Delegate a user’s email address

Use email delegation to grant one or more people (delegates) access to a single account. For example, a boss might delegate their administrative assistant to read and send emails.

A delegated account has most of the benefits of Gmail, including:

• Automatically sorting email with filters (rules)
• Keeping a record of correspondence by archiving email
• Tracking the status of email messages using labels

Delegates can read, send, and delete messages for the delegated account. However, they can’t chat with anyone from the delegated account or change the password. 

Note: In Gmail, delegated accounts and shared inboxes are the same. 

When should I use email delegation?

Your organization might need more than one person to read and respond to messages sent to a certain email address. For example, everyone on your sales team might want to check and respond to messages sent to [email protected]. In this case, we recommend assigning delegates to the account [email protected].

Google Workspace offers several ways to collaborate using email, in addition to email delegation. Depending on how your organization uses email, these options might be better solutions for you:

• Email alias: An alias, also called an alternate email address, is an email address that you add to a user's primary email address. Messages sent to the alias are automatically sent to the user's primary email account. You can assign an alias to one user only. Learn how to add an alternate email address.
• Email forwarding: Forwarding lets you deliver messages to new, additional recipients that you specify, in addition to delivering the message to the original recipient. Learn more

Using email delegation

• A single Google account can support up to 1000 delegates. To avoid impacting account performance, we recommend allowing a maximum of 40 concurrent users.
• Google Workspace admins control whether messages sent by delegates include the email address of both the account owner and the delegate, or only the account owner.
• Google Groups can be added as account delegates. One Group counts as a single delegate for that account.
• Email aliases don't support delegates because an alias isn’t a Google Account.

Let users delegate email

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsGoogle WorkspaceGmail.
3. Click User SettingsMail delegation.
4. To turn on email delegation, click the box next to Let users delegate access to their mailbox to other users in the domain.
5. To change which sender address that the recipient sees (the account owner’s or delegate’s), under Sender information shown to recipient, select an option.
6. Click Save.
7. Tell your users that they can add individuals or Groups as a delegate. 

Related topics

• Avoid sharing an administrator account
• Add or delete an alternate email address (email alias)