Business mailboxes
Open them in a browser or the mail app on your phone, with access and ownership controlled by your office.
On its own
There is no part of this that waits on you taking something else first. Mail stands on its own here, and it is meant to.
The name can be one we sold you or one you registered years ago somewhere else. There is no website to build first, no system to move onto, and no part of the office to reorganise. If the only line on your bill is mail, that is a complete purchase and not the first step of one.
What you get is the mailboxes themselves, on your own name, opened in a browser or in the mail app already on the phone in your pocket — and the whole of the office side of them: making them, changing them, handing one over, taking it back, and seeing what was done.
It runs the other way too. Nothing here is held back for a business that keeps its books on our platform. The office that does gets its mail beside the rest of its records; the office that does not gets exactly the same mailboxes, with exactly the same controls behind them.
A customer who buys nothing from us but their mail is a customer — not a lead to be worked on later.
First, the name
A mailbox opens only after its name points mail to the right place and proves who may send from it. We check both ourselves.
Where the name is with us we hold its settings, so we write them and check them ourselves and you never see them. Where it is kept somewhere else you add them once, and then we stop taking anybody’s word for it — including yours. A line is not marked done because somebody said it was done. It is marked done because we looked it up and it answered.
Who may do what
Permissions follow the job somebody has been given. The owner hands those jobs out, takes them back, and keeps passwords personal.
| What it is | The owner | Whoever runs the mail | The front desk | The mailbox’s own person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open a new mailbox | The ownerYes | Whoever runs the mailYes | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personNo |
| Change what a mailbox is called, or how much it holds | The ownerYes | Whoever runs the mailYes | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personNo |
| Add another address that lands in a mailbox | The ownerYes | Whoever runs the mailYes | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personNo |
| See the list of every mailbox in the office | The ownerYes | Whoever runs the mailYes | The front deskYes | The mailbox’s own personNo |
| Set the filing rules and the away reply on their own mail | The ownerNo | Whoever runs the mailNo | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personYes |
| Read what is in a mailbox | The ownerNo | Whoever runs the mailNo | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personYes |
| Hand out these jobs, and take them back | The ownerYes | Whoever runs the mailNo | The front deskNo | The mailbox’s own personNo |
The row worth reading twice is the last but one. Reading what is in a mailbox is not something any of the office jobs carries — it belongs to the person the mailbox is for, and to anybody they or the owner have deliberately handed it to. That handover is the next section, and it is not a formality.
Addresses
The addresses on a website, invoice or bank record can reach the right people without each becoming another paid mailbox.
The one on the website, the one on the invoice, and the misspelling of your own name that customers keep using. Add it, rename it, take it away again — the mailbox underneath does not notice, and nobody has to be hired to sit behind it.
The address the bank writes to, arriving for everybody who works on that side of the business. Who is on that list is yours to change as people join and leave, and changing it does not disturb a single mailbox.
The customer wrote to the office address, so the office address is what goes back on the front of your reply — out of the mailbox you already had open. Which addresses a mailbox may answer as is the office’s decision rather than the mailbox’s, so nobody quietly starts signing off as the accounts department.
Written down, they look like this — info@ and accounts@ and sales@ arriving for the people who already have somewhere to read them.
Getting in
Making and changing mailboxes never grants access to the mail inside them. Reading belongs to the person, or to someone deliberately handed the keys.
Reading, sending, and changing the settings are separate things to be given, and giving one never quietly gives another. Letting somebody send on your behalf does not let them read what you have received.
Cover for a fortnight away stops being cover when the fortnight is up, without anybody having to remember to end it.
Not at the end of an hour and not when something expires. The next thing they try to open is already refused, because nothing was remembered that would have to be forgotten.
The one person a handover may not name is the person making it. Being able to create and resize a mailbox has never been the same thing as being able to read it, and this is the door that would have made it the same thing.
Who was given what, over which mailbox, and who gave it. Along with who opened a mailbox and who changed one — a trail the owner can read rather than one kept for us.
And when something is stopped, the mailbox says so and says why. The screen that explains a block is never itself one of the things blocked — an explanation you cannot reach during the outage it explains is not an explanation.
The morning after
This is the ordinary emergency of business mail, and it is much better known about before it happens than worked out on the day.
Hand the mail to whoever is taking the job on, and move the address they answered to onto that person. The customer who writes to somebody who left in March still reaches a human being in April.
A closed mailbox is not gone. There is a date until which it comes back whole, and that date is written on the mailbox itself rather than kept in somebody’s head. It still counts as a mailbox you keep while it sits there, which is the honest half of this.
After that date there is nothing to bring back, and nothing partly recoverable either. We would far rather tell you that now than on the morning you go looking.
Wherever you open it
The same mailbox works in a browser on every screen, showing as much as fits while keeping the message you are reading in place.
When there is not room for everything, what goes is the folder list — never the letter you were in the middle of, which is the one thing a reader does not forgive. Turning a phone sideways closes nothing. And Back always means back to where you opened this from, rather than back to whatever you happened to be reading before you changed folder.
If you would rather use the mail app already on the phone, that works too, on a password of its own that opens the mailbox and nothing else. Making one asks you to prove properly that it is you. Taking one back never does — the moment you most need to kill a password is the moment you are least able to answer a question about yourself.
Tell us who answers each address, who covers when somebody is away, and where your name is kept. We will map the mailboxes with you.
