Email Aliases, Shared Mailboxes and Groups: Setting Up Business Roles

Email aliases, shared mailboxes and groups are three tools that solve the same everyday problem: a business needs addresses for roles such as sales, support, accounts and info, but it does not want to give each of them a separate login, a separate password and a separate licence. Done well, they keep messages from being lost when a person is on holiday, let customers write to a stable address that does not change when staff do, and make onboarding and offboarding simple. Done badly, they produce a tangle of forwarding rules, unanswered messages and addresses nobody owns.

This guide explains in plain language what each tool is, how they differ, which to use for which job, how to name and organise role addresses, how to keep email authentication working, and which mistakes to avoid. It is written for owners and office managers of small businesses using a typical business email service, and the ideas apply whichever provider you use.

The Problem: Addresses That Belong to Roles, Not People

A customer who writes to “sales@” is writing to a function, not to Anna. If the function is tied to Anna’s personal mailbox, three things go wrong sooner or later. When Anna is away, nobody sees the message. When Anna leaves, the address either disappears or someone has to guess where to forward it. When the team grows to three people, each of them needs to see the same messages, and they start forwarding and copying each other, creating confusion about who has already answered.

The cure is to separate the address from the person. The three tools below do this in different ways.

Email Aliases

An alias is an additional address that delivers into an existing mailbox. If Anna’s mailbox is anna@example.com, an alias such as info@example.com delivers messages sent to it into her mailbox. She can usually also send from the alias, depending on the system’s settings.

Good uses

• One person who handles a function, such as a sole owner receiving info@ and hello@.
• Name variants. anna.smith@ and a.smith@ both reach the same person.
• Old and new addresses after a rename or rebrand, so that nothing is lost.
• Domain variants, such as example.com and example.net, delivering to one mailbox.
• Disposable addresses for sign-ups and newsletters, which can be removed if they attract spam.

Limits

• An alias has no inbox of its own. All messages mix with the person’s other mail.
• Only the owner of the mailbox sees them, unless access is shared separately.
• If the person leaves, the alias must be moved to someone else, or messages go missing.

Distribution Lists and Groups

A group or distribution list is an address that forwards each incoming message to several members. Writing to team@example.com delivers a copy to everyone on the list. Providers describe this differently, and the details vary: some groups are simple forwarding lists, while others add a shared conversation view, access control and archives. Microsoft explains the options in its article comparing group types in Microsoft 365, and Google describes how to set up and use groups in Google Workspace.

Good uses

• Announcements to a team, such as staff@ or all@.
• Notifications from systems that should reach several people, such as alerts@.
• Departments where everyone should see incoming messages but replies are handled informally.
• Project communication with a changing membership.

Limits

• With plain forwarding, each member has their own copy, so nobody knows who has replied, and two people may answer the same customer differently.
• Replies may come from the member’s personal address instead of the group’s address unless the system is set up to send as the group.
• Membership needs maintenance; people who left may still be receiving customer mail.
• External senders may need permission to write to a list, depending on settings.

Shared Mailboxes

A shared mailbox is a mailbox that several people can open together. Messages arrive in one inbox, everyone with access sees the same folders and replies can be sent from the shared address. Because it is one inbox, you can see which messages have been answered, move them into folders, and keep a common history. Shared mailboxes are the natural choice when a team handles customer messages.

Good uses

• support@, sales@ and accounts@ handled by two or more people.
• Customer requests that need to be answered consistently and tracked.
• Recruitment inbox such as jobs@, where several people review applications.
• Handover during absences, because anyone with access can pick up where a colleague stopped.

Limits

• Access must be managed, and the shared mailbox often has no direct login of its own, which is intentional.
• Without discipline, two people may reply to the same message. Agree a way to mark ownership, such as a category, flag or folder.
• Shared mailboxes are not ticketing systems. At higher volume, tools with assignment and tracking work better, which we discuss below.
• Rules for storage size, licensing and features differ between providers, so check your plan.

Comparing the Three

Choosing the Right Tool

1. Is one person responsible for the address? Use an alias.
2. Do several people need to know a message arrived, but there is no shared workflow? Use a group.
3. Do several people need to answer, and should customers get one consistent reply? Use a shared mailbox.
4. Do you need assignment, statuses, internal notes and reports? Consider a help desk or ticketing tool. In our own tools, support email to tickets with Talkmio shows how a shared inbox turns messages into numbered tickets.

Many businesses combine them: an alias for the owner’s casual addresses, a group for staff announcements and shared mailboxes for sales and support.

Naming Role Addresses

Good names are short, predictable and stable. Customers should be able to guess them, and you should be able to keep them for ten years.

• Use functions, not people: sales, support, accounts, billing, jobs, press, privacy.
• Keep the common conventions: info@ or hello@ for general enquiries, abuse@ and postmaster@ where required by standards, security@ if you publish a security contact.
• Avoid numbers and personal names in role addresses.
• Do not create too many. Ten well-owned addresses beat thirty neglected ones.
• Document each address: its purpose, owner, members and who is the backup.

Our guide to business email hosting helps you choose a platform whose group and shared-mailbox features fit your plans.

Sending From a Role Address Without Breaking Deliverability

When people send as sales@ or support@, the message must pass authentication checks, or it may land in spam. Make sure the domain’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC records cover every system that sends on its behalf: your email platform, your newsletter tool, your invoicing system and your website’s contact form. If a system sends as your domain but is not listed, receiving servers may treat it as suspicious. Our guide to SPF, DKIM and DMARC explains the records.

Also check reply behaviour. When a customer replies to a group or shared mailbox message, the reply should go to the role address, not to the personal address of whoever sent it. Test it by sending a message to yourself from a test account.

Access, Privacy and Leavers

• Give access by need. Not everyone needs to see the accounts or HR mailbox. Contracts, invoices and personal data call for tight membership.
• Review membership quarterly, and whenever someone changes role or leaves.
• Add the mailboxes to your leaver checklist. When a person leaves, remove them from groups and shared mailboxes, move their aliases and set up a temporary forward or auto-reply for a defined period.
• Protect sensitive mailboxes with multi-factor authentication on every account that can open them.
• Tell staff what is monitored. Shared inboxes contain customer data, and people should know the rules.

The IT steps for joiners and leavers are covered in our checklist for employee onboarding and offboarding.

Working Together in a Shared Mailbox

A shared mailbox needs a few simple team rules, or two people will answer the same message and a third will miss one. Agree these habits and write them on one page.

1. Claim before you reply. Mark the message with a category or move it to a personal folder, so colleagues see it is being handled.
2. Set a response target, such as one working day, and check the inbox at fixed times.
3. Use templates for common answers and keep them up to date.
4. Sign with a name. Customers prefer to know who wrote, even when the address is a role.
5. Move finished conversations to an archive folder so the inbox shows only open work.
6. Escalate complaints, legal matters and anything unusual to a named person.

Migration: Moving Existing Addresses

If your team currently uses forwarding rules or personal mailboxes for role addresses, plan the change calmly. List every address customers use. Decide the right tool for each, create the new alias, group or shared mailbox and test it from an outside account. Switch the address in the system, then watch for bounced or missing messages for a few days. If you are also changing platforms, read our guide on email migration. Where you need help setting this up, our IT maintenance page describes the support we offer.

A Small Example Setup

Take a company of eight people. The owner keeps an alias, hello@, that delivers to her own mailbox for general enquiries and old addresses. Sales and support are shared mailboxes, each opened by three people, with templates for the ten most common answers. Accounts is a shared mailbox for two people, with membership limited to them and the owner. A staff group delivers announcements to every employee, and an alerts group sends system notifications to the two people who maintain the website and the network. Jobs is an alias to the office manager. Every address is listed in a one-page register with its purpose, owner and backup, and the register is reviewed each quarter. Nothing here is complicated, but it ensures that no customer message depends on one person being at their desk.

Common Mistakes

• Using one person’s mailbox as the company’s sales inbox.
• Creating groups that forward to former employees.
• Letting two people answer the same customer without any marker.
• Sending from role addresses before SPF, DKIM and DMARC include every sender.
• Giving shared mailbox access to everybody.
• Never documenting who owns each address.
• Using a shared mailbox for high volume where a ticketing tool would be clearer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between an alias and a group?

An alias is an extra address for one existing mailbox. A group is an address that distributes messages to several members.

Do I need to pay for a shared mailbox?

That depends on your provider and plan. Some include shared mailboxes within limits, others require a licence for each one. Check your plan’s terms before you build around the feature.

Can people reply as the shared address?

Usually yes, if you grant the send-as or send-on-behalf permission. Test that replies show the address you expect.

Is a shared mailbox the same as a help desk?

No. It gives a common inbox but not assignment, statuses or reports. For larger volumes, a ticketing tool is better.

How many role addresses should we have?

As few as you can manage well. Start with info or hello, sales, support, accounts and jobs, and add others when a real need appears.

What happens to messages when someone leaves?

If role addresses are separate from people, nothing is lost. Remove the person from groups and shared mailboxes and reassign their aliases. Keep a temporary forward for their personal address for a period.

The Bottom Line

Use aliases when one person handles an address, groups for announcements and notifications, and shared mailboxes when a team answers customers together. Choose short role names, document the owner of each, make sure sending from them passes SPF, DKIM and DMARC, give access by need and add the addresses to your joiner and leaver checklist. These small decisions keep customer messages from depending on any one person, and they save time every week.