Set up mailboxes, aliases and forwarding for a small team

Decide who gets a mailbox and which addresses can be free aliases, then set up forwarding and catch-all so nothing important is missed.

Mailboxes3 min read

For a small team, the trick is working out which addresses need to be real mailboxes and which can simply be extra names for one. Mailboxes are paid per seat; aliases are free. A little planning keeps your bill low and your mail tidy.

Mailbox or alias?#

Use a…	When	Examples
Mailbox	A person needs to sign in, read and send mail.	`sara@`, `tom@`
Alias	An extra address that should land in someone's existing mailbox.	`hello@`, `orders@`, `press@`
Forward	Mail should also go to one outside address.	A bookkeeper's own address

Each mailbox costs $1.49 a month, or $11.99 a year. Aliases use no seat. Mail to an alias arrives in its mailbox, and people can sign in to webmail with an alias too.

Note

Replies are always sent from the mailbox's own address; webmail can't send from an alias. If customers write to hello@, they'll get the reply from, say, sara@. Decide whether that suits you before you set up shared addresses.

Create the mailboxes#

1
Open Mailboxes and choose New mailbox
2
Pick the domain and the address
Letters, numbers, dots, dashes and underscores.
3
Add a display name
The name people see on mail from this address.
4
Set the password
Generate a strong one (16 characters, shown once) or Set it myself: 8 to 128 characters with a lowercase and an uppercase letter, a number and a special character.
5
Adjust storage and sending limits if needed
Storage can be 1, 2, 5 or 10 GB per mailbox; 5 GB is the default on a paid plan.

For more than a handful of people, use Import CSV instead. A file with type, address, displayName, password and target columns creates mailboxes, aliases and forwards in one go. Leave password empty and one is generated; the passwords come as a one-time download, so keep it somewhere safe.

Add aliases#

Open a mailbox's Aliases & forwarding tab and add the extra addresses it should receive. Plus addressing works automatically as well: mail to sara+news@ arrives at sara@, which is handy for signing up to newsletters and filtering them later.

Set up forwarding#

Turn on Forward new mail and enter one outside address. Choose Keep a copy in this mailbox if you'd like the mail in both places; without a copy, forwarded mail goes to Trash.

Spam is never forwarded.
Forwarded mail shows the sender as "Sender via your address", so it passes the recipient's checks.
Forwards count towards the mailbox's sending limit, and pause if your plan isn't active.

Decide on a catch-all#

On your domain's Catch-all tab, choose what happens to mail for addresses that don't exist: Drop it (recommended) or Deliver to a mailbox. Catch-alls attract a lot of spam, so only turn one on if you really need mail for any address. Mail to postmaster@ and abuse@ always goes to the domain's first mailbox, as email standards expect.

Limits worth knowing#

	Per mailbox on a paid plan
Storage	5 GB by default, up to 10 GB
Emails sent	500 a day, 100 an hour
Recipients per email	50
Attachments per email	25 MB

Every recipient counts towards the sending limit, and forwarded mail and auto-replies count too. A full mailbox keeps receiving mail but can't send until there's space again.

Tip

You're the only admin on the account. Keep a note of which addresses are aliases of which mailbox; it makes changes much easier when someone joins or leaves.