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Boost Your Team Email Collaboration With These 10 Tips
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by
Reem Abouemera
June 3, 2022
· Updated on
Email collaboration is vital for teams in today's business world. Without it, important tasks can slip through the cracks, and opportunities can be missed.
Most businesses aren't using email to its full potential, especially among small businesses.
Whether you're already using a shared inbox software or simply need to find a way to manage team communication more effectively, here are 10 simple ways to boost email collaboration within your team.
Quickly put, email collaboration is a practice where team members cooperate on emails, generally from a shared inbox, to share the workload.
Most shared inboxes are used for companies' shared aliases like support@ or info@ to enable teams to work together on emails. This can involve sharing information and updates, discussing ideas and decisions, and providing feedback and support to each other.
Some tools, with features such as commenting, collaborative writing, and sharing options, also make it possible to collaborate on personal emails.
Having a good system of email collaboration comes with a lot of advantages for your business whether big or small. Some of you might think that your small team doesn't need it since you only have a few team members, but chances are they are responsible for multiple aspects of the business and will certainly need to collaborate on emails with a coworker at some point.
A good can help teams to streamline communication and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work processes.
By collaborating on emails, teams can work together efficiently even if they are not in the same location. And since all team members have access to the same information and can see each other's contributions, transparency and accountability are also increased.
Collaborating on emails brings a lot of benefits to your team, however, if you're using a tool like Gmail to manage your personal and team emails at work there are some downsides you should know about.
Gmail isn't great for team collaboration and can do more harm than good. The main drawbacks are:
Using software made for email collaboration like Missive can solve these problems and make sure that your company benefits from all the advantages of collaborating on emails.
Having a process in place is key when it comes to email collaboration. Every team member should understand their role and managers need systems to maintain accountability.
That means that you should always be clear about who needs to do what by when.
For example, if you need someone to review a document, include specific instructions on what you'd like them to do and make it clear that they're responsible for completing the task. Deadlines should also be included whenever possible.
In Gmail, you could establish a streamlined process through the support of external documentation and SOPs so that your team knows exactly how to collaborate on email.
You could also make use of Google's "Tasks" app to keep track of deadlines and individual responsibilities. The problem with adding comments and notes to Gmail this way is that it’s still based on the individual and doesn’t lend itself well to collaborative work.
That’s where email clients like Missive, a tool built with collaboration features as a first principle, can be a game changer.
In Missive, you can do this by assigning emails or tasks to teams or individuals with a few mouse clicks (or keyboard shortcuts like ⇧ ⌘ K ), eliminating the need to CC or BCC anyone.
The email will automatically be added to the assignee’s inbox.
If you need functionality for due dates or additional data to be tracked, you can send tasks directly from Missive to popular project management apps like Asana, Trello, Todoist, and ClickUp.
When you share an email account, it's difficult to keep track of who's responsible for what. Important messages easily get lost in the shuffle.
Instead, each team member should have their email account that they or can access. That way, everyone has a clear record of who’s responsible for what and who completed it.
But that doesn't mean that you can't still share information–you just need to do it more smartly. A collaborative email tool like Missive makes it easy to share emails and other information without actually sharing email accounts.
With Missive, you can add other team members to a shared team inbox so everyone can easily view and respond to messages together while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of their email accounts.
You can even chat with each other right from the app so that you can quickly discuss important details and cut down on the back-and-forth context switching in other tools like Slack.
Missive gives you the best of both worlds: everyone's inbox remains segregated, yet still shareable for collaboration and accountability purposes.
When you need to pass along an email to another team member, it's tempting to just hit the forward button. However, that's not always the best course of action for email management.
Think about it: you're still on the hook when you forward an email thread.
If there's a problem with the task or questions to be answered for a customer, the email will have to go through you instead of the customer support team member who's responsible for the task, so you’re still the support POC for that task.
Instead of forwarding an email, delegate it.
Replying to someone with your delegate CC’ed is one way of doing things, but the problem is it’s common for your delegate to still have questions and need clarification. And when they do, an unruly chain of back-and-forth emails ensues.
Delegating through Gmail can be challenging because the only way to do it is through shared Google Workspace accounts or Google Groups.
Google’s collaborative inbox provides a central place for your team to communicate, and share documents, calendar events, and more.
But it still doesn’t solve the problem of having to forward emails back and forth whenever you need to discuss the context of an email with a coworker in the email itself.
Using chat is an option, but still requires you to add a bunch of contexts.
When you delegate things in Missive, you can use comments and chat to include specific instructions on what needs to be done—reducing the back and forth and confusion and improving workflow efficiency.
Clear communication can dramatically boost team collaboration.
