What is the difference between Google Groups and a shared mailbox?

By Patronum

September 07, 2026

Read Time: 4 mins

What is the difference between Google Groups and a shared mailbox? image

The comparison
Option 1: a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox
Option 2: Gmail delegation on a dedicated account
Who each option suits
Where Patronum actually helps here
Frequently asked questions
If the real problem is who has access
Sources

A Google Group is a distribution address that fans mail out to members’ own inboxes. A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox is a mailbox several people open directly, which Microsoft says needs no license of its own up to 50 GB. Google Workspace has no equivalent. You get a group with Collaborative Inbox, Gmail delegation, or a dedicated account.

Disclosure: Patronum is a Google Workspace management platform and wrote this comparison. Patronum is not a shared mailbox product. The facts below come from Google’s own documentation.

The comparison

Four things decide whether a shared-inbox setup lasts: is mail really shared or just copied, can two people avoid duplicate replies, do replies carry the right identity, and what happens when the owner leaves.

	Google Group	Group + Collaborative Inbox	Delegation on a dedicated account	Shared password
Costs a license	No	No	Yes, the account itself. Delegating an existing employee’s mailbox adds none	Yes, one
Where mail lands	Members’ inboxes, or read in Groups, or both, depending on each member’s subscription setting and the group’s conversation history setting	groups.google.com	The delegate’s Gmail	One inbox
Assign and resolve	No	Yes	No	No
Sender shown on replies	The member’s address	Group or member, per settings	Usually the delegate’s address, but admins can change sender information settings	The account’s address
Real ceiling	500,000 members	Groups for Business required	1,000 delegates, 40 at once	One session, constant conflicts

Option 1: a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox

The closest native match, and genuinely good for small teams. Google’s Learning Center describes assigning a conversation to a member, marking items complete, no action needed, or duplicate, and filtering by assignee or resolution. That’s real shared-inbox behavior.

The constraints bite quickly. An administrator must turn on Groups for Business, Google says you “must turn on conversation history” first, and taking or assigning needs the “Who can moderate metadata” permission. Where members read the mail isn’t fixed either: each picks each email, digest, abridged, or no email, and with conversation history on they can read and reply in Google Groups instead. Your team lives in groups.google.com, not Gmail, so no filters and no labels. Google signals the ceiling itself, suggesting on that page that you “set up delegated accounts in Gmail, where you can share inboxes among 40 to 1,000 users.”

Option 2: Gmail delegation on a dedicated account

You create support@yourcompany.com as a real user, then delegate it. Google’s Admin Help states one Gmail account supports 1,000 unique delegates, with about 40 accessing it at once under typical use. Delegates must be users or groups in your own domain, and you can’t delegate an alias: Gmail Help says “You can’t add delegates to an alternate email address or alias because it’s not a Google Account.”

Delegates read, send, and delete mail from inside their own Gmail. That’s the win. Google’s catches: the delegate’s address usually appears on messages they send, though admins can set sender information to show the account owner only; delegates can’t chat as the account or change its password; and delegation does not increase the limits for a Gmail account, so the 2,000 messages per day cap covers the whole address. Delegating a group is quicker but quieter, because the mailbox shows one delegate while the real access list is the group’s membership.

On cost, be precise: delegation itself adds no license, but the dedicated account you invented to be the shared mailbox does. That’s the line a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox doesn’t cross. No shared drafts, no resolution state either.

Who each option suits

Under 10 people, low volume, want tracking: a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox.
10 to 40 people who want it inside Gmail: a dedicated account with delegation.
Real ticket volume or SLAs: buy a helpdesk. Google isn’t competing with Zendesk or Front.
Pure distribution, no triage: a plain Google Group, free.
Nobody: a shared password on a dedicated account. It breaks 2-Step Verification, leaves no audit trail, and dies with the person who knew the password. Google says the same in its “Avoid sharing an account among users” guidance: accounts are meant for one person, shared use makes an account more likely to hit a threshold, and if one person can’t clear a login challenge, “the account might be temporarily locked for everyone.” Google’s own suggested alternatives are additional addresses, delegation, and a shared inbox.

Where Patronum actually helps here

Patronum isn’t a shared mailbox and won’t turn a Google Group into one. It works the edges: delegation and group membership move by onboarding and offboarding policy, not by hand.

Then there’s the part that bites. A dedicated mailbox account tends to get kept alive indefinitely, long after the team around it has moved on, because nobody wants to be the person who deleted the shared history. That’s a paid seat working as a filing cabinet. Patronum Archive takes the history out of the account so the account itself can close, which is the difference between a mailbox you retired and one you’re still renting.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google Workspace have a shared mailbox?

Not as a named feature. Google’s equivalents are a Google Group with Collaborative Inbox, Gmail delegation on a dedicated user account, or a plain group used as a distribution list.

Does a Google Group need a license?

No. A Google Group doesn’t consume a Google Workspace user license. A dedicated user account used as a shared mailbox does.

How many people can share a Gmail account through delegation?

Google documents up to 1,000 unique delegates per account, with about 40 accessing it at once under typical use. Delegation does not raise the account’s Gmail limits.

Can I use Google Groups and delegation together?

Yes, and plenty of teams do. Mail arrives at a group address, forwards to a dedicated account, and that account is delegated to whoever answers. You then maintain two membership lists, which is where drift starts.

If the real problem is who has access

Most shared mailbox pain isn’t the mailbox. Nobody tracks who has access, or removes it when people move on. That’s lifecycle work, and what Patronum’s Workspace management platform automates. Read next: the user offboarding checklist.