Shared inbox for support teams without double replies
InboxManager turns support@ into a shared inbox for support teams of two to forty people, without moving you to a help desk. Every message gets an owner, teammates see who is replying before they start, and AI drafts answers based on how your team answered similar questions before. Each reply is reviewed and sent by a person.
What support@ looks like when a team shares it
A small support or operations team usually shares one address through a group or a forwarding rule. Every morning brings password questions, billing disputes, shipping delays, feature requests and a few angry messages that need a careful answer. Everyone sees everything, nobody knows who has taken what, and the same customer sometimes gets two different answers within ten minutes. Meanwhile the hardest tickets wait because each person assumes someone else has them.
The pains of a shared address
- 01 Two people answer the same customer, sometimes with different information.
- 02 Messages nobody picked up sit for a day because everyone thought someone else had them.
- 03 The same twenty questions get typed from scratch every week.
- 04 New teammates take weeks to learn the right answers and the right tone.
- 05 Long back-and-forth threads with a frustrated customer are hard to pick up mid-way.
How InboxManager runs a support inbox, step by step
Picture a busy Monday after a pricing change. Your team of four connects support@ as a shared inbox on the Plus plan.
- 08:05. Ninety new messages arrive overnight. InboxManager sorts them into Important, Needs reply, Waiting, Newsletters, and Spam and cold pitches, and flags six billing disputes as Important.
- 08:10. Rules assign billing questions to the teammate who handles invoices and login problems to the teammate on technical duty. "Billing questions go to the billing lead, login problems go to the person on call."
- 08:12. For each assigned message, a reply draft is ready. It reuses the wording your team sent for similar questions last month, so the answer about the new price matches what customers already heard.
- 09:40. Two teammates open the same refund request. Collision detection shows that one of them is already drafting, so the second moves on to the next message.
- 11:15. A customer's thread reaches fourteen messages. The three-line summary shows what was promised, what the customer still asks and the deadline they gave, so the teammate who picks it up does not have to read the whole history.
- 15:00. A message waiting on a customer's order number moves to Waiting and comes back with a reminder if the customer does not reply in two days.
Features support teams use
- Shared inbox software gives support@, info@ or sales@ assignment, collision detection and AI drafts based on your past answers. It runs inside Gmail or Outlook, so your team keeps the mail app it knows.
- AI email response generator prepares replies in your team's tone and saves them as drafts. There is no auto-send setting, so a person reads every answer before it reaches a customer.
- AI email organizer sorts incoming mail into lanes and lets your rules route each type of question to the right person.
- AI email summarizer gives the next person on a long thread the decision, the open ask and the deadline in three lines.
- Email follow up reminder brings back threads where you are waiting on the customer, so nothing stays open by accident.
Admin controls for team leads
Admins assign roles, review the audit log of who opened, drafted and sent what, and set data retention for the shared inbox. On Enterprise you also get SSO with SAML, SCIM provisioning and an admin console.
Which plan usually fits a support team
Starter does not include shared inboxes, so support teams start on Plus. Plus covers up to five people, ten mailboxes and two shared inboxes, with 20,000 emails triaged, 2,000 AI reply drafts and 900 thread summaries per month. It costs 74 USD per month billed yearly (888 USD per year) or 149 USD month to month.
A support team of up to twenty-five people with several addresses usually picks Pro: forty mailboxes, ten shared inboxes, 60,000 emails triaged, 6,500 drafts and 3,500 summaries per month, for 249 USD per month billed yearly or 499 USD month to month. Enterprise covers up to a hundred people and forty shared inboxes.
Usage is counted per billing period and shown in the app. Deleting a message or a draft does not give the allowance back, and no plan is unlimited. Compare all limits on the InboxManager pricing page.
Shared inbox or group email
If your team still runs support@ as a group address, read shared inbox vs Google Group to see where a group stops working. Customer data in support mail is handled as described on our email data privacy page.
Questions about a shared inbox for support
Do we have to move to a new help desk tool?
No. InboxManager works inside Gmail and Outlook through labels and folders, with assignment and collision detection on top. Your team keeps its mail app and its history.
Can AI answer customers without a person checking?
No. InboxManager prepares drafts only. There is no auto-send setting, so every reply is read and sent by someone on your team.
How does it learn our standard answers?
It looks at replies your team has sent from the shared inbox and drafts new answers in the same wording and tone. When you change a policy, the next answers you send become the new reference.
How many shared inboxes can we connect?
Plus includes two shared inboxes, Pro includes ten and Enterprise includes forty. Starter has none.