Google Workspace has no shared mailbox object. Microsoft 365 has one, created by an admin and opened by several people from their own accounts. Google gives you four routes to the same result. A Google Group with Collaborative Inbox turned on, Gmail delegation, a shared login, or a shared inbox tool connected to a Gmail account.
Which route fits depends on how many people answer the mail and whether you need to know who owns a thread. The table below is the short version. The steps that follow come from Google's own help pages, checked in October 2026. We build Sektra, a shared inbox tool that syncs with Gmail, so weigh the last section accordingly.
Two or three people who only need to see the same mail: delegate the mailbox. A team that needs to assign conversations and mark them done at no cost: turn a Google Group into a Collaborative Inbox. A team that needs internal notes, a typing indicator, states and reporting: connect the address to a shared inbox tool such as Sektra, Hiver, Gmelius, Keeping or Missive. Never share a password.
How do you create a shared inbox in Google Workspace?
Start with the comparison, then follow the steps for the route that fits.
| Route | What it is | Assignment | Internal notes | Who sees who replied | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Group with Collaborative Inbox | A group address whose conversations members take, assign and resolve at groups.google.com | Yes, by hand | No. A note travels in the assignment email only | Members who open the group | Shared addresses with modest volume and no reporting needs |
| Gmail delegation | Other users open one Gmail mailbox from their own accounts | No | No | Only if the admin chooses to show the delegate's address on sent mail | Two or three people covering one address |
| Shared login | Everyone signs in to one account with one password | No | No | Nobody | Nothing. The second factor belongs to one device and the audit trail is lost |
| Shared inbox tool | Software connected to the Gmail account that adds ownership, notes, states and reporting | Yes, by rule | Yes | Everyone, plus a typing indicator while a reply is being written | Teams past three or four people, or any team asked about response times |
Route 1: a Google Group as a Collaborative Inbox
A Collaborative Inbox is a Google Group with extra features switched on. Members with the right permission can take a conversation, assign it to someone else, and mark it complete, duplicate or no action needed. Mail to the group address still lands in each member's Gmail. The shared view lives at groups.google.com.
An administrator first makes Google Groups available: in the Admin console, Apps, then Google Workspace, then Groups for Business, where Creating groups decides who may create one.
- Go to groups.google.com and click Create group. The name can be up to 73 characters and the address up to 63 characters before the domain.
- Set Who can post to the audience you want. A support@ or hello@ address that clients write to needs Anyone on the web.
- Add members, then open the group and click Group settings in the left menu.
- Under Enable additional Google Groups features, select Collaborative Inbox.
- Under Posting policies, set Conversation history to On. When it is off, new posts are not kept in the group.
- Set Who can moderate metadata to the members who will take and assign conversations, and Who can post as group so replies can go out from the group address. Click Save changes.
From then on a member opens the group, selects a conversation and clicks Take, Assign or Drop. The assignee gets an automated email, and a note typed into the Assign dialog arrives in that email. Mark as complete is a button at the top of the conversation. The Collaborative Inbox guide covers shared labels, the resolved filter and the limits in detail.
Route 2: Gmail delegation
Delegation lets other people in your organization open a Gmail mailbox from their own accounts. The owner of hello@ grants access, and each delegate switches to hello@ from the account menu in Gmail. Google's admin help puts it in one line: in Gmail, delegated accounts and shared inboxes are the same.
An admin allows it first, under Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, User settings, Mail delegation. The checkbox is Let users delegate access to their mailbox to other users in the domain. The same screen decides what recipients see when a delegate sends: the account owner and the delegate who sent the email, or the account owner only.
- Sign in to the mailbox you want to share, on a computer. Delegates cannot be added from the Gmail app.
- Click Settings, then See all settings, then the Accounts and Import tab.
- In the Grant access to your account section, click Add another account.
- Enter the delegate's address, click Next Step, then Send email to grant access.
- The delegate accepts the invitation within a week. Google says it can take up to 24 hours before they can use the account.
A Workspace account can have up to 1,000 delegates, and a Google Group can be added as a single delegate. Google recommends no more than 40 people using a delegated account at the same time. Delegates read, send and delete mail, and cannot chat as the account or change its password. The delegation guide covers the rest.
