How should a company with many brands set up shared email inboxes?
Short answer
Use Google Groups. Give each brand a shared inbox on its own domain that the whole team, and your AI agents, can read and reply from while logged into their own accounts. Assign access by role, not by person. Keep internal mail on the company domain and everything external on a brand domain. Don't share one fake login.
We have easily 30 brands if you count every local media brand on its own, and we'll be close to 40 soon. Getting email right for all of them is a big deal for us.
Why can't replies come from the company email?
Readers reply to a specific newsletter in a specific city. If the answer comes from a company address they've never heard of, they'll think, who is this? Are you tricking us that you're not actually in our town?
So replies come from the brand's own domain. And somebody on the team has to send them. The people on the ground don't want to reply to emails. They're paying us to do it for them.
What didn't work?
- A shared fake user. We created one login and figured everyone could sign into it. You can't. Google blocks you because it knows where you are.
- A separate Workspace account per business. I did that for about two years. It's really annoying.
What's the setup that works?
"Each team member is logged into their own account, but they can also send and receive as a brand. No more sharing passwords."
That's Google Groups. Each brand gets a group address everyone can read and answer from. A few rules make it hold up:
- Name it team. The reply address for a brand is team at that brand's domain.
- Split internal and external. Everything internal is on our company domain. Everything external is one of the brand names.
- Grant access by role. Instead of adding people one by one to every group, create groups by role: writer, manager, co-owner. A new hire gets a role and inherits the right inboxes.
- One account for me. I use one Workspace account with an alias per brand. They all land in the same inbox, but separate addresses make it easier to forward and sort mail by brand later.
One address per brand, or sales and support separately?
One address per brand, like hello at the brand, is probably the simplest. The question is the sites that produce leads, like the software sites and agency sites. There, two addresses can make sense: one for service and one for sales, with forms going to the salesy one.
| Brand type | Addresses |
|---|---|
| Local newsletter | One shared team inbox for reader replies |
| Software or agency site with lead forms | Possibly two: sales (forms go here) and service |
| Internal work | Company domain only |
I want a setup that works short term and long term. Too simple turns confusing at 40 brands.
What goes into the group, and who sees it?
Everything that isn't someone personally writing to me goes in the group. Newsletter replies, form submissions, the software sites, the agency sites. Then I can tell a teammate, or an AI agent, to go handle them. That's what I'm really solving for.
The agents are part of the team. Everyone can respond, including agents, so it's our entire human team and our agent team in one place. I don't want brand mail marked off-limits to the AI. It should be able to check and help with everything. That's the point.
For the rest of the stack, see the tools I use to run a multi-brand newsletter company.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From team operations calls and my own notes to my AI agents, 2026. Last updated .