Here’s a useful model to apply when you need to convey an idea, respond to a question, delegate a task, or provide details around a situation in written communication.
Lead with the point of your communication (called the BLUF principle), followed by the details structured using the SCQA framework coined by McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto.
SCQA stands for Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer.
Here's how it all works together:
A collection of excellent examples of this style of writing in different contexts can be found in this article over good business writing by Leonardo Fed.
When you use this framework across your communication channels, you can be sure that your emails are clear and concise. Plus, you'll avoid misunderstandings and save everyone's time.
Centralization means having one place where all your team's email communication is stored—a central hub where your whole team can see all the emails sent and received by the team. Think of it as a group email but with separate emails for each person.
There are a few different ways you can do this.
One option is to use an email client like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail. Another option is to use a project management tool like Asana or Trello. But, each of these requires sacrifice in terms of collaboration or context-switching to make them work.
The easiest way to centralize email amongst a team is to use a collaborative email client like Missive.
With Missive, each user has a mailbox for their account but the admin can also set up a shared mailbox (such as a team account) that all users can access and respond from. That way, everyone can see the same emails and there's no need to forward messages or CC everyone.
You can also manage communication from channels other than emails like WhatsApp, SMS (via Twilio), and social media channels like Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
The benefit of using a centralized system is that it makes it easier for the entire team to stay up-to-date on the latest email conversations in their mailboxes in a single place.
Plus, it's easier to search for old emails when you need to reference them. And the best part is that emails can be broken down into smaller tasks or projects, making it easier to stay organized and encouraging teamwork.
When you're sending emails to clients or customers, it's important to be consistent. That means using the same language, tone, and format for all your communications.
One way to ensure consistency is to use shared email templates. These are email templates that can be accessed and used by anyone on your team.
Not only do shared email templates save you time, but they also help to ensure that your team is always on the same page. Plus, they can be customized to fit your brand's voice and style.
If you're using Gmail, for example, you'd have one of your team members develop a template following email etiquette for customer service. Then, you'd copy them to a shared repository (be that Google Docs, Notion, Guru, or similar.). Your team members can then add that template to their canned responses.
Great–but what happens when the template changes in the repository? Unfortunately, you'd have to inform your team members to update the template in their canned responses.
A better solution is to use a tool like Missive, which, when any user generates a template, stores that template in the repository and makes it available to everyone on the team. Plus, when someone updates a template, that change is pushed to everyone's account automatically. That eliminates the need for manual updates!
If your team is constantly sending emails to the same people, it makes sense to create a shared book of contacts. This way, everyone will have access to the same contact information and you won't have to waste time searching for an email address every time you need it.
A shared book of contacts can be stored in a central location, like your email client, a CRM, or in a Google Sheet/Excel document stored in Google Drive or Dropbox that your team has access to.
However, adding contacts to a sheet and manually updating is laborious and a possible point of failure for many teams.
Missive has a built-in shared contact book that supports syncing with Office 365 and Google accounts. They also have options to sync data with other contact tools using no-code tools like Zapier and Make or by building your own custom integration with the Missive API.
When you add or update a contact in Missive, that change is immediately reflected for everyone on your team.
If you're using Gmail, you can take advantage of filters and labels to segment and organize emails to find later.
For example, you could create a label called "Webinar Launch", which has a filter that includes all the emails sent and received by people on your marketing team that include specific keywords related to your campaign.
But the problem is that labels aren't shared across workspace accounts and must be set up manually.
This is made easier in Missive where you can share labels and filters with your team.
Shared filters and labels make sorting and organizing emails a breeze and ensure that everyone is on the same page. They also save you time that could've been spent setting up labels and filters manually.
It’s 2022. There's no reason to waste time on tasks that can be automated. You don't have to
You can set up auto-responses, snooze emails, and even create rules to automate email filing.
For example, in Missive, you can create a contact group in which you add spammers and use automation to automatically trash them the moment they hit your email inbox. Goodbye everyone out there with high-quality backlinks to sell. 👋
Imagine using built-in shortcuts to quickly insert a template or emoji into your email without having to leave your inbox. Or, setting up auto-responses so you can reply to common questions without having to type out the same message over and over again. Better yet, how about snoozing an email until a later time or date so you can focus on what's most important right now?
Automation can save you a lot of time and headaches, so it's worth considering if you're looking for ways to improve your team's email collaboration and internal communication without putting in a lot of extra work.
Finally, one of the best ways to boost email collaboration for teams is to write collaboratively. Instead of sending individual emails back and forth, you can use a tool like Google Docs or Dropbox Paper to write and edit your emails together in real time.
Writing collaboratively has several benefits.
However, doing the writing anywhere else other than your email client can introduce needless work for you and your team. You have to write, copy, paste, and then send, right?
