Create support@, sales@, or any shared team inbox using aliases and standard IMAP clients—no Zendesk or Freshdesk required.
Three of us were replying to the same customer email. At the same time. From our personal inboxes. The customer got three different answers — one saying we could do the thing, one saying we couldn't, and one asking clarifying questions about the thing we'd already answered twice.
Mortifying.
That was the moment I realized we needed a proper shared inbox. Not "maybe we should look into this someday" — we needed it that week. Something like support@ourdomain.com that everyone could see, reply from, and not duplicate work.
The obvious move was help-desk software. Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout — pick your poison. But honestly, we were a three-person team getting maybe 15 support emails a day. Paying $15-50/seat/month for ticket management felt like buying a forklift to move a couch. (If you're curious how those per-seat costs add up, see our breakdown on flat-fee vs per-mailbox email pricing.)
Here's the thing: you don't need dedicated help-desk software for a shared team inbox. You can set this up with email aliases and standard IMAP clients. Your team sees the same inbox, sends from the same address, and you skip the monthly subscription entirely.
By the end of this, you'll have a shared email address like support@yourdomain.com (or sales@, or team@, or whatever you want). Multiple team members will be able to:
No new software. No per-seat fees. Just email working the way it should.
If you're on JustEmails, everything below is included in the $49/year flat fee — unlimited mailboxes, unlimited aliases, full IMAP/SMTP. The shared-credential approach in this guide costs nothing per person, because everyone is connecting to the same mailbox rather than holding an account of their own. (If you would rather each person had their own login to the JustEmails app, separate team members are $2 per member per month; the account owner is free and uses no seat.) If you're on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the same concepts apply, but you'll likely pay per user.
First, create a dedicated mailbox for your shared inbox. Not an alias — an actual mailbox with its own storage.
In JustEmails:
support or team (the full address becomes support@yourdomain.com)Why a dedicated mailbox and not just an alias? Because you want a shared source of truth. When five people connect via IMAP to the same mailbox, they all see the same messages, the same read/unread status, the same folder structure. An alias forwarding to individual inboxes? That creates five separate copies — and five separate versions of reality. I learned this the hard way after spending two weeks with the alias approach, wondering why conversations kept falling through cracks. (Not sure about the difference? Our guide on email aliases vs forwarding explains it.)
In Google Workspace:
Google calls this a "collaborative inbox" and buries it under Groups. (Why is it under Groups? Nobody knows.) Create a Google Group, set it to Collaborative Inbox mode, and configure the access. It's clunky. But it works.
In Microsoft 365:
Create a "shared mailbox" in the admin center. Credit where due: Microsoft actually handles this well. Shared mailboxes don't consume a license, and multiple users can access them via Outlook.
Grab the IMAP and SMTP settings for your email host. These let any email client connect to the shared mailbox.
JustEmails settings:
| Protocol | Server | Port | Security |
|---|---|---|---|
| IMAP | imap.justemails.app | 993 | SSL/TLS |
| SMTP | smtp.justemails.app | 587 | STARTTLS |
Username: the full email address (support@yourdomain.com) Password: whatever you set when creating the mailbox Authentication: PLAIN or LOGIN (JustEmails does not offer CRAM-MD5 or OAUTH2 on SMTP)
Note the asymmetry, because it trips people up: IMAP on 993 is implicit TLS, so your client's security dropdown says SSL/TLS. SMTP submission is port 587 with STARTTLS — JustEmails publishes 587 only, so if your client defaults to 465 with SSL/TLS, change it or the connection will never answer.
Write these down or put them in your team's password manager. Every team member needs the same credentials to connect.
Now each team member adds the shared mailbox to their email client as an additional account.
Apple Mail (macOS/iOS):
The shared inbox appears as a separate account in the sidebar. Personal email stays separate.
Outlook (Windows/Mac):
Thunderbird:
After this, every team member has the shared inbox as a separate account in their client. When Sarah opens Apple Mail, she sees her personal inbox plus the support@ inbox. Same for everyone else.
When your team replies from the shared inbox, the email should come from support@yourdomain.com — not from Sarah's personal address.
Most email clients handle this automatically when you reply from within the shared account. But double-check. Send a test email to your personal address, then reply from the shared inbox. Verify the "From" address shows the shared address.
If you want to add some personalization (so customers know they're talking to a human), configure the display name. Something like:
The email address stays shared, but the name shows who's actually writing.