Route 3: a shared login, and why to skip it
The oldest route is one account and one password. It still appears in small offices, and Google Workspace gives it three problems that grow every year.
- 2-Step Verification belongs to a device. Workspace admins enforce it from Security, Authentication, 2-step verification, with security keys, Google prompt, the Google Authenticator app or backup codes as the second factor. Each of those lives on one phone or one key, so a shared account means a shared phone or a shared sheet of backup codes.
- There is no record of who did what. Every reply, archive and deletion carries the same identity, so a wrong answer to a client cannot be traced to a person.
- Leavers keep access until the password changes, and every change has to be passed around again.
Delegation gives the same two or three people the same mailbox with none of these problems.
Route 4: a shared inbox tool connected to Gmail
The fourth route is software. A shared inbox tool connects to the Google Workspace account that receives the mail and adds what Google does not model. Who owns each thread, internal notes beside the conversation, states such as open, waiting and done, a warning when two people reply at once, and reports on response time. Mail keeps arriving in Gmail. The tools differ mainly in where the team works, covered below.
When each route breaks
- Delegation breaks when a third or fourth person joins. There is no assignment, so two people open the same message and both reply, or both assume the other has it. Unless the admin chose to show the delegate's address, sent mail does not say who answered.
- Collaborative Inbox breaks when a thread needs context. The assignment note travels in an email, nothing shows that a colleague is replying right now, and nothing reports how long replies take. The queue also lives in the Groups interface, a separate screen from Gmail.
- A shared login breaks the day 2-Step Verification is enforced, and it should break earlier.
- A tool breaks when it is bought for two people who only needed to see the same mail. The cost is a subscription and a login nobody wanted.
One test covers it. If nobody can say who is handling the oldest unanswered message and how long it has waited, the free routes have stopped fitting.
Which shared inbox tools work with Google Workspace?
Five tools come up again and again for Gmail teams. The facts below are from each vendor's own site, checked in October 2026.
- Sektra is a separate workspace that syncs two-way with Gmail, Outlook, IMAP and WhatsApp Business. Mail stays in Gmail, and anyone not yet on Sektra keeps working there. It adds assignment by rule, internal notes, a typing indicator that reads A teammate is typing a reply, and analytics by teammate and client. Underneath sits the memory layer, a record per client of what was promised and what is still open. We build it.
- Hiver is a Chrome extension that renders a helpdesk in the Gmail interface, with internal notes, automation rules for routing and SLA alerts, and an AI Copilot for drafts. It is built around a support queue and keeps no record of what a client was promised. Sektra keeps that record per client, and Sektra vs Hiver sets the two side by side.
- Gmelius is a Gmail-native platform with shared inboxes, shared Gmail labels, notes and mentions, email analytics and AI agents that need configuring. Its site does not mention Outlook. Sektra connects Gmail and Outlook mailboxes in the same workspace.
- Keeping is a Chrome extension that turns Gmail into a help desk, with assignment, internal notes, collision detection and response-time reports. Its site names Gmail and Google Workspace only, and the record of a client ends at the ticket. Sektra keeps the commitments and open questions per client after the thread is closed.
- Missive is its own desktop and mobile app that combines email, team chat and tasks, with auto-assignment and workload balancing. The whole team moves into it. With Sektra, Gmail keeps receiving and sending underneath, so a teammate who has not moved yet loses nothing.
The split that matters is where people work. Hiver, Gmelius and Keeping live in Gmail's screen, so a teammate who has not installed them sees plain Gmail. Missive replaces the inbox. Sektra sits between: a separate app, with Gmail still receiving and sending underneath, connected through Google sign-in so Sektra never sees the password.
For an account management team, the queue is half the job. The other half is remembering what each client was told, and that record is the part only Sektra keeps. The product page describes what the record holds and how the assistant uses it.
Trying the next route without a migration
None of the four routes moves any mail, so trying the next one is cheap. Turn on Collaborative Inbox for a week and watch whether anyone opens the Groups screen. Connect a tool to the same address and run both in parallel, as the two-week parallel run describes.
Every choice on this page is reversible. The shared password is the one you will wish you had never made.
