How to set up a shared inbox for a small business

One address, many hands.Every email answered once.

To set up a shared inbox, give your team one address such as support@yourdomain.com and pick one of three routes: your email provider’s own shared option (a Google Group set up as a Collaborative Inbox, or a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox), forwarding that address into a shared inbox tool, or a help desk. Then agree who owns each email, mark what is waiting on whom, and give the mailbox one signature, so no customer gets two answers or none. The picker below gives the route and the steps for your provider.

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7 starting points steps checked 30 October 2026

By the Builderify team

01 Your provider’s option 02 Forward into a tool 03 A help desk
01 / Three routes

What is a shared inbox, and which kind do you need?

A shared inbox is one address, such as support@ or hello@, that several people read and answer, with everyone able to see what has been answered. A shared mailbox gives people access; a shared inbox tool adds who owns each email and where it stands.

If your mail is on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 and two or three people answer, start with what you already pay for. Move to a shared inbox tool when you need owners and statuses, and to a help desk when the queue is someone’s whole job.

Three ways to set up a shared inbox, compared
NumberRouteGood atWatch for
01 Your email provider’s shared option
Google Group as a Collaborative Inbox, Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, Zoho shared mailbox, Gmail delegation		 Nothing new to buy or learn, and it works in the mail apps and phones you already use. Google’s Collaborative Inbox has take and assign. A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox or delegated Gmail shows everyone the same mail, and who answers is up to you.
02 Forwarding into a shared inbox tool
Builderify Inbox and other shared inbox apps		 Owners and statuses on every conversation, and your existing mail stays where it is. One more place to check. Forwarding can be switched off by an admin, and replies go out through the tool, so set up its sending domain.
03 A help desk
Ticketing tools such as Freshdesk or Zendesk		 Reference numbers, priorities and reports for a queue several people work all day. More setup, plans often priced per agent, and ticket numbers can feel formal for a small shop.

Whichever you choose, the address itself goes on your website: the contact us page guide covers where and how to show it.

02 / Setup picker

Shared inbox setup picker
Your provider, your team, your steps.

Pick where your mail is now, how many people answer, and whether your current mail must stay put. You get the route that fits, the steps in order, and what it means for your DNS. Provider menus were checked on 30 October 2026.

Your email now
Who answers
Your current mail

Google Workspace · 2 to 5 people · keep mail where it is

Recommended route

Your provider’s own option

A Google Group as a Collaborative Inbox

You already pay for Workspace, and Collaborative Inbox adds take, assign and mark complete to one group address.

  1. In the Admin console, go to Apps > Google Workspace > Groups for Business > Sharing settings and tick “Group owners can allow incoming email from outside the organization”.
  2. In Google Groups, create the group with the address customers will use, such as support@yourdomain.com, and add the people who answer.
  3. Open Group settings, check conversation history is on, and under “Enable additional Google Groups features” select Collaborative Inbox.
  4. Set Who can post to everyone on the web, so customers’ mail is not bounced, and give members the moderation permissions that let them take and assign conversations.
  5. Send a test from an outside address, then take it, assign it and mark it complete, so everyone has seen the flow once.
DNS

No DNS change: the group lives on the domain your mail already uses.

Team
Each member needs the moderation permissions to take and assign. Assigning emails the person, with your note in the body.
03 / By provider

How to set up a shared inbox in Google Workspace, Outlook and Gmail

Each provider has its own version, with its own limits. The steps, menu names and numbers below are from each provider’s help pages on 30 October 2026.

Google Workspace: a group as a Collaborative Inbox

In Google Workspace, a shared inbox is a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox turned on. Members can take a conversation, assign it to someone else with an optional note that is emailed to them, and mark it complete, no action needed or a duplicate. You filter by “Assigned to me” or “Not assigned” from the search bar, and you work in Google Groups rather than Gmail.Google

  1. An admin turns on Groups for Business and, under Apps > Google Workspace > Groups for Business > Sharing settings, ticks “Group owners can allow incoming email from outside the organization”. It is unticked by default.Google
  2. Create the group in Google Groups with the support address and add the people who answer. Collaborative Inbox needs conversation history on.
  3. In Group settings, under “Enable additional Google Groups features”, select Collaborative Inbox.Google
  4. Set Who can post to everyone on the web, or customers’ mail bounces, and give members the “Who can moderate content” and “Who can moderate metadata” permissions the take, assign and resolve actions need.

