Shared Inbox vs Case-Based Email: Which Scales?
A shared inbox works well for a small team and a steady flow. Once work is organised by matter, filing mail to the matter scales better. Here is how to tell which you need.
When a team outgrows one person answering email, there are two common models. A shared inbox gives several people one mailbox, such as info@ or support@, with assignment, tags and shared folders. Case-based email files each message into the record of the matter it concerns, so the conversation sits next to the files, dates and notes for that matter. Both work. The shared inbox scales with volume; case-based email scales with complexity. Which one you need depends on whether your work is a queue or a set of matters.
Where a shared inbox shines
- High volume, short lifespan. Enquiries answered in one or two replies and then done.
- Anyone can answer. Most messages do not need a particular person's history with the sender.
- One channel, one team. Everything arrives at one address and leaves from it.
Its weaknesses show when a conversation runs for months. The context lives in thread history, attachments are buried in messages, and the matter's other material, such as documents, notes and deadlines, is somewhere else entirely.
Where case-based email shines
- Long-running matters. A tenancy, an investigation, an HR matter, a client file. The emails are part of the record, not a separate stream.
- Several people and addresses per matter. The client, the other side, a contractor, an expert. A shared inbox splits them into separate threads; a case gathers them.
- Evidence and retention. When the matter closes, its correspondence closes with it, under the same retention rule, instead of lingering in a mailbox.
- Handover. Whoever picks up the matter sees everything in one place, not just the threads they were copied on.
Its cost is discipline: every relevant email must be filed to the right matter, and a message about two matters needs a decision. We looked at what happens when nobody files at all in the hidden cost of using email as a filing system.
Signs you have outgrown the shared inbox
- People search the inbox for a client's name to find out "where we are" with them.
- Attachments are downloaded, renamed and saved elsewhere by hand, inconsistently.
- Colleagues on leave leave behind threads nobody else can follow; see holiday cover.
- You have been asked to produce "all correspondence about X" and it took a day.
Many teams use both
The models are not exclusive. A shared inbox can remain the front door, triaging new enquiries, while anything that becomes a matter is filed into its record from then on. The rule to agree is the handover point: once a case exists, its email lives with the case. Case-based tools, Herarx among them, let you file an email and its attachments into a case and send new mail from within the case so it is filed at the moment it is sent.
Decide with a simple test
Look at your last fifty email conversations. If most ended within a week and involved one sender, a shared inbox is enough. If many are still running, involve several parties and relate to documents and deadlines, your email wants to live with your matters.
