Gmail has two ways to create an email group. A contact label groups addresses in Google Contacts so you can type one name into the To field. A Google Group is an address of its own that delivers to every member. The first takes two minutes and belongs to you. The second takes ten and belongs to the team.
Which one you need depends on who sends and who receives. The steps below come from Google's help pages, checked in October 2026, and the limits are Google's published numbers. We build Sektra, a shared inbox tool for Gmail and Outlook, and it appears once, in the last section.
To send to a set of people from your own account, create a label at contacts.google.com and type its name into the To field in Gmail. To give a team an address such as sales@ that everyone receives, create a Google Group at groups.google.com. Neither one records who answered a message. For that you need a shared inbox.
How do you create an email group in Gmail?
Pick the route from the table, then follow its steps. The deciding question is whether the group needs an address that other people can write to.
| Contact label | Google Group | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A saved set of contacts in your Google Contacts | An email address that delivers to its members |
| Who can use it | You, from your own account | Anyone allowed by the Who can post setting |
| What recipients see | Every address in the To field | The group address; members are listed only if allowed |
| Where replies go | To you, or to everyone on reply all | To the group, so every member sees them |
| Managed at | contacts.google.com | groups.google.com, with admin settings in Google Workspace |
| Needs an admin | No | Only if the admin limits who can create groups |
| Member limit | Gmail's per-message recipient limit | None stated on the group creation page |
Route 1: create a contact label and email it
- Open contacts.google.com. On the left, next to Labels, click Create label.
- Enter a name and click Save.
- Select the contacts to include. Check the box on each one, or check any box and use Selection Actions, then All, for everyone.
- At the top, click Manage labels, click the label, then Apply. Only each contact's default email address joins the label.
- In Gmail, click Compose. In the To field, type the label name and select it from the list. The field fills with every contact in the label.
Every recipient sees every other address, so a label suits colleagues and small lists where that is fine. For a one-way announcement, put the label in Bcc. Google calls the feature a label on the button and a group in its headings; they are the same thing.
The limits are Gmail's sending limits. A personal account hits an error above 500 recipients in a single message or 500 messages in a day. A Google Workspace account can address 2,000 recipients per message, with at most 500 of them outside the organization, and send 2,000 messages a day. Those numbers can change without notice, so check them before a large send.
Route 2: create a Google Group
- Go to groups.google.com and click Create group at the top.
- Enter a group name of up to 73 characters and a group email of up to 63 characters before the domain. Add a description if the group will be searchable.
- Choose the privacy settings: Who can search for group, Who can join group, Who can view conversations, Who can post, and Who can view members. For an address that clients and prospects write to, set Who can post to Anyone on the web.
- Add members and give each a role: Group members, Group managers or Group owners. Only owners can delete the group or make another member an owner.
- Leave Directly add members on to add people at once, or turn it off to send invitations instead.
- Click Create group. Google asks you to wait a few minutes before sending a message, or it may not be delivered.
In Google Workspace, an administrator decides who can create groups at all. The setting is under Apps, Google Workspace, Groups for Business, as Creating groups. The options are Only organization admins can create groups, Anyone in the organization can create groups, and Anyone on the internet can create groups. If Create group is missing for you, that setting is why.
Sending to the group is sending to one address. Each member receives the message in Gmail, and if Conversation history is on under Posting policies, the group keeps a copy at groups.google.com. Members can switch how they receive it, from every message to a digest that combines up to 25 messages.
Google Groups vs contact labels
A contact label is a shortcut for one sender. It lives in your Contacts, nobody else can use it, and the recipients get a plain email with everyone's address visible. It is the right tool for a project team you write to every week, a board you send minutes to, or a family list.
A Google Group is an address. Anyone permitted can write to it, every member receives the mail, and replies flow back to the whole group. It is the right tool for sales@, support@, a department list, or any address that should outlive the person who created it. It needs ten minutes of setup and, in Workspace, an admin who allows it.
- Pick a contact label if you are the only sender and the recipients know each other.
- Pick a Google Group if other people need to write to the group, if replies should reach everyone, or if the address should survive staff changes.
- Pick a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox if the members will answer the mail and need to see who took which conversation. The Collaborative Inbox guide has the steps.
Is there a distribution list in Gmail?
The term comes from Exchange and Outlook, where a distribution list is a directory object that forwards to its members. Gmail has nothing with that name. A contact label does what a personal distribution list does, and a Google Group does what an organization-wide one does. Teams moving from Microsoft 365 usually want the Group.
When a team needs a shared inbox instead of a group
A group delivers mail. It does not decide who answers it. Send a prospect's question to sales@ with five members and five copies arrive, each person assumes someone else has it, and the prospect waits. Or two people reply within minutes of each other with different answers. The group did its job; the job was too small.
A shared inbox adds what the group lacks. Every thread gets one owner and a state such as open, waiting or done. Notes stay beside the thread where the client never sees them. A warning shows when a teammate is already replying, and a record shows how fast each thread was answered. Collaborative Inbox is Google's free step toward this, and the Google Workspace shared inbox guide compares that with delegation and with tools.
We build Sektra, a shared inbox that syncs two-way with Gmail. Connect the mailbox that receives the group's mail, through Google sign-in so Sektra never sees the password, and every thread gets an owner by rule, a state and notes. A typing indicator reads A teammate is typing a reply. Analytics report response time per teammate and per client.
For a sales team answering sales@, the memory layer is the part a group could never hold: a record per prospect of what was promised and asked. The Gmail integration page lists what syncs, and the product page covers the rest.
