How to Set Up a Shared Mailbox for Your Team

A shared mailbox lets more than one person read and reply to messages sent to an address like info@yourdomain.co.ke or support@yourdomain.co.ke. Your hosting control panel does not have a dedicated "shared mailbox" feature, but you can get the same result in one of two ways: give your team the login details to one email account, or forward a copy of every message to each person's own inbox. Which one suits you depends on how your team works.

Option 1: Create One Account and Share the Login

This works well when replies need to come from the same address and you want everyone to see the same inbox, including what has already been answered.

In cPanel

1. Log in to cPanel and open Email Accounts under the Email section.
2. Click Create, enter the address you want (for example info), and set a strong password.
3. Share the email address, password, and your mail server's incoming/outgoing settings with each team member.
4. Have each person add the account to their phone or desktop mail app using IMAP, not POP3, so every device stays in sync.

In DirectAdmin

1. Log in to DirectAdmin and open E-Mail Accounts.
2. Click Create Mail Account, enter the username and a strong password, then save it.
3. Share the login details with your team and have each person connect using IMAP so read/unread status and replies stay consistent across every device.

Always connect a shared mailbox using IMAP rather than POP3. POP3 downloads and can remove messages from the server, so one person's app could end up with mail nobody else can see. See IMAP vs POP3 for the difference.

Because everyone uses the same password, change it whenever someone leaves the team, and avoid saving it in personal password managers tied to one individual.

Option 2: Forward a Copy to Each Person's Own Inbox

This works better when you want each team member to keep their own copy and their own sent history, without sharing a single password.

1. Create the shared address (for example sales@yourdomain.co.ke) the same way as above, but no one needs to log in to it directly.
2. Set up forwarding on that account so every incoming message is copied to each team member's personal work email address.
3. When someone replies, they reply from their own address, or you can ask them to set their outgoing 'from' name to the shared address if your mail client supports it.

See How to Set Up Email Forwarding for the exact steps to add a forwarder.

Which Option Should You Choose?

• Choose a shared account if the whole team needs to see what has already been replied to, to avoid double replies.
• Choose forwarding if each person prefers working from their own inbox and you don't need a shared view of what's been answered.

Either approach works on shared hosting without any extra software, and you can switch between them later if your team's needs change.