The other Workspace option
Delegation: make support@ a user and let others open it from their own Gmail. A Workspace account can have up to 1,000 delegates, with about 40 at once in normal use, and your admin must have delegation turned on.Gmail It needs a user, and so a licence, for the address, and it has no take or assign.

Microsoft 365: a shared mailbox in the admin center

In Microsoft 365, a shared mailbox needs no licence of its own while it holds up to 50 GB; each person who opens it needs their own licensed Exchange Online mailbox. Past 50 GB, or for archiving or litigation hold, it needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 licence. Microsoft supports up to 25 users on one shared mailbox, and Microsoft 365 Apps for business has no email, so it cannot have one.Microsoft

  1. As an Exchange admin, open the Microsoft 365 admin center and go to Teams & Groups > Shared mailboxes.
  2. Select + Add a shared mailbox, enter a name, check the address and select Save changes. It can take a few minutes before you can add members.
  3. Under Next steps, select Add members to this mailbox, then Add members, and pick who answers.Microsoft
  4. Decide how replies look: Send As makes a reply come from the mailbox, Send on Behalf shows “Sam on behalf of Support”. Sign-in to the mailbox itself stays blocked.

With automapping on, which is the default, the mailbox appears in each member’s Outlook after a restart, and it can be added to the Outlook app on iOS and Android. Anyone can delete a message in it; Microsoft points to a Microsoft 365 group if you need to stop that.Microsoft

Free Gmail: one support account with delegates

Free Gmail has no shared inbox, but delegation gets close: a personal account can have up to 10 delegates. Add them on a computer under Settings > See all settings > Accounts and Import > Grant access to your account. It can take up to 24 hours to work, the invitation expires after a week, and a delegate cannot change the password or use Chat.Gmail

When a delegate sends, their own address appears on the message, and there are no owners or statuses, so use a label per person. The address also ends in @gmail.com; for support@yourdomain.com you need your domain’s mail handled somewhere.

Zoho Mail and host email

Zoho Mail has shared mailboxes under Admin Console > Groups > Shared Mailbox > Create. Set “Who can send emails to your group” to Everyone so customers can write in. Mail to it stays out of members’ personal inboxes, and external members cannot be added.Zoho

Hosting email in cPanel has forwarders (Forwarders > Add Forwarder), which can send support@ to several addresses at once.cPanel That gives everyone a copy, not a shared inbox: each person answers from their own mailbox and nobody sees who already did. Forward to one shared inbox instead.

04 / Running it

How to manage a shared inbox without double replies
Five house rules.

The setup takes an afternoon; the rules are what make it work. Most shared inbox trouble is two people answering the same email, or each assuming the other did. Write these five down where the team will see them.

01

One owner per email

Before you reply, take it: Take in Google Groups, the assign menu in Builderify, or a label or category with your name in Gmail and Outlook. Nobody answers an email someone else has taken. When your shift ends, hand back what you have not finished.

02

Three statuses, kept honest

Open means you owe a reply, Waiting on them means they owe one, Closed means done. If it is not clear who writes next, it is Open. How quickly each should move is its own question: see what a good customer service response time is.

03

Notes beside the thread, never in it

Talk about a customer where the customer cannot read it: an internal note, an assignment note or your team chat. Forwarding their email to a colleague with “thoughts?” is how internal comments end up in a customer’s inbox.

04

One signature per mailbox, signed by a person

The address is shared, the person is not. End with your first name above the mailbox’s signature, so the customer knows who they spoke to. For the words above it, use customer service email templates.

05

Reply from the shared address

Do not forward support@ to everyone’s own inbox: each person gets a private copy and nobody can see who answered. Reply from the shared mailbox, so the answer sits in the shared Sent folder for the next person.

05 / In Builderify

A shared inbox in Builderify
without moving your mail.

Builderify Inbox gives you mailboxes such as support@ on your own domain in three ways: the domain’s MX record, a mailbox on a subdomain where only that subdomain’s MX changes, or a private forwarding address with no DNS change at all. If your domain’s mail is on Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Zoho, the mailboxes page tells you not to move its MX and offers the other two.

