Groups & email aliases

Most businesses need more email addresses than just one per person. You might want info@, support@, hello@, or a team@ address that goes to several people. In Google Workspace, you create these using groups or email aliases, and neither requires an extra paid seat.

Help me choose

Group, alias or a new user?

Does the address need its own inbox, Drive and settings?

Groups vs. aliases, what's the difference?

	Group	Email alias
Delivers to	Multiple people	One person
Who can send from it	Group members (if allowed)	The user it's attached to
Extra cost	No	No
Best for	support@, team@, info@	Alternative spellings of one person's name

Same question, opposite answers: an alias adds addresses to one inbox, a group adds inboxes to one address. So count the people who need to see the mail: a shared address for several of them is what a group is for.

Read this as text

An alias works like this. Two different addresses on your domain (hello@, which is the alias, and sarah@, which is her primary address) both deliver to the same place: Sarah’s regular inbox. Adding an alias adds a way to reach one person. It never adds a person.

A group runs the other way. One address, support@, delivers a copy to every member: Sarah’s inbox and Marco’s inbox. Adding a member adds someone who sees the mail, without creating a new address.

So the two are not settings of the same thing: they point in opposite directions. Count the people who need to read the message. Several people sharing one address is what a group is for; several addresses for one person is what an alias is for.

Creating a group

Groups (sometimes called Google Groups) are the most powerful option. They act as a mailing list. Email sent to the group address goes to everyone in the group.

Go to admin.google.com and sign in.

In the left sidebar, click Directory, then Groups.

At the top, click Create group.

Fill in the group details, then click Next:

Group name: A human-readable name, like "Support Team"
Group email: The address you want, like support@yourcompany.com
Description: Optional, useful if you have lots of groups
Group owner(s): Optional

Choose a group access type: Public, Team, Announcement only or Restricted. Each one is a set of ready-made permissions for who can post, who can see the conversations, and who can join. Changing any individual option switches the type to Custom.

Click Create Group, then Add members to add the people who should receive messages, and click Add To Group.

Give the group a few minutes to become active before you send anything to it. It can take up to 24 hours to appear in your organization's Groups directory.

Check the moderation setting for shared inboxes

If you want all email to deliver immediately without anyone having to approve it, check the group's moderation setting. It lives in Google Groups rather than the Admin console: sign in at groups.google.com, click the group's name, click Group settings on the left, and set Message moderation to No moderation. This needs Groups for Business turned on for your organization.

Adding an email alias to a user

An alias is an extra email address for one person. Email sent to the alias lands in their regular inbox. The user can also choose to send from the alias in Gmail.

Go to admin.google.com, then Directory → Users, and open the user's account page.

At the left, under the user's name, click Add Alternate Emails.

Click Alternate email and enter the part of the address before the @. If your account has more than one domain, pick the right one.

Click Save.

Email to the alias lands in the user's regular inbox. Google says the change can take up to 24 hours, though it usually happens much faster. Two more things worth knowing: an alias is not a Google Account, so nobody can sign in with it; and Google's own help pages disagree about whether anyone besides its owner can send from an alias, so when several people need to send from one address, use a group instead.

Allowing a group to send email

Being a member of a group doesn't let you send email as the group. Each person who wants to reply as support@ sets that up in their own Gmail:

Let the group receive the verification email first. Gmail sends it from outside your organization, so the group has to accept it. At groups.google.com, click My groups, click Manage under the group, then Permissions → Posting permissions, and set Post to Anyone on the web. (If that option isn't there, an admin has to allow incoming email from outside your organization first.)

In Gmail, go to Settings → See all settings → the Accounts tab (some accounts call it Accounts and import).

In the "Send mail as" section, click Add another email address. Enter the name and the group's address, then click Next Step and Send verification.

Click the link in the confirmation email. It goes to the group, so it lands in the members' inboxes. Once the address is confirmed, it appears in the "From" line when you write a message.

Common use cases

Good uses for a Group

support@ that two or more people monitor
info@ that goes to you and an assistant
team@ for internal announcements
billing@ for your finance person and their backup

Good uses for an Alias

sarah.jones@ and s.jones@ both going to the same inbox
hello@ as a friendlier version of yourname@
An old email address you used before changing domains

Common questions

Can I have an email address that isn't tied to any person or group?

Sort of: you can create a group with a single member, or add the address as an alias on someone's account. Google says both kinds of address are free and don't count towards your user licenses. If you need the address to have its own inbox, Drive and settings, create a full user account instead (which does use a paid seat).

How many aliases can a user have?

Each user can have up to 30 email aliases in Google Workspace.

Can I use a group address to catch all email sent to my domain?

Yes, this is called a catch-all, and Google supports using a group address for it so more than one person can watch it. Set it up in the Admin console under Apps → Google Workspace → Gmail → Routing. See Email routing & catch-all for steps.

Will emails sent to the group go to spam?

It can happen. If it does, the member can open the message in Gmail and mark it as not spam, or add the group address to their contacts.