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The three options at a glance #
When somebody asks us to set up accounts@yourcompany.co.uk, there are three quite different
things they might mean. Two of them are included in what you already pay for.
| User mailbox | Shared mailbox | Distribution list | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costs a licence | Yes, per month | No | No |
| Has its own inbox | Yes | Yes | No |
| Can sign in | Yes | No | No |
| Several people can use it | Not properly | Yes | Yes |
| Everyone sees the same messages | No | Yes | No, each gets a copy |
| You can see who replied | Not applicable | Yes | No |
| Replies come from the address | Yes | Yes | No, from the individual |
| Keeps a shared history | Yes | Yes | No |
| Has files, Teams and a calendar | Yes | Calendar only | No |
Does more than one person need to deal with these emails, or do several people just need to receive them? Handling means a shared mailbox. Receiving means a distribution list. One person who needs their own account means a user mailbox.
The options
A licensed user mailbox #
A real person's account. It has a licence, a password, and everything that comes with being a member of your organisation.
This is what every member of staff has. As well as email, a licence gives them:
- Their own sign in, and the Office apps.
- OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint access and a calendar.
- A place in your directory, so colleagues can find them.
- Their own security settings, multi-factor authentication and device access.
A user mailbox costs a licence every month, for as long as it exists. That is entirely reasonable for a
person. It is money thrown away for an address like info@, which does not need a sign in,
does not use Teams and will never open a spreadsheet.
This is the single most common piece of unnecessary spend we find when we take over a Microsoft 365 tenant, and it is usually several licences.
There is one situation where a shared address genuinely does need a licence: when it has to sign in to something. A few third party systems insist on signing in as the mailbox rather than being granted access to it. If you have one of those, tell us and we will licence it deliberately rather than by accident.
The options
A distribution list #
Not a mailbox at all. It is an address that fans mail out to a list of people, each of whom gets their own copy in their own inbox.
Send to allstaff@yourcompany.co.uk and everybody on the list receives it. There is no inbox
behind the address, nothing is stored, and there is nowhere to go and look at what was sent.
What it is good for
- Announcements.
allstaff@,directors@,reception@when it should reach everyone on the desk. - Alerts. Anything automated that should land in front of several people at once.
- Reaching a group without anyone needing to track what happened next.
What it is bad for
Anything a customer writes to. If a customer emails sales@ and that is a distribution list,
three people get a copy, nobody knows who is dealing with it, two of them reply from their own address, and
there is no record anywhere of what was said. That is the situation shared mailboxes exist to solve, and it
is the single most common misconfiguration we find.
Decide whether the list should accept mail from outside your company. An internal announcement list open to the world is an invitation to spam every member of staff at once. We close them by default and open them only where there is a reason.
The decision
Which one do you want? #
Two questions get you there.
Worked examples
| What you want | What you need | Why |
|---|---|---|
| info@ or sales@ | Shared mailbox | Customers write to it and several people answer. |
| accounts@ for three people processing invoices | Shared mailbox | They need to see what each other has dealt with. |
| allstaff@ for announcements | Distribution list | Nobody replies to it, everyone needs a copy. |
| A new employee | User mailbox | They are a person. They need a sign in and the apps. |
| A second address for one person | An alias | Costs nothing, arrives in their existing inbox. |
| noreply@ for automated mail | Shared mailbox | Free, and catches the replies people send anyway. |
| A meeting room | Room mailbox | Bookable in the calendar. Free. |
| A team needing email, chat and files together | Microsoft 365 Group | Shared inbox plus a Team and a document library. |
| A leaver's mail kept for six months | Shared mailbox | Convert theirs. Keeps everything, frees the licence. |
The decision
Two more you should know about #
These come up constantly, and one of them is frequently the right answer when somebody asks for a shared mailbox.
An alias
An alias is simply an extra address bolted onto a mailbox that already exists. Mail sent to it arrives in the same inbox. One person can have several, and they cost nothing.
If somebody wants firstname.lastname@ as well as f.lastname@, or a director wants
a separate address for a side of the business they run alone, that is an alias rather than a new mailbox.
Replying from an alias is more awkward than people expect and does not always behave the way you want. If sending as the address matters, and it usually does for anything customer facing, you want a shared mailbox instead.