Messages from the Bubble’s Contact Form block land in the same Inbox, so website enquiries and email sit side by side. Replies go out through your verified sending domain, so set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC first.

What it does

  • Threads each conversation and gives it a status: Open, Waiting on them or Closed. Your reply moves it to Waiting on them; their next email opens it again.
  • Lets one person take a conversation or hand it to a teammate, who gets an email about it.
  • Files mail in Inbox, Unread, Starred, Snoozed, Archived, Sent, Spam and Trash, with search across senders, subjects and message text.
  • Adds each mailbox’s own signature, inserts saved replies shared with Support Tickets, and replies from the sending domain that matches the address the customer wrote to.
  • Delivers support+anything@ to support@, and can forward new mail to your own address as a notification, up to 30 per mailbox per hour.

What it doesn’t

  • No IMAP or POP, so it cannot be added to Outlook or a phone’s mail app. You answer in the dashboard.
  • No internal notes on email conversations. Talk about a customer in your team chat.
  • No sign that a teammate is replying right now, which is why the take-it rule matters.
  • It is not a help desk: no ticket numbers or priorities on email. Those are in Support Tickets.

What it costs

Receiving and answering mail have no line of their own on the rate card. One person is included; each extra team member is 250 credits, once. Every account gets 250 free credits a month with no monthly fee, and one-time packs start at $9 and never expire. See pricing.

How long mail is kept

Until you delete it, by default. An owner or admin can set Keep mail to 90 days, 1 year or 2 years instead, and older conversations are then deleted each night. Trash and Spam are emptied after 30 days.

AI help, if you want it

Suggest reply drafts an answer from the conversation and what your AI Chatbot knows about your business, and Summarize writes one line on what the customer wants. Nothing is sent without you. Both are charged in credits based on the AI model’s usage. Where AI fits in support overall is in AI customer service for a small business.

06 / Outgrown it

When have you outgrown a shared inbox?
Four signs, and what each one asks for.

A shared inbox is enough while one glance shows what is open and who has it. When that stops being true, add the one thing that is missing rather than moving everything to a help desk at once.

01

Customers ask “any update on my request?”

You need a reference number they can quote. Support Tickets gives each request one, with four statuses and a priority.

02

Someone answers support all day

You need priorities and a queue sorted by them, which is what help desks are built for. The Freshdesk free plan guide shows what a free help desk covers.

03

The same five questions arrive daily

Answer them before they become email: an FAQ on the site and an AI chatbot trained on your pages that hands over to a person when it cannot.

04

Customers want an answer while they are still on the site

Email cannot do that. Live chat can, for the hours someone is there to answer.

Questions

Shared inboxes, before you ask.

A shared mailbox is one mailbox several people can open, such as a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox or a Gmail account with delegates. A shared inbox usually adds who owns each email and where it stands, as a Google Group set up as a Collaborative Inbox or a shared inbox tool does. Both give a team one address such as support@.

Close to it, with delegation. Create a Gmail account for support, then on a computer go to Settings, See all settings, Accounts and Import, and add people under Grant access to your account. A personal account can have up to 10 delegates, each opening it from their own Gmail. There are no owners or statuses, so agree who answers what.

Not while it holds up to 50 GB. Each person who opens it needs their own licensed Exchange Online mailbox, and Microsoft supports up to 25 users on one shared mailbox. Past 50 GB, or for archiving or litigation hold, the shared mailbox needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 licence.

Yes. Your email provider's own shared option needs no DNS change, and neither does forwarding: every Builderify mailbox has a private forwarding address, so you forward support@ to it from Gmail, Outlook, Zoho or your host. Do not move the MX record of a domain whose mail is on Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Zoho, or that mail stops arriving.

No. Builderify Inbox has no IMAP or POP, so you answer in the dashboard rather than in a mail app. You can have new mail forwarded to your own address as a notification, up to 30 per mailbox per hour, and a teammate you hand a conversation to is emailed about it.

Sources

Every provider page above was read on 30 October 2026; dates in brackets are when the page was last updated. Menu names change, so check the provider’s own help if a step does not match. The Builderify details come from the Inbox module page and were checked against the product on 30 October 2026. Larkspur Ceramics is made up.

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