One number to know before the desk gets busy: the daily send allowance belongs to the account rather than to this mailbox. It runs 20/day for a domain's first week after verification, 200/day for the second, and 500/day from day 15 onward, so five people working out of support@ share that figure with every other mailbox on the domain and with anything your app sends through the API. Count a heavy day's replies against it while you're still setting up.
In Apple Mail: Mail → Settings → Accounts → [Shared Account] → Edit the "Name" field.
In Outlook: Account Settings → Change → More Settings → General → Mail Account name.
A shared inbox without organization turns into chaos fast. Set up a folder structure everyone follows.
Suggested folders:
Create these folders in the shared mailbox itself (not in each person's client). Because it's IMAP, the folders sync everywhere. When Mike moves an email to "Done," Sarah sees it move too.
Some teams add a naming convention: prefix folders with numbers (01-Needs Reply, 02-Waiting, etc.) so they sort predictably.
This is the part where no software can save you. Two people replying to the same email is embarrassing and confusing for customers. (Ask me how I know.)
Low-tech solutions that work:
Higher-volume teams sometimes add a lightweight tool like Missive or Spark Mail on top of IMAP — these add collision detection and assignment features while still using your existing mailbox. But for teams under 5 people handling under 50 emails/day? Manual coordination is usually enough. We're still on the manual approach. It's not elegant, but it works.
Before declaring victory, run through the whole loop:
If any step fails, check the IMAP settings. The most common issue is clients configured with POP instead of IMAP. POP downloads and deletes. IMAP syncs. You want IMAP. Always IMAP. (Need a refresher? See email ports explained for the full breakdown.)
"Authentication failed" when connecting the shared mailbox
The password is wrong, or you're using the wrong username. The username should be the full email address, including the domain. Not just "support" — it's "support@yourdomain.com".
Emails appearing in one person's client but not another's
Check that everyone is using IMAP, not POP. POP downloads messages to one client and (often) deletes them from the server. IMAP keeps everything synced.
Sent emails not appearing for other team members
Some clients save sent mail to a local folder instead of the server's Sent folder. Go into account settings and ensure "Store sent mail on server" is enabled. In Apple Mail: Settings → Accounts → [Account] → Mailbox Behaviors → Sent Mailbox should point to the server's Sent folder, not "On My Mac."
Folder changes not syncing
IMAP sync isn't instant. Give it 30 seconds to a minute. If folders still don't sync, check your client's IMAP sync settings — some clients only sync when you open the folder. Force a full sync or set the client to sync all folders automatically.
"Too many simultaneous connections" error
Some email hosts limit how many IMAP connections a single mailbox can have. If you've got 8 team members and each has the inbox open on desktop and phone, that's 16 connections. Most hosts allow 10-20 concurrent connections (JustEmails doesn't impose hard limits here), but cheap shared hosting might cap you at 5. Check with your provider. Or switch providers. Life's too short for arbitrary connection caps.
Once your shared inbox is running, a few things worth doing:
If you're managing email across multiple domains — maybe your main business, a product site on ClickzProtect, or an analytics tool like JustAnalytics — the same shared-inbox pattern works everywhere. Same IMAP setup, same folder structure, same workflow.
For sales teams doing outbound with VeloCalls, a shared sales@ inbox lets everyone see what's coming back from prospects. No more "did anyone reply to that lead?"
Yes. Each team member connects to the shared mailbox via IMAP/SMTP with the same credentials. When they reply, the email goes out as support@ or sales@ — the recipient never sees individual names unless you configure it that way. Most IMAP clients let you set the From name to something like "Sarah from Support" while keeping the address as support@yourdomain.com.
The simplest approach is internal discipline — claim a thread before replying (a quick Slack message works). Some teams use color-coded labels or flags to mark "I've got this." For higher volume, add a lightweight shared inbox tool like Missive or Front on top of the IMAP connection. But honestly, teams under 5 people handling under 50 emails/day rarely need anything beyond communication.
With IMAP, deletions sync to all connected clients. If Sarah deletes a message, it's gone for everyone. This is intentional — you want a single source of truth. Train your team to archive rather than delete. If accidental deletion is a real risk, some email hosts (including JustEmails) offer a trash retention period before permanent deletion.
Depends on your threat model. With direct IMAP access, emails stay on your mail server — no third-party SaaS vendor has copies of your customer conversations. That's a plus for compliance-sensitive industries. But help-desk tools often add features like audit logs, permission granularity, and SSO. For most small teams, the security difference is negligible. Pick based on workflow, not paranoia.
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