A Microsoft 365 Group
A Group is a shared inbox with a Team, a calendar and a document library attached. Where a shared mailbox gives a set of people one inbox, a Group gives them a whole shared workspace.
For a project, a department or anything where the email is only part of how the group works together, this is often the better answer. For a straightforward departmental address where people just answer email, a shared mailbox is simpler and easier to live with.
Meeting rooms, projectors and pool cars can have their own resource mailboxes, so they can be booked in the calendar and will accept or decline automatically. They do not need a licence either. If people are still booking the meeting room on a paper diary, ask us.
Saving money
When somebody leaves #
This is where the biggest saving usually is, and where we most often find businesses paying for something they do not need.
When somebody leaves, you generally still want their email: for the history, for anything unfinished, and so that people writing to them still reach somebody. The instinct is to leave the account exactly as it is, which means the licence keeps being paid month after month.
You do not need to. Their mailbox can be converted to a shared mailbox. Everything is kept, colleagues can be given access, mail sent to their old address still arrives, and the licence is freed up for whoever replaces them.
- Tell us their last working day Ideally before it, not three months after.
- Tell us who should have access Usually their manager, or whoever is picking up their work.
- We convert the mailbox and remove the licence The address keeps working, the history is intact, and the monthly cost stops.
- We disable the account properly Sign in blocked, sessions revoked, devices dealt with. This part matters more than the licence saving.
If you have had a few people leave over the years, it is worth asking us to check what is still licensed. We regularly find several, quietly costing money every month, sometimes for people who left years ago.
A leaver's account that is still licensed and still able to sign in is a security problem as well as a cost. It is a working set of credentials that nobody is watching. Converting to a shared mailbox removes the sign in entirely while keeping the mail, which is why it is the right answer on both counts.
Practicalities
Things that catch people out #
A short list of the surprises, all of which are easier to deal with if you know about them first.
| What happens | What is going on |
|---|---|
| Replies from a shared mailbox end up in your own Sent Items | By default the copy is saved to the sender rather than to the shared mailbox, so colleagues cannot see what was sent. It is a setting, and we turn it on as standard. Tell us if it is not behaving. |
| A shared mailbox has stopped receiving mail | Usually it has hit its size limit. Shared mailboxes are generous but not unlimited, and a busy one with years of attachments does fill up. Tell us and we will sort it. |
| A shared mailbox does not appear in Outlook | It usually appears automatically once access is granted, but it can take a little while, and it sometimes needs Outlook restarting. On a phone it normally has to be added manually. |
| Two people reply to the same customer | Nothing technical, just a working habit. Agree how you mark something as handled: a category, a folder, or moving it out of the inbox. |
| A distribution list is full of people who have left | Lists do not maintain themselves. Worth reviewing once a year, and worth telling us when somebody leaves so we can take them off. |
| Somebody wants the password for a shared mailbox | There is not one. They should be given access through their own account instead. |
Support
Common questions #
Can we change one into another later?
Usually yes. A user mailbox can become a shared mailbox and back again, and a distribution list can be replaced with a shared mailbox keeping the same address. It is easier to get it right at the start, but nothing here is a one way door.
How many shared mailboxes can we have?
Effectively as many as you need. They do not consume licences, so the practical limit is how many your team can sensibly keep on top of rather than anything we would charge you for.
Can a shared mailbox have its own signature?
Yes, and if you use centrally managed signatures we can apply a specific one to mail sent from a shared address. Tell us what it should say. There is more in Email signatures with Exclaimer.
Can we use a shared mailbox on a phone?
Yes, though it generally has to be added as a separate account in the mail app rather than appearing automatically the way it does in Outlook on a computer. Ask us and we will walk you through it.
Who can see what is in a shared mailbox?
Only the people you have given access to. It is not open to the whole company by default. Tell us who should have it, and tell us when that changes.
Do shared mailboxes get backed up?
They are covered the same way as any other mailbox in your tenant. If you are not certain what your backup arrangement covers, that is worth asking about separately, because it is a question with a more important answer than this one.
We think we are paying for mailboxes we do not need
Quite likely, and it is worth checking. Ask us to review your licences and we will tell you what is assigned, what is actually being used, and what could be converted. It is a common way to reduce a bill without losing anything.
Getting help
If you need a new address setting up, tell us what it is for and who should be able to answer it, rather than which type you think you need. We will pick the right one, and it is usually the free one.