The best shared inbox software for a firm of two to five people is usually the one you already pay for. That’s a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, or a Google Workspace Collaborative Inbox. When you need a name on every thread and a warning that someone’s already replying, the choice turns on your mail. On Gmail, Drag ($12 a user a month) and Hiver ($25) work inside the Gmail you know. On Outlook, or a mix of both, Missive ($14) is the lowest-priced separate app that does the job. Front and Help Scout suit a firm whose shared address is a real support queue.
Every price, plan limit and AI charge below comes from the vendor’s own page, checked October 4, 2026.
What shared inbox software adds to a shared address
A shared address on its own already gives everyone the same view. Each of you sees every message, and each reply shows up for the others. What it doesn’t give you is a record of who’s on what.
Shared inbox software adds that layer. The parts that matter to a small firm are these:
- A name on each thread. You assign it, and everyone can see it’s taken.
- A status. Open, waiting and done look different from each other.
- A collision warning. You see that a colleague is already writing a reply.
- Internal notes. You talk about a client’s email beside it, where the client can’t see.
- Shared drafts and saved replies. One person starts, another finishes.
- Reports. How long things waited, and who answered what.
The ways to build a team address underneath all this, from an alias up to a shared mailbox, are laid out in team email when the team is two or three people. This piece starts where that one stops, at the point you’re comparing products.
Comparing the best shared inbox software
These are the tools a firm of two to five people realistically chooses between. Prices are per user per month, annual billing first, then monthly.
| Tool | Works with | Where you work | Lowest price | Free plan or trial | How AI is billed | Official MCP server |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 shared mailbox | Microsoft 365 | Outlook | Included, no license up to 50 GB | Comes with your plan | Copilot license | Work IQ Mail, preview, needs a Copilot license |
| Google Collaborative Inbox | Google Workspace | Google Groups | Included | Comes with your plan | Not part of it | Gmail MCP, developer preview |
| Drag | Gmail only | Inside Gmail | $12 / $16, no minimum | 7-day trial | Credits, with an allowance on Plus and Pro | Yes, Pro plan only |
| Missive | Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, IMAP | Its own app | $14 / $18, up to 5 users | 30-day trial | Your own key, or credits at provider price plus 25%. Productive plan and up | Yes, Productive plan and up |
| Hiver | Gmail inside Gmail, or Gmail and Outlook in its own app | Inside Gmail, or its own app | $25 / $35, from 2 seats | 7-day trial | Included in the seat | Yes, for the standalone app only |
| Help Scout | Any address, by forwarding | Its own app | Free, then $25 / $30 | Free for 5 users and 1 inbox | Assist included, AI Answers $0.75 a resolution | Yes, read-only |
| Front | Gmail, Office 365, others by forwarding | Its own app | $25 / $35, up to 10 seats | 14-day trial | Some included, Copilot $20 a seat, Autopilot from $0.05 a conversation | Yes |
Sources for each row: Drag pricing, Missive pricing, Hiver pricing, Help Scout pricing, Front pricing, and Microsoft’s shared mailbox page, all checked October 4, 2026.
A few lines in that table change the real price for a small firm.
- Missive Starter has no AI. Missive’s docs say AI needs the Productive or Business plan. Its MCP server needs the same. So the $14 seat is a clean shared inbox, and AI starts at $24.
- Hiver bills at least two seats. Its page says, “All Hiver plans start at 2 seats.” That’s no trouble for a firm of two. It’s worth knowing for one person covering a role address.
- Front Starter caps at 10 seats. Most of its AI sits in add-ons below Enterprise.
- Drag’s AI is metered in credits. One credit is a cent. Drafting a reply costs 2.5 credits, per its credits page. The Plus allowance of 1,000 credits a seat covers a lot of drafting.
Gmail-native, Outlook-native or a separate app
The first fork is where your mail lives today. It decides more than any feature list.
On Gmail or Google Workspace, you can keep working in Gmail. Drag and Hiver’s Gmail version add assignment, notes and status as a layer on the Gmail screen. Nobody learns a new app. Hiver’s own page says its Gmail version “works on top of your existing Gmail or Google Workspace account” as a Chrome extension. Before you buy one, try Google’s free Collaborative Inbox. It already does assignment and a done status.
On Microsoft 365, the free answer is a shared mailbox, opened in Outlook. None of the paid tools on this page runs inside Outlook the way Drag and Hiver run inside Gmail. The paid route on Outlook is a separate app: Missive, Hiver Omni, Front or Help Scout. Each one connects your Microsoft 365 account and becomes the place you read that address.
On a mix of both, a separate app is the only kind that holds everyone. Missive connects Gmail, Outlook, Exchange and plain IMAP, which makes it the usual pick for a firm with one partner on each.
A separate app changes the daily habit. Help Scout says so directly: “Once forwarding is set up, you should not work out of the email inbox with your email provider.” For a support desk that’s the point. For a two-person firm, it means one address lives in one app and your own mail lives in another.