With tools like Missive, you can write your emails collaboratively right from your inbox. That means you can avoid the extra steps and still take advantage of all the benefits of collaborative writing. Just write and send using Missive's Live Edit feature!
Collaboration doesn't have to be a pain. By following these simple tips, you can boost email collaboration for your team and make everyone's life a little easier.
Whether you’re using ancient email clients like Gmail or collaboration software like Missive, you can find ways to eliminate wasteful manual labor and stay focused on what matters.
Start a free trial and give Missive a try. Your team will thank you for it.
September 16, 2025
The 6 most secure email clients for collaborative teams
We looked at 6 of the most popular email clients for teams on the market, and scored them on 6 criteria: security hygiene, auditing & accountability, access, removal, and sign-in controls, privacy & data handling, external verification, and data residency.
There are lots of secure email clients on the market—Tutanota, ProtonMail, StartMail. But many of these fail to have the helpful collaborative features of more modern business email clients. Where you can have internal comments, real-time drafting, powerful automations, all in an intuitive interface.
Tutanota - Tutanota is a top tier secure email provider. It offers end-to-end encryption, send encrypted emails, but zero collaborative functionality or third-party integrations.
ProtonMail - ProtonMail is a close competitor to Tutanota. It allows you to send password-protected encrypted emails, open source mobile apps, but no collaborative features.
StartMail - StartMail is another secure email provider. It offers local storage with ISO 27001 certified data centers and out of the box phishing and spam protection, but like the other two options, it has little collaborative functions.
If you just need a few shared labels, email aliases, and calendars to make your team more productive, then any of these options would work great. But if you often have multiple team members working on email threads and/or high volumes of emails that need to be coordinated amongst multiple people—you'll want to look into true collaborative email clients.
If you rely on email for your business and you work with sensitive information, you'll want to know which of these shiny collaborative email clients have robust security and privacy standards underneath the hood.
Note: If you require a very high level of privacy like PGP, you're better off with one of the traditional options (i.e. Tuta) or Mailfence/Posteo/Zoho Mail for small businesses. But if PGP and full end-to-end encryption is not required, then keep reading on...
We looked at 6 of the most popular email clients for teams on the market, and scored them on 6 criteria:
As a benchmark, we compared each of them to the gold standard of secure email providers and email security—Outlook/Microsoft 365.
Let's get into it.
Outlook is the most popular email service and email client for enterprises, especially those who deal with sensitive client information over email. Outlook has unmatched configuration options and incredibly detailed auditability.
Auditability is particularly important for professional industries like healthcare, finance, and public sector companies which have recording keeping requirements by law. Here's Outlook's score:
Bottom line: There's a reason why Outlook is the email service of choice for enterprises. Now, if only they could do collaboration well.
Missive is a collaborative inbox designed for teams that supports all email service providers, including IMAP accounts. While it doesn't offer end-to-end encryption, it does have very high security standards, auditability, and external verification.
Price: Starts at $14/user/month, paid annually.
Bottom line: Missive checks the boxes that most teams look for (SSO, SOC 2, TLS encryption) and is clear in public docs. Audit depth & residency options aren’t M365-level, hence the gap.
Superhuman is a productivity-first email service build for high volume inboxes who loves shortcuts. It offers less collaboration functionality than others on this list, but it shines on it's access/removal functionality. By default, Superhuman does insert a pixel in all emails for it's read receipt feature, that might be a privacy concern for some.
Price: Starts at $25/user/month, paid annually.
Bottom line: If you already run Okta/Entra and need fast onboarding/offboarding, Superhuman’s Identity and Access Management system is excellent. Balance that with the privacy policy’s scope.
Hiver started is the Gmail-only option on this list. It has a a lot of the collaborative email functions like Missive but most of their customers use it as an alternative to a help desk. Here's how they rank from a security perspective:
Price: Starts at $19/user/month, paid annually.
Bottom line: If your priority is “don’t duplicate email content in another vendor,” Hiver is attractive for Google Workspace shops.
Shortwave is the most AI-forward email service on this list. They don't excel at any security standard compared to the other options, but they're a good middle ground option if you're looking for some thing with a lot of AI functionality and you're not required to have solid audit logs.
Price: Starts at $24/user/month, paid annually.
Bottom line: Great in Google-first orgs, but if you need audit trails for compliance/forensics for your industry, you'll probably want a different option.
Spark is used by individuals and teams. They offer a familiar interface with some collaboration functionality, though they are the lightest security option on this list.
Price: Starts at $4.99/month for individuals and $6.99/user/month for teams, paid annually.
Bottom line: Individual teams that want a polished client and understand the implications of server-side features for notifications/scheduling.
