Shared Mailboxes for Your Whole Team

A shared mailbox is a team address such as support@ or sales@ with its own inbox. Each person's access depends on their permissions. Everyone signs in to their own mailbox, without a shared password.

How it differs from alternatives

• A normal mailbox belongs to one person and has one password. A shared mailbox has several members and no shared password.
• Forwarding copies incoming mail, but replies usually come from the person's own address. A shared mailbox replies as the shared address.
• An alias delivers to one person's inbox. A shared mailbox is a separate inbox that a team works in together.

Create a shared mailbox

1. Open Mailboxes and choose Add mailbox.
2. Under Create directly, choose Shared and enter a name such as support.
3. Choose the members and select Create shared mailbox.

To use an existing mailbox instead:

1. On the Mailboxes page, open the existing mailbox's menu and choose Convert to shared mailbox.
2. Choose the members and confirm. The former mailbox password stops working, and all its app passwords are revoked.
3. Members use their own sign-ins to reach it.

How members open it

With Read, you can open the team inbox in the Shared mailboxes switcher after signing in to your own mailbox. Send as is also needed to write or reply from inside it. Your own password and two-factor authentication protect access.

You can give a shared mailbox a personal label in the switcher. It affects only your own view, not the mailbox name or other members' views.

Replying as a client address

If a client's mail is forwarded into the shared mailbox, a member with Read + Send as can add the approved client address under Settings, Sending addresses and select it in From. The client's domain must first be in your account and marked as keeping incoming mail with its current provider. See Send From a Domain You Do Not Host.

At the top of Settings, Sending addresses, choose whether replies start from the address a message was delivered to or always from the mailbox's default address. This is a shared-mailbox setting, so the team follows the same rule.

Use a desktop or mobile mail app

With Read, connect your own mailbox to Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or another IMAP app using your own address and an app password. Open the team inbox under Shared/<shared-address>/INBOX. Never sign in with the shared address.

Do not add the shared address as a second account or try to sign in with it. Members with Read + Send as can choose the shared address in From while still authenticating as themselves. Read-only members can open the folder but cannot change its messages or send as the shared address. Removing a member removes both webmail and mail-app access. See Use a Shared Mailbox in Outlook and Mail Apps for setup and troubleshooting.

The unified inbox

With Read, the unified inbox includes the shared inbox. It combines your own inbox and every shared mailbox you can read in date order. Each row identifies its source mailbox. Replies and forwards use the source mailbox's address.

Unified inbox supports text search across included mailboxes. You can tick messages from different mailboxes there and archive, delete, mark as read or unread, or report spam on them together. In a mailbox where you only have Read access, archive, delete and report spam are refused (marking messages read or unread still works), and a message tells you how many messages were changed. After a search in Inboxes only, Select all N messages in All inboxes that match this search covers every match in every mailbox, with the same permissions. To move several messages to a folder at once or use Select all in folder without a search, open the individual mailbox first.

Manage access

Open the shared mailbox's Manage screen, then Access. It lists everyone with access and lets you add other mailboxes in the account.

• Read opens the shared inbox. Send as allows sending as its address. New people receive both permissions. Leave Read on and turn Send as off for read-only access.
• Removing someone takes effect immediately.
• At least one person must keep Read to handle customer replies. Give another person Read before removing the last reader.
• If nobody can read the inbox after a member mailbox is deleted, add a reader on Access.

No shared password, by design

A shared mailbox cannot sign in directly through webmail, IMAP, or SMTP. There is no shared credential to leak, rotate, or remember when someone leaves. Delegated mail-app access uses each member's own sign-in. To off-board someone, remove them on the Access tab.

To make it a personal mailbox again:

1. On Access, choose Convert to regular.
2. Set a new password for webmail and confirm. Every member loses access. Mail, aliases, and storage stay.
3. For phones and mail apps, create app passwords on the Security tab after converting.

Plans and limits

• Shared mailboxes are included on Starter and above: 5 per domain on Starter, 15 on Pro, and 30 on Agency.
• A shared mailbox also counts toward the domain's regular mailbox limit and storage pool.
• Members can have regular mailboxes on any domain in the same account.

API and MCP

You can manage shared mailboxes through the public API and MCP: create one, convert an existing mailbox, list or change members, and retrieve a member's mail-client setup. Use the member's mailbox identifier to request client setup; no interface returns a mailbox password. See the API overview for authentication and request guidance.

To send from a shared inbox through the Message API or MCP, the member needs both Read and Send as. Use the member's token with shared_mailbox_id. A token for the shared mailbox can read but cannot send. See Send As, Identities, and SMTP Profiles over API and MCP.