How the AI is priced
AI is where the bills now differ most. There are four ways a vendor can charge for it, and each one behaves differently in a quiet month and a busy one.
| Model | Who does it | What you pay | How it behaves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Included in the seat | Hiver | Nothing extra on the pricing page | Fixed. Easy to budget. |
| Seat add-on | Front Copilot | $20 a seat a month on Starter and Professional | Fixed, but it can nearly double the seat |
| Per outcome | Help Scout AI Answers, Front Autopilot | $0.75 a resolution, or from $0.05 a conversation | Rises with volume. Busy season costs more. |
| Credits or your own key | Drag, Missive | Drag credits at a cent each; Missive at provider price plus 25%, or your key at cost | Rises with use. Long threads cost more. |
Per-outcome pricing suits a desk answering strangers’ routine questions. A firm’s shared address rarely has many of those. Most of what lands there needs a person who knows the client, so an AI that resolves things alone has little to resolve.
For two to five people, an AI line that’s either fixed or small is easiest to live with. A seat price with AI included, or a modest credit allowance, keeps the bill flat. Modeling the whole category against a firm your size is the job of what an AI email client costs.
The built-in assistants count too. Microsoft says Copilot Chat in Outlook can summarize and draft in a shared mailbox: “Summarize and Draft work for all shared and delegated mailboxes” (Microsoft Support, checked October 4, 2026). That needs a Copilot license on top of Microsoft 365.
Which tools are ready for AI agents
MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is how an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT reaches into another product. With it, an assistant can search your shared inbox, read a thread or write a draft for you. The question a buyer should ask is what the assistant is allowed to do once it’s in.
| Tool | What an assistant can do | Plan needed |
|---|---|---|
| Help Scout | Search and summarize. Read-only. | Standard and up |
| Hiver | Read and create shared drafts, email inboxes only | Hiver Omni, not the Gmail version |
| Drag | 47 tools, open source | Pro |
| Missive | Search, draft and send | Productive and up |
| Front | Read, draft, send, tag, assign and change status | All plans, with rate limits per plan |
| Gmail | Search, read, label and draft. No send. | Developer preview |
| Microsoft 365 mail | Create, reply and search messages | Preview, needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot license |
Help Scout states its limit clearly: “The connector is read-only. AI Agents can find and summarize information in your account, but they cannot create, send, edit, or delete data” (Help Scout, checked October 4, 2026). Front’s server is broader. Its developer docs say it “lets AI agents act on Front conversation data using a single OAuth-authenticated endpoint” (Front, checked October 4, 2026).
Google’s Gmail MCP server and Microsoft’s Work IQ Mail server are both previews, checked October 4, 2026. Microsoft’s page says, “You must have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to use Work IQ MCP servers.” Neither page mentions shared mailboxes or Collaborative Inboxes.
Read-only is a sensible place to start in a client practice. An assistant that can send from the firm’s address is sending in the firm’s name. Whoever connects it should decide that on purpose. The confidentiality questions worth asking any vendor apply to an MCP connection as much as to the tool behind it.
Free shared inbox options
Free is a real option at this size. Here’s what each free route gives you.
- Microsoft 365 shared mailbox. One mailbox, everyone with access sees it, and replies come from the shared address. It’s included, with no license needed up to 50 GB. It has no assignment and no status.
- Google Collaborative Inbox. A Google Group with assignment and a done status turned on. Members can “assign responsibility for a conversation” and mark it complete (Google, checked October 4, 2026). It’s included in Google Workspace. It isn’t available on personal Gmail.
- Help Scout Free. “The Free plan includes 5 users, 1 Inbox, and 1 Docs site.” It’s a full help desk, and you work in Help Scout rather than your mail app.
- HubSpot’s free inbox. HubSpot’s conversations inbox connects a shared address, and its free tier covers up to 2 users. It comes with a CRM, which suits a firm that wants one and adds weight for one that doesn’t.
The free versions hold up well for two people who talk every day. They start to strain once the address carries a promise, like a reply within a business day, that nobody can check.
The honest disadvantages of shared inbox tools
Every product on this page solves real problems. Each one also brings costs that the comparison pages tend to skip.
- Every seat is paid for one address. You buy a seat per person to run a single shared address. Your own mailboxes, where most client mail arrives, sit outside it.
- A second place to look. A separate app means one address lives there and your own mail lives in Outlook or Gmail. Things slip between the two.
- Platform lock. Drag and Hiver’s Gmail version only work with Gmail. Moving to Microsoft 365 later means moving tools too.
- The AI bill moves. Credits, per-resolution charges and provider keys all rise in your busiest month.
- Setup lands on the owner. Rules, tags and statuses need someone to set them up and keep them current. A firm of three has no operations lead, so it’s you.
- Everyone sees everything. A shared inbox shows every message to every member. If the address receives tax documents or bank details, that’s an access decision to make deliberately.
- Leaving takes work. Notes, assignments and history live in the vendor’s database. Your mail stays with Google or Microsoft, but the record around it may not export cleanly.
