Running a shared address for free: the real options
You have a contact@ or office@ address, two or three people answering it, and no appetite for another subscription. That instinct is right more often than software vendors admit. Before paying for anything, it is worth knowing what you can already get for free, because the answer is: quite a lot, up to a very precise point.
There are four genuinely free routes. For a small team with low volume, any of them can hold for years. Each one stops somewhere specific, though. Here is the honest tour, with terms checked in July 2026.
Gmail delegation
If the shared address is a Gmail account, delegation is built in and free. The owner grants access from settings, and each colleague then opens the mailbox from their own Google account. Nobody shares a password, and a personal account can name up to 10 delegates: far more than a small team needs.
The catch is not technical. Delegation shares access, not work. There is no way to assign a message, no done state, and a message opened by one person shows as read for everyone. For one owner and one backup, it is exactly right. For a team answering every day, the cracks show within a week. We took it apart in Gmail delegation: what it does well and where it stops.
Google Groups as a Collaborative Inbox
The least known free option: a Google Group can be switched into a Collaborative Inbox. Messages sent to the group address land in a shared view where you can assign a conversation to a member (they get notified by email), mark it complete or a duplicate, and filter by assignment status. Google charges nothing extra for any of it.
That makes Groups the only free route with real assignment. The trade-off is the interface: you work inside Google Groups, which looks and feels like a forum rather than a mailbox. There are no internal notes, and nothing warns you when two people answer the same message at once. If your budget is exactly zero and your volume is low, start here anyway. It beats a password on a sticky note.
A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox
If your organization already pays for Microsoft 365, a shared mailbox is included in what you have: the mailbox itself needs no license of its own, and the people accessing it use the licensed accounts they already own. It appears in Outlook next to everyone’s personal mail and behaves like a normal mailbox.
“Behaves like a normal mailbox” is also the limit. Nothing in Outlook marks who owns a conversation or whether it is finished, and there is nowhere to leave a note for a colleague. Setup and pitfalls are covered in our Microsoft 365 shared mailbox guide for small teams.
The free tiers of paid tools
Shared inbox vendors also run free tiers, sized so that a growing team will eventually leave them. As of July 2026, three are worth knowing about.
Missive is free for up to 3 users and 2 shared accounts, without rules, integrations or analytics. The limit that bites is history: 15 days of email and chat, after which conversations disappear from the tool (your mail itself stays safe in the mailbox). It is a generous demo, not a place to settle. The first paid tier starts at $18 per user per month on monthly billing, 20% less on annual.
Help Scout offers a $0 plan for up to 5 users with 1 inbox. The hard wall is contacts: 100 per month. A team busy enough to need a shared inbox usually hears from more than 100 different people a month, which is exactly where the limit is placed. Paid plans start at $25 per user per month on monthly billing.
HubSpot lets you connect a team address like info@ to its conversations inbox on any plan, including the free one, so several people can read and reply. You get the entire HubSpot CRM alongside, whether you wanted one or not, and automatic routing of incoming conversations requires a paid seat.
None of this is a trick. These are real free products from serious vendors, designed as on-ramps. Their limits sit exactly where a team that starts depending on the tool will hit them.
When free is genuinely enough
The honest answer first: for two people and a handful of messages a day, free is usually the right call. A delegated Gmail account or a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, plus one simple agreement about who checks when, covers it. Paying for software to manage ten emails a week would be absurd.
Free holds as long as three things stay true: the volume stays low, the team stays stable, and you can still coordinate by talking to each other. Plenty of small teams live in that situation for years. If that is you, keep your money.
The symptoms of having outgrown it
You will not need a consultant to spot the moment. It announces itself, always through the same three symptoms.
Duplicate replies. A customer gets two answers to the same message, slightly different, sometimes with two different prices. Nobody knew who was taking it.
Silently unanswered mail. Each person assumed the other one had it. You find out when the sender follows up, annoyed, ten days later.
The password creeping back. The free option did not cover some need, so someone “just shared the password” with the new volunteer or hire. Now you have the exact security problem the free route was meant to avoid, plus provider lockouts when two people sign in from different places.
Add the daily digging through the Sent folder before answering, and the context drifting into WhatsApp, and the diagnosis is clear: your problem is no longer access, it is coordination. None of the free options provide it, apart from the basic assignment in Google Groups.
If you do end up paying, count differently
The price objection against these tools is legitimate, but look at what it actually targets: per-user billing. At $18 per user, a team of three pays $54 every month, and every added volunteer or seasonal hire raises the bill. That model is what makes paid tools feel expensive for a small structure, not the act of paying.
Trupeo takes the opposite approach: 10 EUR per month, flat, however many people join. You connect the mailbox you already have (Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, or any IMAP provider), everyone keeps their own login, and the team finally sees who handles what: one owner per conversation, an open or done status, and internal notes the sender never sees. That is the coordination layer the free options lack, without a bill that grows with the team.
To weigh free against paid with all the numbers on the table, read our roundup of the best shared inboxes for small teams. And Trupeo’s pricing fits in one line.
Sources:
- Delegate and collaborate on email (Gmail Help): delegation built in at no cost and the 10-delegate limit on a personal @gmail.com account.
- Send mail on behalf of someone (Google Workspace Learning Center): a message opened by a delegate is marked as read for the other person.
- Use a group as a Collaborative Inbox (Google Workspace Learning Center): assigning conversations to members, the complete and duplicate states, and filtering by assignment status.
- About shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Learn): the shared mailbox itself needs no license, while each person accessing it must have a licensed Exchange Online mailbox.
- Billing and plans (Missive Docs): the free plan’s limits of 3 users, 2 shared accounts and 15 days of history, and the first paid tier’s price.
- Help Scout Pricing: the free tier at $0 for up to 5 users and 1 inbox with 100 contacts per month, and Standard at $25 per user per month.
- Connect channels to the conversations inbox (HubSpot): the team email channel available on all plans including free, and the paid seat required for automatic routing.