Several Gmail accounts sharing one email address

Question

In our company, using Google Apps, we need that everyone can check one special email address. What I did was to create a group for that special address and added everyone to that group so that all of the people can receive those emails AND I set up every account so they can also send messages using the group email.

E.G.: [email protected] and [email protected] are members of the group [email protected] so they are receiving all emails that are sent to [email protected], also they can send (from their own accounts) emails "from" [email protected]

My question is: is there another (better) way of making multiple users to receive/send emails from one single address?

Answer 1

Definitely the new the collaborative inbox from Google Groups for Business if you are on a Google Apps for business.

If not it worth the upgrade.

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&hlrm=en&answer=167430

Answer 2

Google doesn't seem to believe in standard shared mailboxes, despite their conceptual simplicity and useful collaborative features, unfortunately.

If you're on a free Apps account, the best you can do is a distribution list and send-as functionality, as you've currently got. As you've probably noticed, this means you can't see whether anyone else has responded to the incoming mails or see their responses unless they CC the group.

If you have a paid account, you can go one better by using the Google Groups system as a collaborative inbox. My small company eventually decided after the trial period that it wasn't worth the fees, so we're back with the free account, but it might work for you.

Answer 3

Gmail has built in function, called mail delegation. This way another person so they can read, send, and delete messages on behalf of another account. You can specify up to 10 users.

However, to first use this option in Google Apps for your domain, Administrators must first enable mail delegation by checking the Mail Delegation checkbox under Email Settings in the administrator control panel.

Answer 4

Please try Hiver - it lets you manage a shared email account like [email protected] right from your Gmail.

Once you have Hiver set up, you and your team would be able to see emails sent to [email protected] in your Gmail account. When any of you respond to such emails, the replies would be 'synced' to all accounts.

You can also do other useful stuff, like delegating an email to anyone else in your team to handle. And of course, everyone can send email as the group email id by using Gmail's send-email-as feature: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en

Do give it a try.

Disclaimer: I am the Founder of Hiver.

Answer 5

The approach you are using the standard approach where group is used that I feel is best approach. However, alternatively, you can use Settings --> Accounts and Imports --> Grant Access to your account... but if you want to add many users, seems tedious as for normal account, it only allows to add one account at a time.

Since, you have business Google Apps account, you can take their support service.

Answer 6

As far as sticking to a Google-only solution I agree with baptme. If you need a more robust tiket system in back of your "[email protected]" email you should look into something like fogbugz.com. It rocks and you can make an incoming message into a bug, feature request, or anything else you want. Everyone on the team can see who has done what and check the status of the tickets. The list of features goes on for days but this is what my company is starting to use and it is awesome!