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Shared Mailboxes in Outlook
Free under 50 GB, set up in about two minutes, and genuinely the right answer for info@ or support@. Here is how, and where it stops helping.
Try it with your OutlookHow to set one up
- 1Microsoft 365 admin centre → Teams & groups → Shared mailboxes → + Add a shared mailbox.
- 2Give it a name; the email address is derived from it and can be edited.
- 3Add members. They access it with their own credentials — a shared mailbox has no password of its own and nobody signs into it directly.
- 4Auto-mapping puts it in each member's Outlook automatically, usually within an hour.
- 5Decide whether replies save to the shared mailbox's Sent Items or the sender's own — this is a setting, and the default catches teams out.
The problem
- ✕Free up to 50 GB. Past that the mailbox itself needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 licence, which people discover when it stops receiving mail
- ✕Every member still needs their own Exchange Online licence to access it
- ✕It tells you where a message lives, never whether anyone has answered it
- ✕Two people can reply to the same enquiry, and neither finds out
- ✕Rules on a shared mailbox are set up separately from your own, and are easy to forget
What Clarity does, and what it does not
- 1Clarity does not provide a shared inbox. If several people need to answer one address and see who picked up what, a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox — or a tool like Missive or Front — is the right answer, and Clarity is not.
- 2What Clarity does is work on a mailbox one person owns: categorising what arrives, drafting the replies that need writing, and tracking what was sent and never answered.
- 3Connect the personal Outlook account, not the shared one.
- 4If a shared inbox is what you actually need from Clarity, say so — it is not built, and demand is how it gets prioritised.
What changes
- ✓Honest about the gap rather than pretending a personal assistant is a team tool
- ✓Works alongside a shared mailbox — they do not conflict
- ✓Handles the half a shared mailbox never touches: whether anything got answered
- ✓Gmail and Outlook, no migration
Who runs into this
Operations
info@ is answered by three people and enquiries get answered twice or not at all.
Small business owner
Set up a shared mailbox for quotes and cannot tell which ones are still waiting.
Support lead
The mailbox hit 50 GB and quietly stopped accepting mail.
Frequently asked questions
Does a shared mailbox need a licence?
Not under 50 GB — that is the point of them. Past 50 GB the mailbox itself needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 licence, which raises it to 100 GB. Every person who accesses it still needs their own Exchange Online licence regardless.
How do I create a shared mailbox in Microsoft 365?
Admin centre → Teams & groups → Shared mailboxes → + Add a shared mailbox. Name it, add members, save. Auto-mapping usually puts it in members' Outlook within the hour.
Can you log into a shared mailbox directly?
No. A shared mailbox has no password of its own. Members open it through their own account, which is why it does not consume a licence.
Does Clarity Inbox provide a shared inbox?
No. Clarity works on one person's mailbox — categorising, drafting replies in your voice, and tracking follow-ups. For a genuinely shared inbox with assignment, use a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, Missive or Front. If a shared inbox is what you would want from Clarity, tell us; that is how it gets built.
What does a shared mailbox not solve?
Whether anything got answered. It shows where messages live and who can see them, but nothing tells you that an enquiry went quiet three days ago — which is usually the expensive part.
Looking for Microsoft's own documentation? Microsoft's shared mailbox documentation
More Outlook guides
Outlook Rules Not Working?
Why Outlook rules stop running — the 256 KB quota, client-only rules, and rule ordering.
Auto-Categorise Emails with AI
Stop building rules by hand. Clarity reads every email and applies the right Outlook category.
Daily Email Summary
A morning brief of what needs your attention — prioritized by urgency, noise filtered out.
What it costs you
Roughly 9.1 hours a week
Estimate2.8 hrs of that we could cover
The rest stays yours — it is not repeatable.
106 hrs
a year, if the low end of the range holds
137
threads went quiet and nothing told you
Last 90 days · your own mail · illustrative figures
Clarity Inbox
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