Tuta, ProtonMail or even Zoho Mail has a lot of the enterprise-grade security features (encrypted mail, PGP, etc) right out of the box, but the collaborative-first email clients we mentioned here might be able to meet your security standards with a little custom development. For example, you can feed all of the data/comms out to a third-party compliance service to make sure you hit the regulatory requirements.
At the end of the day, it'll depend on what trade offs you're willing or unwilling to make. Most businesses want some level of security but also usability and collaboration. How much of each will depend greatly on your use case.
Which of these options offer end-to-end encryption and encrypted emails?
Short answer is none. While most of these options have some form of encryption, the higher scoring ones are encrypted via TLS at rest and in transit, but none of them offer the same level of encryption features as Tuta or ProtonMail.
Is Outlook “more secure” than these tools?
It’s more controllable out of the box—especially for audit, labeling/IRM, and data residency. That’s why we use it as the baseline. Your best option is the one that fits your constraints and is configured well.
Do these tools read my emails?
Policies differ. Some tools process email content to power features (e.g., read receipts, scheduling, AI summaries). Some store only metadata. Always confirm what’s stored and for how long.
Are there other options with different encryption options?
If you're primarily looking for encryption features, but don't want to go with your standard Tuta, then you might want to check out Zoho Mail, Mailfence, or Posteo. The latter options offer OpenPGP end-to-end encryption and the former is basically enterprise level controls that isn't Outlook.
May 21, 2025
Collaborate beyond your team: Guest Access is here
We designed Guest Access for anyone you occasionally collaborate with (think your accountant, a third-party vendor, seasonal workers, etc).
Remember the first time you @mentioned a teammate below an email, instead of forwarding it to them?
That’s a magical moment for many Missive users.
It’s when they realized email can be collaborative without creating more email.
Starting today, with Guest Access, you can give that same experience to anyone you work with — even if they’re not on your team.
Guest Access makes it easy to bring people outside your organization — like an accountant, contractor, or client — directly into specific Missive conversations.
No more forwarding long threads. No more stitching together feedback from different tools. Just real-time chat alongside the emails that matter.
Here’s how it works:
Your guest will get an email with a link to join. Once they create a free Missive account, they’ll land directly in the conversation you invited them to.
They’ll be able to read the full message history and reply via chat — but not email, tasks, or assignments. Just focused, limited access.
Guest Access is included in all Missive plans. No add-ons. No hidden costs.
Each team member can invite up to 5 guests, and each guest can access up to 5 conversations.
That means if your team has 10 users, you can collaborate with up to 50 guests across 250 guest-enabled conversations — all for free.
We designed Guest Access for the people you don’t work with every day, but still need to collaborate with effectively — without paying for a full seat or dragging another tool into the mix.
If you’ve ever said:
I wish this person could just see this conversation—now they can.
Guest Access isn’t just for external vendors or partners. If you have teammates who don’t need full Missive functionality every day, Guest Access is a perfect lightweight option. No need to buy a full seat just to loop someone in occasionally.
By default, any team member can invite guests. But admins can manage this in:
Settings → Guests → Allow guest invitations
You can:
Want tighter control? You can restrict guest invitations so only admins or the org owner can send them. That way, access stays centralized and intentional.
Guests can:
Guests cannot:
This keeps their access simple, focused, and secure.
Admins can see which guests are active and what they have access to. If you need to invite new guests but hit your limit, you can quickly revoke access from inactive ones to free up slots.
We can’t wait to see how you use Guest Access.
Whether you’re looping in a freelance designer, a tax advisor, or just a teammate who doesn't need a full Missive seat — Guest Access gives you the power to collaborate where the conversation is happening.
Try it today and let us know what you think!
Can guests see the full history of the conversation?
Yes. Guests can view the entire message and chat history of any conversation they’re invited to.
Can guests reply to emails or send new ones?
No. Guests can only send chat messages. They cannot interact with the email side of the conversation.
Can guests be assigned to tasks or create tasks?
No. Guests don’t have access to task-related features in Missive.
Can guests @mention team members?
Yes. Guests can use @mentions in the chat area of the conversation to address specific people already present in the conversations. They can’t @mention people not present in the conversation.
What happens if I remove a guest from a conversation?
They will instantly lose access to that conversation and all its content.
Can I re-invite someone after removing them?
Absolutely. You can revoke access at any time and re-invite them later if needed.
Can I upgrade a guest to a full team member later?
Yes. If someone needs broader access, you can always add them as a regular user by assigning them a seat.
What if my guest has their own Missive organization?
They will be able to access the conversation(s) that you granted them, from their existing Missive interface. It will be treated like any other conversation.
