rather than needing to check an archive. Add members. Members reply from their own individual Gmail addresses. The group has no unified sent history and no assignment features.

3. 3

   3. Set up a Collaborative Inbox

   Create a Google Group as described above, then open the group settings page at groups.google.com. Select the group, go to Group settings, and under Enable additional Google Groups features, choose Collaborative Inbox. Save the change. Members can now open the group in the Groups interface, see conversations, assign them to a specific member using the Assign button, add tags, and mark conversations as complete. Assigned conversations appear in the assignee's Groups view — not in Gmail. There is no email notification for assignment by default; members must check groups.google.com or configure notifications in the group settings to receive a Gmail alert.

4. 4

   4. Provision a dedicated shared account

   In the Admin console, go to Directory, then Users, then Add new user. Create the account as a full Google Workspace user — for example, [email protected]. This consumes a seat license. Do not share the account password with the team: sharing credentials removes per-user audit trails and makes off-boarding difficult. Instead, use delegated access. The admin, or the account owner, grants each team member delegated access via Gmail settings. Each team member then logs into their own Gmail account and adds the shared address using the account switcher. Replies are sent as the shared address and appear in one unified sent folder, giving the team full history of every reply anyone has sent from that address.

How the four options compare#

The table below covers the five dimensions that matter most when choosing between these options. License costs are for Google Workspace as of August 2026 — verify current per-seat pricing at workspace.google.com, since Google adjusts edition pricing periodically.

A few caveats the table cannot capture. The Collaborative Inbox assignment is manual and relies on members checking a separate Groups view — a habit that breaks under volume. There is no automation to pick an owner, no warning when two members open the same conversation, and no visible record of who replied to what. It is the lowest-cost coordination option, but the coordination is shallow.

A dedicated account has the richest inbox fidelity but still has no native thread assignment. Two delegates can open the same thread simultaneously with no warning, which is the classic double-reply problem. The unified sent history is the main advantage over a Group, but if coordination is what you actually need, you will add tooling on top either way.

What to do when it does not work#

For delegation: the delegate cannot send from the shared address. The most likely cause is that the delegation invitation expired before the delegate accepted it — invitations lapse after seven days. Re-send the invitation from Gmail Settings, Accounts, and have the delegate check their inbox including spam. A secondary cause is that user-managed delegation is disabled at the domain level; an admin must enable it in the Admin console before the mailbox owner can grant access.

For Google Groups: external senders cannot reach the group address. Open the Group settings and check Who can post. External posting must be enabled explicitly — the default for new groups created in the Admin console is members-only. Also check whether the group has moderation turned on for external posts, which causes messages to queue invisibly rather than deliver.

For Collaborative Inbox: assigned conversations do not appear for the assignee. This almost always means the assignee is checking their Gmail inbox rather than the Google Groups view. Assigned conversations surface in groups.google.com under the group name, not in Gmail. Enable email notifications for assignments in the group settings so members receive a Gmail alert when a conversation is assigned to them.

For dedicated accounts: replies go out from the team member's personal address instead of the shared one. This means the person is composing from their own Gmail window rather than switching to the delegated account first. They need to select the shared account from the account switcher, open the thread there, and reply from that context. The default for any new compose window is always the primary account.

A faster way: AI Emaily on top of any Google Workspace address#

The four options above solve the question of whether two people can access the same mailbox. What they do not solve is the coordination problem: no assignment automation, no collision detection, no audit trail of who replied to what, and no drafting assistance at volume.

We build AI Emaily — an AI-native email client that connects to any Google Workspace address, whether it is a delegated account or a dedicated one, and adds the layer that Workspace's native options leave out. Incoming mail is triaged and sorted automatically. Threads can be assigned to a team member or handed to an AI agent that handles routine replies end to end under a Copilot approval gate — a human reviews every draft before it sends. Every action is recorded in an audit log: who replied, when, and what the AI proposed. The agent works from a user-set Personal Context brain and client profiles rather than reading through your past sent mail.

If your team is already on Google Workspace and the native options are not keeping up with volume or accountability needs, a 7-day free trial is available at app.aiemaily.com/signup.