One money saving feature in Microsoft 365 suite is “shared mailboxes”.
How does this work and save you money?
Well, normally when you need a new mailbox in Microsoft 365, you buy another subscription and create a mailbox, put in the details, User name, email address password, and create it.
One more monthly expense to Microsoft.
However, that is only for a mailbox that needs an actual user logging in to that account, checking and sending using that email address as their PRIMARY (or only) email account and address. (Other people may also be granted read and send permission to a user mailbox.)
Internet -> 365 server ->users pc outlook -> a person reading and sending
However, consider the situation where you have a generic mailbox such as sales@ support@ inquiries@, where no single person has that email address as their main address, but a number of people (1 or lots) can read and send as it as an ADDITIONAL or secondary account
Eg: John, Mary and Fred are the sales team, they all have their own email address and mailbox, but they want all to be able to see, send and receive as Sales@ email as well.
Here we create a SHARED mailbox called Sales@ and give John Fred and Mary access to it. All three now will have the sales mailbox showing in their outlook, but it must be a secondary address to their normal account.
This has 2 advantages.
- Easy to change access If john moves to management and Sue joins the sales team, we just remove John and add Sue from the access list.
- SHARED MAILBOXES ARE FREE! There is no monthly subscription! (correct at time of publication)
The disadvantage is no one person can have sales@ as their main or only email address.
Given Microsoft are increasing their monthly subscription cost, this could be a handy way to save on reoccurring expenses.
If you would like more information on this, hit our contact us page.
Written by James Cullen 3.3.2022