Multi staff email set up for the one address

cormie

Hey folks,
I've been using my info@ address via Thunderbird and it works perfect. I have template replies to hand within a second or two, can search all history of conversations and previous correspondence etc, but its all locally stored on my own laptop.

I'm looking for a solution that will use the same email address, but where multiple users can access it to correspond with customers and where it will still be clear to see the conversation that has taken place before.

I'm thinking to migrate the management of the address from Thunderbird to Gmail (it cane be set up as a cloud client while still using the info@ address so it doesn't appear to come from @gmail). I have my own @Gmail account but again, this is personal, so I'd need to set up one just to manage this.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice on this or perhaps there's a better service out there, but it would probably be best to stick with Google as the account would also be used for calendar entries, map searches etc and it can all work harmoniously together?

Any feedback on the idea would be great either way!

Graham

Thunderbird is your mail client, it looks like your email itself is hosted by our resident BK.

Don't BK have webmail you can use while still keeping Thunderbird for yourself.

Nothing wrong with Gmail for business as an option, I've been using it for years. I'm just wondering why you think it's necessary.

Axwell

The issue isnt Thunderbird - as Graham said its just your mail client of choice. If your email is only locally stored then you are using your mail account as the type pop3 id imagine?

If that's correct then with your setup of pop3 if you were to have your email on your phone and the laptop for example then when you pull mails to your phone they would show as new emails even if you read them on the laptop earlier in the day. Changing to imap would mean your emails stay on the server but when you read it on the laptop it gets marked on the server as read and at the point you pull the emails on your phone it pulls them from the server but the ones you already checked on the laptop get marked as read.

Same would apply to allowing others access the same account, they are just other devices accessing the same account in reality. Only thing would be if an email comes in and 2 people go to reply to it at the same time there is no way for one to know the other is already writing a reply, guess that comes down to the frequency of emails though and how many people are checking on them.

There may be other solutions or ways to approach it, and as mentioned by Graham BK have webmail for all accounts which you can access at altmail.blacknight.com

webfruits

Zoho mail could be useful, you can assign email to people, add comments to email for your staff only to read.
They also have bunch of other apps free to start with.

cormie

Thanks for the replies,

I just checked altmail.blacknight.com, I don't think this will work at all. There's nothing in the sent folder so if I reply to a mail on Thunderbird, it can't be known by looking at altmail.blacknight.com.

The advantage I'd see with Gmail over any other provider is the interconnectivity between different Google services. I'm a big big fan of Google and it's an absolutely vital part of the business itself, from maps, to docs, to sheets, to streetview, to contacts, to photos, to drive, to the calendar, to youtube even, everything compliments eachother and all of the above are highly utilised at the moment in the business.

The idea would be to have the account accessible anywhere, especially smart phones to be able to utilise everything on the go and have everything synced, saved and searchable by anyone connected with the account and then being able to share info from other services with others on different levels of access too.

Yep, I've my mail set up on Thunderbird with pop.

Interesting about the IMAP approach over pop, if I reply to a mail on my phone, would it appear in the sent items of thunderbird though? If not, and I'm guessing it wouldn't, this is why I'm thinking it might be best to ditch a local client altogether and just use a cloud service (Google).

Webfruits, thanks for the suggestion, I'll try look into Zoho later, I like the sound of the extra functionality of assigning, adding notes etc, I don't suppose it can be integrated with Google too?

Graham

cormie wrote: »

Thanks for the replies,

I just checked altmail.blacknight.com, I don't think this will work at all. There's nothing in the sent folder so if I reply to a mail on Thunderbird, it can't be known by looking at altmail.blacknight.com.

The advantage I'd see with Gmail over any other provider is the interconnectivity between different Google services. I'm a big big fan of Google and it's an absolutely vital part of the business itself, from maps, to docs, to sheets, to streetview, to contacts, to photos, to drive, to the calendar, to youtube even, everything compliments eachother and all of the above are highly utilised at the moment in the business.

Ahhh, that's a requirement you didn't mention originally

cormie wrote: »

The idea would be to have the account accessible anywhere, especially smart phones to be able to utilise everything on the go and have everything synced, saved and searchable by anyone connected with the account and then being able to share info from other services with others on different levels of access too.

For mail only you should be able to do that with IMAP, for other services it would depend on your mobile device/mail app.

cormie wrote: »

Yep, I've my mail set up on Thunderbird with pop.

Interesting about the IMAP approach over pop, if I reply to a mail on my phone, would it appear in the sent items of thunderbird though?

Replies should synch if you setup thunderbird to use IMAP to connect instead of the existing pop3 connection.

cormie wrote: »

If not, and I'm guessing it wouldn't, this is why I'm thinking it might be best to ditch a local client altogether and just use a cloud service (Google).

Webfruits, thanks for the suggestion, I'll try look into Zoho later, I like the sound of the extra functionality of assigning, adding notes etc, I don't suppose it can be integrated with Google too?

Zoho isn't bad, I find the webmail a bit basic when you're used to something like Gmail/Outlook type webmail. It doesn't integrate with anything other than their own services.

Gmail/Outlook-Office are the best of the web enabled services, if I remember correctly I pay €4per user/per month for Gmail on my own domains.

If you're planning to allow multiple users to access your company email, it won't be long before you get sick of sharing a single account. Keep this in mind when calculating costs.

cormie

Replies in bold

Graham wrote: »

Ahhh, that's a requirement you didn't mention originally

Not definite requirements when it comes to optimal email management, but would certainly give huge favourable merit to Gmail.

For mail only you should be able to do that with IMAP, for other services it would depend on your mobile device/mail app.


