How to Create a Google Group Email Address for Your Team

By Patronum

November 06, 2026

Read Time: 5 mins

How to Create a Google Group Email Address for Your Team image

Google Groups or the Admin console: which route?
Step 1: Enter the group info
Step 2: Choose privacy settings
Step 3: Add members
How do admins create a group in the Admin console?
Who is allowed to create groups?
What do teams usually set up next?
Verification checklist
Sources

To create a Google Group email address in Google Workspace, sign in to groups.google.com, click Create group, and work through three steps: group info (the name and address), privacy settings, and members. That works if your organization lets you create groups and has Groups for Business turned on; both are admin settings. Admins can also create groups in the Admin console under Directory > Groups, which is the route to use if the group will control access to features or services.

Jump to your route: Google Groups / Admin console

Looking for a personal mailing list inside Gmail instead? That’s a contact label, covered in how to create a contact group in Gmail.

Google Groups or the Admin console: which route?

	groups.google.com	Admin console
Who can use it	Anyone your “Creating groups” setting allows	Admins with the Groups administrator privilege
Needs Groups for Business on	Yes	No (email lists, sharing and calendar invites still work)
Can configure features or services	No	Yes
Access settings	Sliders per permission	Presets (Public, Team, Announcement only, Restricted) you can customize
Dynamic membership	No	Yes, on supported editions

The third row matters most: Google says a group created in Google Groups “can’t be used to configure features or services.” If it might ever scope a setting, use the Admin console. For what the four presets do, see the four types of Google Groups.

Step 1: Enter the group info

The screenshots and defaults below come from our test organization on November 5, 2026; yours may differ, because what’s offered depends on your organization’s Groups for Business policies.

Google Groups create group step 1 with group name, group email and description fields
Step 1 of 3 at groups.google.com.

Group name. What people see in the directory and in their inbox. Typing “Sales Team” filled the email field in as “sales-team”.
Group email. Edit the suggestion if you want something shorter, like sales@. If your organization has more than one domain, pick it from the dropdown. Google reserves some words, such as admin and postmaster.
Group description. Optional.

Step 2: Choose privacy settings

Google Groups create group step 2 with privacy sliders for view conversations, post and view members
Step 2 of 3: every slider defaulted to Entire organization.

Who can join group. The default was “Anyone in the organization can join.” For sales@ or finance@, change it so people can’t add themselves.
Who can view conversations. Entire organization by default. Narrow it to members if the mail is sensitive.
Who can post. Who can send mail to the address. The slider stopped at Entire organization, with no outside option. Whether outsiders can post is controlled first by an admin policy, then by the group’s own setting (see “Let outside people email the group” below).
Who can view members. Entire organization by default.

Step 3: Add members

Google Groups create group step 3 with members, managers, owners, welcome message and subscription
Step 3 of 3: you’re an owner by default.

Group members, managers and owners. Only owners and managers can change the group’s settings. You’re an owner by default.
Welcome message. Optional.
Subscription. Defaulted to “Each email” in our test, so every message lands in each member’s inbox.
Directly add members. Adds people straight away; the screen notes that ineligible users will be invited instead.

Click Create group. Google advises waiting a few minutes for the new group to become active before sending it a message. Our screenshots stop before this click: nothing was saved in our test organization.

How do admins create a group in the Admin console?

In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Groups and click Create group.
Enter the name, email, optional description and any owners, then click Next. Optionally tick the Security label.
Choose an access type (Public, Team, Announcement only or Restricted) and click table cells to customize it.
Decide whether admins, users or both can add external members. Google notes this adds an Unsubscribe footer to mail sent to external members.
Choose who can join: Anyone in the organization can ask, Anyone in the organization can join, or Only invited users.
Click Create Group.

Who is allowed to create groups?

It’s an organization-wide setting. In the Admin console, go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Groups for Business > Sharing settings and find Creating groups. The options are Admins only, Internal organization users, and Anyone on the web (the public option only appears if public access to groups is enabled). Google’s default lets anyone in the organization create groups.

No Create group button at groups.google.com? If Create group is missing, ask your administrator to check both your access to Groups for Business and the organization’s group-creation permissions. When Groups for Business is off, users can’t create groups in Google Groups, though admins still can in the Admin console.

What do teams usually set up next?

Let outside people email the group. Customers don’t need to be members to email sales@: letting outsiders post and adding external members are separate settings. An admin first checks Group owners can allow incoming email from outside the organization in Groups for Business sharing settings (Google’s default is unchecked); then the group owner sets Who can post to Anyone on the web. Full steps are in the collaborative inbox guide .

Add an alias. Admins go to Directory > Groups, open the group, click Aliases in the Group information section, then Edit, enter the Group Alias Email and click Add Alias. Google allows up to 30 aliases per group and says changes can take up to 24 hours. Unsure whether you need a group, an alias or delegation? See email alias vs group vs delegation.

Send as the group from Gmail. Gmail sends a confirmation code to the group, so the group must accept that message. Google’s sequence:

As an owner or manager, set Who can post to Anyone on the web (Group settings > General). Optionally turn on message moderation so only moderators see the code.
In Gmail, go to Settings > See all settings > Accounts (or Accounts and import), and under Send mail as, click Add another email address. Enter the group address, then Next Step and Send verification.
Enter the code from the message that arrives in the group.
Delete the confirmation message from the group, then put Who can post and moderation back the way they were.

If Anyone on the web isn’t offered in step 1, the admin setting for outside email is still off.

Make membership automatic. Dynamic groups fill themselves from a membership query (Directory > Groups > Create dynamic group), and you can’t add people manually. Google lists them for Frontline Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, Education Standard and Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus and Cloud Identity Premium. Business Starter, Standard and Plus aren’t on that list.

Keep membership right as people join and leave. Patronum, a Google Workspace management tool, does this through policies. Its onboarding policies can add users to Google Groups based on organizational unit, group or directory attributes, create a group from attributes, and keep membership in sync with the policy. Offboarding policies remove leavers from groups and can transfer group ownership. Policies run after you activate them, hourly by default.

Verification checklist

A test email from an internal account reaches members, according to their subscription
If outsiders need to write in, a test from a personal Gmail address arrives too
At least two people hold the Owner role, so the group survives one person leaving
Who can join, Who can view conversations and Who can view members match how sensitive the mail is
Any alias has been tested after the change has had time to apply
If you set up Send mail as, the confirmation message is deleted and posting settings are restored