When to Set up a New Mailbox
Help Scout makes it easy for your team to manage all your shared email addresses (for example, marketing@domain.com, billing@domain.com, etc) from a single dashboard. Instead of hopping around from inbox to inbox outside of Help Scout, you can house all of your emails in a single Help Scout account.
Help Scout gives you multiple ways for managing your shared email addresses. The best choice depends on your requirements and how your team works.
- Multiple Mailboxes* - Your groups work autonomously and/or privacy or explicit branding is important to you.
- Teams** - You organize by group, responsibility, or priority in the same mailbox.
- Mailbox Aliases - You work out of a single Mailbox, but want to sort, filter, and report by different incoming email addresses.
You should not create Mailboxes for your individual team members (more on that here).
Here’s a more specific breakdown of the best solution based on your situation.
Multiple Mailboxes |
Teams** |
Mailbox Aliases |
Separate Emails into Distinct Mailbox | Organize for groups of users, priority, or responsibility | Sort and tag by incoming email address in a single mailbox |
Privacy restricted on mailbox | Visibility across teams is helpful | Full visibility is helpful |
Users handle a single email address | Users handle multiple addresses | Users handle multiple addresses |
Signature branding important | Generic signature is acceptable | Generic signature is acceptable |
Little collaboration between teams | Lots of collaboration between teams | Everyone works together as a single team |
Unique saved replies, workflows*, and custom fields** | Shared saved replies, workflows*, and custom fields** | Shared saved replies, workflows*, and custom fields** |
More on teams
Teams** can be defined for groups of users dedicated to a particular function, like Accounting, Returns, or a specific product; or they can be used to prioritize conversations, e.g, (level 1, 2, 3, or feedback vs urgent). Teams give you more power to organize within your mailbox, moving conversations out of the Mine and Unassigned folders and into team folders.
You can forward a team specific email address (alias) into a Help Scout Mailbox and use a workflow* to automatically assign the conversations to the correct team. Only users assigned to a given team will see that team folder in their Conversations sidebar.
Replies from team communications can come from either the main email address for the mailbox or the email alias.
More on aliases
You can forward multiple email aliases into a Help Scout mailbox. In some cases, your team may want to manage similar emails all together, such as info@, help@, and contact@. You can also use workflows* to automatically tag conversations, set custom fields, or copy to folders to automate sorting and reporting. Note, that unless you are using the aliases to automatically assign to a team or individual user, all incoming emails will land in the Unassigned folder by default.
Replies can come from either the main email address for the mailbox or the email alias.
Creating a new mailbox
If you’re sure a new mailbox is right for you, create your new mailbox* by going to the Manage menu under Mailbox, then select New Mailbox. See: Creating a New Mailbox. (Tip: Check your plan for maximum mailboxes before choosing this option, as mailbox counts vary by plan. Contact our Support team if you’re running short).
Helping customers from individual, personal email addresses
- You need to work exclusively from Help Scout
- Email notifications and @mention notifications won’t work
- You cannot email from one Help Scout Mailbox to another
- You cannot CC or BCC multiple Help Scout Mailboxes at once
- Since administrators have access to all Mailboxes, there’s no way to keep Mailboxes completely private
- My team works exclusively out of independent email addresses (no shared email address like help@ or contact@)
- My team handles some emails from a shared address and some emails from a personal address
- My team mostly works from a shared email inbox, but handles a few emails from a personal address
My team works exclusively out of independent email
My team handles some emails from a shared email address (like contact@ or help@) but mostly handles customer emails from a personal address:
My team mostly works from a shared email inbox, but handles a few emails from a personal address
** Custom Fields and Teams are available on the Plus and Company plans.
You can see a full breakdown of plan options here. Please reach out to our Support team if you have questions about any of our features or plans.