Limitations of Office 365 shared mailboxes

Office 365 shared mailboxes have a number of limitations, which can pose a challenge to organizations that want to use the mailbox to truly work efficiently. Here's what you need to know.

Collaborating is hard

There's no way to collaborate on email directly in Outlook shared mailboxes. Team members are unable to have discussions about email conversations within the account. You would need to use Teams to communicate and collaborate, which means you need to leave your mailbox to chat. Information gets scattered and can be hard to locate later.

No insights or visibility into team metrics

The lack of analytics leaves you without insights. One of the main reasons to use a shared mailbox is to improve response times. Metrics are not available with an Office 365 shared mailbox. 

Limited access

The number of members is limited due to a simple fact: when too many members try to access a shared mailbox at the same time, some of the connections may fail. In this case, you’ll want to reduce the number of members. 

Lack of customizations

There's no way to customize the shared mailbox beyond a standard individual email account.

No integrations with other apps

There's no way to integrate with other apps unless you use third-party software like Zapier.