Replies should synch if you setup thunderbird to use IMAP to connect instead of the existing pop3 connection.

Oh, I didn't think it would be able to show a mail sent from a smart phone in the sent items folder of Thunderbird. That certainly changes things. Would you know, if I had Thunderbird set up on 2 computers, using the same email address via IMAP, would both accounts (inbox, sent, drafts, deleted etc) appear identical?

Another thing is that I organise mails and enquiry emails into different folders based on the subject and requirements of that particular mail. I'm guessing there's no way Thunderbird or any similar mail client would be able to sync this organisation between computers/phones and I could probably only achieve this with a cloud based service? I think Gmail give the ability to organise into folders now? Or at least create tags?



Zoho isn't bad, I find the webmail a bit basic when you're used to something like Gmail/Outlook type webmail. It doesn't integrate with anything other than their own services.

Gmail/Outlook-Office are the best of the web enabled services, if I remember correctly I pay €4per user/per month for Gmail on my own domains.

If you're planning to allow multiple users to access your company email, it won't be long before you get sick of sharing a single account. Keep this in mind when calculating costs.


If you reckon Gmail is still better than Zoho, I'd rather stick with Gmail. Is there any reason why I'd need to add a user as opposed to the other user just knowing the password and having it set up on their devices, the same way you can have the same account set up on laptop, phone, tablet etc? I know €4 is nothing, but just trying to understand what it actually gives that they don't already offer free. It would really only be 2 of us using it for now anyway and anyone else wouldn't be dealing with emails, but would be good to share certain info with, could just have certain things shared with them like calendar entries, photos etc maybe?

Graham

Oh, I didn't think it would be able to show a mail sent from a smart phone in the sent items folder of Thunderbird. That certainly changes things. Would you know, if I had Thunderbird set up on 2 computers, using the same email address via IMAP, would both accounts (inbox, sent, drafts, deleted etc) appear identical?

Another thing is that I organise mails and enquiry emails into different folders based on the subject and requirements of that particular mail. I'm guessing there's no way Thunderbird or any similar mail client would be able to sync this organisation between computers/phones and I could probably only achieve this with a cloud based service? I think Gmail give the ability to organise into folders now? Or at least create tags?

I don't know much about Thunderbird but IMAP supports synching folders etc so theoretically should provide everything you want on the mail side of things. The same caveat applies regarding sharing email accounts of any flavour:

Is there any reason why I'd need to add a user as opposed to the other user just knowing the password and having it set up on their devices, the same way you can have the same account set up on laptop, phone, tablet etc?

No technical reasons but it quickly becomes a major pain in the t*ts, the pain level increases the more people you add into the mix. Expect a few (many) conversations along these lines:

Where's that email gone.
Who deleted XYZ
Did you reply to that customer or did I?
Who the $#!* gave the customer that price!!
Where's that email gone.
Who deleted XYZ
Customer X is suggesting she wants to ride one of us, I'm just not sure which one.
Bob, your Mammy emailed to say she's expecting you for dinner tonight.
Where's that email gone.
Who deleted XYZ
I just emailed customer Z but he/she had already been speaking to Y.
Who the $#!* promised that to the customer!!

Nuttzz

This might be work a look at

https://www.zendesk.com/inbox/

webfruits

Zoho does integrate into Google apps now and they have a newer interface.
But it sounds like you are invested in google apps big way so staying there is probably easiest.

Actually zendesk inbox that Nutzz has looks like a good choice for small team using 1 email address.

Axwell

cormie wrote: »

Interesting about the IMAP approach over pop, if I reply to a mail on my phone, would it appear in the sent items of thunderbird though? If not, and I'm guessing it wouldn't, this is why I'm thinking it might be best to ditch a local client altogether and just use a cloud service (Google).

It will, you set up imap server folders and on your devices you use those as your inbox, sent, thrash etc. So they all remain in sync.

mneylon

It depends on what you are trying to achieve ..

If it's for a "sales" or "customer service" team I'd strongly recommend using Zendesk or a similar service.

That also means that you (and other managers) can see what's going on when somebody is out of the office, out sick etc.,
It's also good for building up a history with a clients

As for other email options ..

There are many ..

It depends on how easy / complicated you want to make it.

I wouldn't recommend sharing your email login with anyone - as others have pointed out that is a recipe for trouble.

I'd recommend putting together a simple list of requirements and rank them by priority eg "must have" "would be nice"

You could always talk to your current hosting provider about your options

HTH

Michele

StupidLikeAFox

+1 for zendesk

When somebody emails in it goes into a pooled web interface, where anybody can pick it up and respond (you can set different rules for how this behaves but thats the gist of it). You can get a full history of the correspondence to that email, a customer profile and lots of reports. You can also link your Facebook and Twitter messages so you are responding to all your messages in one place. Its a great little tool.

I think Freshdesk is an alternative, Ive never looked at it but it might be worth a look also

mneylon

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

+1 for zendesk

When somebody emails in it goes into a pooled web interface, where anybody can pick it up and respond (you can set different rules for how this behaves but thats the gist of it). You can get a full history of the correspondence to that email, a customer profile and lots of reports. You can also link your Facebook and Twitter messages so you are responding to all your messages in one place. Its a great little tool.

I think Freshdesk is an alternative, Ive never looked at it but it might be worth a look also

There's a bunch of them out there. We chose Zendesk because we wanted some of the features it offered
What I've noticed is that the pricing jumps quite a bit from small teams to bigger ones, so if you've only got 1 - 3 staff the price per head is often a lot lower than if you have 20+ staff

Hanley

+another 1 for zendesk

we use it, and its excellent

Tangled

Thunderbird will do everything you're asking about if set up as IMAP as suggested.