How to share a support inbox without sharing the password
Sharing one login to info@ works until it doesn't: no one knows who replied, security is a group chat message, and when someone leaves you rotate the password everywhere. Here are the four real options, honestly compared.
1. Keep sharing the password
Free and instant. Costs you: no accountability (every sent email is from “the team”), no way to see who's handling what, one credential everyone carries, and 2FA becomes a shared-phone problem. Fine for two people who sit together; degrades fast beyond that.
2. Delegated mailbox access
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 both let a mailbox be delegated to named users — each person opens it from their own login. Better security, and it's free. Still nothing shows who is replying or what's been handled, and delegation caps out clumsily (Gmail allows limited delegates and hides read state).
3. A Google Group / distribution list
Every member gets their own copy. Free, easy — and now there are five copies of every customer email, five separate “read” states and no shared record of who answered. Reply-loops are common enough that we wrote a fix page.
4. A shared inbox tool
One copy of each thread, one login per person, visible read and reply state. The trade-off is price and setup — per-seat helpdesks run £15–25 a person monthly and want workflows configured. Flat-priced tools like Bosun sit behind a single forwarding rule instead.
Decide who needs to see the inbox. Two people, same room? The built-in options may be enough.
If you pick delegation or a group, follow your provider's guide — and turn off the shared password the same day.
If you pick a shared inbox tool, set up forwarding (our guides cover each provider), test with one email, then retire the password.
Whichever you choose: rotate the old shared password once, so departed staff and old devices lose access.