Whether a firm your size needs one at all is a fair question, and alternatives to a shared inbox tool makes that case properly, with the yearly cost for a whole team.
The disadvantages of a plain shared mailbox
The shared mailbox has its own gaps, and they’re the reason the paid tools exist. Briefly, a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox has:
- no owner on a thread, so each of you can assume the other has it
- no sign that someone’s already replying, so a client can get two answers
- no status, so open and done look the same
- no response times, so nothing shows how long a client waited
- a storage limit, at 50 GB without a license
Microsoft also says you can’t stop members deleting messages, and mail sent from a shared mailbox can’t be encrypted. Each of these, with Microsoft’s own wording, is set out in where a shared mailbox starts to strain.
The trade, in one line: a shared mailbox is free and quiet about who’s doing what. A tool costs money and says it out loud. Two people who sit near each other often need nothing more than the first.
Five questions that settle the choice
Answer these in order. Most firms have a clear pick by the third.
- Where does your mail live? All Gmail opens up Drag, Hiver and the Collaborative Inbox. All Microsoft 365 points to the shared mailbox, or a separate app. A mix points to Missive.
- What’s actually going wrong? If nobody could get into the address while someone was out, a free shared mailbox fixes it. If two of you answered the same client differently, you need assignment and a collision warning.
- How much mail lands on the address? Twenty a day is enough work to justify a tool. Twenty a week fits in a folder.
- Do you want AI on the shared address? If yes, price the plan that includes it. Missive’s AI starts on Productive, and Front’s Copilot is an add-on below Enterprise.
- Will an assistant ever act in it? If you plan to connect Claude or ChatGPT, choose by what the MCP server allows. Read-only is safest to begin with.
Then take the free trial on the real address for a week, with everyone who answers it. A week of real mail tells you more than any comparison table.
Where Point fits beside a shared inbox
Point isn’t a shared mailbox, and it doesn’t replace one. It connects the Gmail or Microsoft 365 account each person already has, and seats are per person. If your need is a queue for one address, a shared mailbox or one of the tools above is the right answer.
What Point does is make each person’s own mail calm. When you open it, the thread that needs you today is first. Each thread has a short summary, so you know what a client wants before you open it. A reply is drafted in your voice, and by default it waits for you to read it and press send. Your team’s threads sit in the same feed as your own mail. See what Point does.
How seats are counted is in per-seat billing. If you’re weighing Point against a specific tool, Point vs Missive and Point vs Front go through each one in detail.
Common questions
What is the best shared inbox software?
For a firm of two to five people, start with what’s included: a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox or a Google Workspace Collaborative Inbox. If you need assignment and collision warnings, Drag ($12 a user a month) or Hiver ($25) suit a Gmail firm. Missive ($14) suits Outlook or a mix of both. Front and Help Scout suit a firm whose shared address is a real support queue. Prices were checked October 4, 2026.
What is the best way to manage a shared inbox?
Agree who answers which kinds of mail, and put a name on each thread. Mark a thread done when it’s done, so nobody picks it up again. Reply all, so the others see it went. A Collaborative Inbox or a shared inbox tool does the naming and the status for you. On a plain shared mailbox, a folder for “in hand” and a quick word does the same job.
How do I create a shared inbox?
On Microsoft 365, an admin creates a shared mailbox in the Microsoft 365 admin center and gives each person access. On Google Workspace, a group owner creates a Google Group and turns on Collaborative Inbox. Both are free with your plan. The steps for each are in team email when the team is two or three people.
What are the disadvantages of using a shared mailbox?
A shared mailbox has no owner on a thread, no status and no warning when two people are replying at once. It has no record of response times. On Microsoft 365 it’s free only up to 50 GB, members can delete anything, and mail it sends can’t be encrypted. For two people who talk every day these gaps are small. They grow with the number of people and the volume of mail.
What is shared mailbox software?
Shared mailbox software and shared inbox software describe the same thing. It’s a tool that lets several people work one address with assignment, status and notes. The Microsoft 365 shared mailbox is the free built-in version, and products like Missive, Front and Hiver are the paid ones.
What is replacing Gmail?
For most firms, nothing is. Google keeps adding to Gmail itself, including a Gemini-powered Inbox view announced in January 2026 (CNET). Apps like Missive and Front put a different screen over the same Gmail account. Your mail still lives with Google, and the app reads it from there.
Is there a free shared inbox for Gmail?
Yes, if you’re on Google Workspace. A Google Group set up as a Collaborative Inbox gives you assignment and a done status at no extra cost. On personal Gmail there’s no shared inbox, only delegation, which lets someone into one person’s account. Help Scout and HubSpot both have free plans that work with a Gmail address.
Do shared inbox tools work with Outlook?
Some do, as separate apps. Missive, Front, Help Scout and Hiver’s standalone app all connect Microsoft 365. Drag and Hiver’s Gmail version work only with Gmail. On Outlook itself, the built-in option is a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox.