Difference Between A Shared Email Account And Share Inbox. (Compared)

Are you looking for the difference between a shared email account and a shared inbox Gmail? A shared mailbox is an email account that several users can access to read and write emails. Multiple users can plan and monitor vacation time and work shifts using shared mailboxes as a unified calendar. There is no dedicated user account linked to the email address. This indicates that a shared mailbox does not have a username or password associated with it.

The most common method of communication in the workplace is still email. 86 percent of professionals say email is their preferred method of business communication. It’s without a doubt a fantastic tool for having two-way chats or sending one-way messages.

However, each user can access a shared mailbox using their unique login information. Users will be able to view and send messages from it.  Mails sent from a shared inbox will appear to have been sent from that address rather than from your personal email account.

Emails connected to projects or departments can be stored in shared mailboxes. You are in charge of selecting who has access to and who does not have access to your shared mailbox as the host. The names of these individuals can then be added by IT to the shared mailbox’s Access Control List. Read Our Guide On Best Email Marketing Software And Tools.

You may decide who has accessibility to your linked mailboxes completely on your own. These could be members of the university, employees, students, or anyone else. In this situation, they don’t compare to using a shared email account. In order to help your team communicate and collaborate more effectively, read this article to understand the difference between a shared email account vs a share inbox mail.

What Is A Shared Mailbox?

A mailbox that enables numerous team members to handle emails collaboratively from within their individual email accounts is known as a shared mailbox. Teams like marketing and sales receive a large number of emails every day, which frequently requires monitoring by even more than one person. When several team members need to use the same email account, such as orders@ or support@, shared mailboxes are frequently used.

Specific members can send, receive, and control emails from a single email account when managers grant them access. Teams can collaborate using shared mailboxes to streamline communication and speed up system performance. Anyone can manage and work together on incoming emails from their own inboxes by setting up a shared mailbox and sharing it with the appropriate team members.

Advantages Of A Shared Mailbox

Teams can collaborate using shared mailboxes. Shared mailboxes make it possible for you to collaborate and communicate openly with your team, regardless of whether you are located in the same office, division, building, or even in different places and fields.

The following are the main advantages of changing your personal Gmail account into a shared mailbox:

1. Transparency And Accountability

Emails can be shared and distributed throughout your entire team. There is complete transparency because the email server and history are visible to everyone.

Since everything is readily available and there is a record of what has previously been delivered, there is no need to track down coworkers for information. This also lowers the possibility of missing an email or responding to it more than once.

2. Secured And Easy To Monitor

A shared inbox ensures explicit accountability and enables teams to manage projects cooperatively from their inboxes. Emails are intended for use in interpersonal communication and were never intended to function as a tool for effective teamwork. As a result, you’ve probably discovered complicated or unsafe solutions to fix the issue. Your assistant may have access to your passwords or you may just send all emails to your workers easily.

In comparison, everyone on your team can control all incoming and outgoing emails when you shared an inbox. In this way, you no longer need to share your passwords, grant access to your mailbox or send long email sequences.

3. Best Alternative To Third-Party Tools

With shared inboxes, you can control group emails like sales@, support@, and info@ right from your Gmail inbox. This automatically transforms your inbox into a helpdesk system.

To ensure clear and responsible ownership and to reduce the possibility of emails being ignored or tasks sliding through the cracks, you can designate a certain email to a specific team member. In addition, you may add tags and status to an email to describe how the communication and the related task are progressing.

4. Enable Teams To Collaborate Via Email

The barrier between email and changes in team cooperation is covered by shared mailboxes. Given that email is still the primary form of communication, having a shared inbox increases the possibility of teamwork. Mass emails don’t need to be forwarded when using shared mailboxes. A comprehensive history of communication is visible to all members of your team, ensuring that no emails are duplicated and that no communications are overlooked.

5. Can Be Easily Organized

Using predefined snippets and tags, a few shared inboxes let collective their recently received emails. The tags could be made based on concerns or compliments received that are already recorded and sorted.

Disadvantages Of Shared Mailbox

Shared Mailbox also comes with some drawbacks, which are as follows:

1. Incorrect Response to the Customer

Different communications may be exchanged with the customer as a result of the conflict. Conflict may develop when tags or notes for the next person to address are lacking. Read Our Guide On Best CRM Solutions For Gmail.

2. Missing Insights

Emails typically do not maintain track of the concerns or questions that were sent. Without classification choices like snippets or tags, the knowledge that may be shared with management to enhance various departments could be lost.

3. Lack Of Ownership

As everyone had simultaneous access to the emails they had received, there was a potential that respondents’ lack of control may be noted. Emails might be forwarded to the next person by the first person, while the individual might assume the first person will respond. It’s possible that the email won’t even be responded to as a result of this uncertainty.

4. Confusion Due To Collision

The majority of the time, multiple people will access, open, and respond to emails from a shared inbox around the same time. It causes misunderstanding about who will be sending the email, which causes the process to take longer.

What Is A Shared Email Account?

A shared email account is a common shared email address, typically along the lines of support@ or help@, that is used by several members of a team or organization to send or receive email from a unified inbox. Although it is possible to set up a shared email account by giving each team member the login information for a single email address, most teams choose to use a specialized tool that offers more sophisticated functionality.

There are various types of shared email accounts, but here are the most common forms:

• Distribution List: You can send emails to a group of recipients without manually entering each one’s email address by using a distribution list.
• Shared Mailbox: A shared mailbox serves as a central location where several people can read and write emails. Additionally, they can include a shared calendar, enabling members to plan and view absences or schedules. Shared mailboxes support the sense of mutual trust and respect.
• Shared Inbox: The most cutting-edge team communication features and best scaling capabilities are provided by a shared inbox. Members can access reports, change permissions and account settings, view previous customer data, add private notes, and prevent repetitive replies by using shared inboxes.

Advantages Of A Shared Email Account

Here’s why your team should use a shared email account to be more productive, collaborate with ease, and better manage group email addresses:

1. One View For All Customer Emails

Businesses benefit from having a single dashboard view of all client tickets and their status updates due to shared email inboxes. Your agents will be able to efficiently manage all client inboxes, including support@, sales@, billing@, contact@, and help@, as well as arrange and allocate tickets to concerned individuals and teams with the help of a single inbox. Additionally, customer support teams are left without cc emails when tracking emails using a basic, single email-like interface. Prioritizing tickets and collaborating as a team is made easy by a shared inbox.

2. Automated Messages

You can send out automatic messages right away using a shared mailbox. Additionally, your dashboard allows you to create and save scheduled responses. Agents can respond to consumers more quickly as a result. Productivity is positively impacted by the increased flow of information throughout the organization. Since external communications are instantly visible and accessible to your team, they can quickly and confidently make better decisions with the vital information they have. Teams can improve their teamwork by using collaborative emailing, which gives them a sense of communal ownership over all communications.

3. Easy To Manage Emails

Owners and system administrators can manage emails simply with a single mailbox since every email can be read and retrieved on a single screen. Every client email can have labels added, and you can categorize them according to the department, priority, and type of inquiry. You can now create distinct inboxes for customers, such as those for a product, billing, sales, contacts, support, and help.

4. Improved Agent Productivity

Teams can make the most of each other’s work by reviewing each other’s emails when they use a shared email account. Keep in mind that every person contributes to the worth of the organization. They must be able to listen in on all customer interactions. Due to reporting and analytics, you can easily monitor what your employees are doing, how fast they are answering client issues, and how satisfied your clients are with their performance.

The ability for new members to view older emails in the group is one of the main advantages of a shared mailbox over individual mailboxes. Users can select their degree of participation and can view recent and older emails. Additionally, you can disable alerts for your user mailbox.

5. Set Permissions To Restrict Access

The administrator has the flexibility to set up various roles and permissions thanks to a single mailbox. Users can be created, and they can be put into teams. By doing this, roles, task assignments, and permissions may be simply managed. The admin has the authority to grant a user or team access to and control over a ticket.

Depending on the employee’s position and department inside the company, they may not even grant the right to act on a complaint.

Disadvantages Of Shared Email Account

Here are the drawbacks of a Shared Email Account that you must consider:

• The team’s shared email account will grow significantly if many team members use it. Email is not a reliable platform for long-term data storage. There are upper limits to the amount of data that can be saved, and this will eventually become a significant barrier.
• Lack of privacy for one-to-one communications means that management cannot receive private emails about HR, payroll, PTO requests, etc.

Group Email Vs Shared Mailbox Vs Shared Email Account

The primary purpose of sharing or teamwork is where these tools most significantly diverge from one another. While sharing mailboxes serve as an email management platform where teams can collaborate on email responses, group emails act as distribution lists for teams.

A group email is best used when one individual needs to send information to several recipients at once. Group email, however, is unable to facilitate team communication. Shared mailboxes stop CCing and forwarding and let administrators give team members explicit responsibilities to avoid duplicating work.

Group inboxes perform well as bridging between shared and personalized mailboxes. In actuality, switching from shared mailboxes to group inboxes is a totally manual process. Renaming and removing the previously shared mailbox are steps in the procedure.

The next step would be to replace the previous group inbox with a new one. Items from your mailbox must be manually copied if you want to move them. Additionally, you won’t be able to create shared folders. No need to worry because this feature’s removal may be advantageous. Instead of having a tonne of useless files, it helps in managing more effectively.

When Should You Use A Shared Mailbox?

Teams that need to communicate with their email recipients might consider shared mailboxes. There are numerous advantages to shared mailboxes, even though reporting is less frequent than with certain other email strategies:

• Smaller businesses without a large budget can manage with a shared mailbox.
• The ability to arrange group events and acquire additional team insights is made simple with shared calendar features.
• There aren’t any related user accounts to protect, oversee, or authorize.
• Observing other people’s responses will help you avoid duplicating effort and provide insight.

Teams on a tight budget should consider shared mailboxes. They are particularly useful for organizations like IT, sales, or smaller support groups that require a great deal of insight into one another’s interactions since they let people to see what one another is focusing on.

Similar to this, for teams who work across time zones, a shared mailbox can help members take up where one left off, even if it means continuing to work on an email that was started but left unfinished when the previous shift completed their task.

When Should You Use A Shared Email Account?

Advanced reporting features are among the shared inbox’s major advantages. Beyond that, using a shared email account will be your only viable alternative if your team needs unique logins to access the email for privacy or tracking purposes.

Shared mail accounts are great for teams that interact with customers, like assistance, marketing, or even finance. Managers can use the tool’s intelligent, sortable folders to keep track of various issue kinds and delegate conversations to specific user emails.

A shared inbox will alert them if two users simultaneously access the same ticket and begin typing. No more time wasters or multiple responses! Finally, shared inboxes and the automation they normally offer can be very useful if you have a significant volume to manage. Instead of manually assigning, replying to, and managing each discussion that comes in, teams may save themselves and their customers’ time.

Final Words

To wrap up, you must consider the main points of difference between a shared email account and a share inbox outlook for better collaboration and communication with all your team members!

Your personal emails can be configured in a variety of ways. It pays to carefully examine your process to identify whether a shared email account or a shared inbox is necessary. Additionally, you may treat any that call for interactive logins properly with the required licensing and security restrictions.

Hope this comparison has helped you to determine which option is best for your team. If you have questions please leave them in the comment section below.