Recommendation: Do Not Use Shared or Group Email Addresses
As a supplier, you may have shared team email addresses with your customers — for example: quotes@examplecompany.com or sales@examplecompany.com.
However, it is strongly recommended NOT to use shared email addresses like this as the main email address for your account in Supplios.
It can cause confusion for the 2-way messaging and other features in the platform, it is not secure, and it is simply not necessary.
Issues with shared or group emails
Most notification emails sent from the Supplios platform can be replied to, and will get routed to the appropriate contact(s) and topics with the buyer-side company. But for this to work, the email address sending the reply must be the same email address that received the original email notification.
When you use a group email address (quotes@examplecompany.com) but then reply from an individual email address (bob@examplecompany.com) the Supplios platform will not recognize the individual address and the email reply will not reach the intended recipient.
Even if you have multiple accounts — one with the group email address and one with individual person email addresses — if both users are not included on the same topics in the portal (both invited to the same RFQ, same Quality workflow, etc) then they message may also get rejected.
Recommended Solution
To avoid these issues, we strongly recommend creating separate Supplios accounts for each internal team member who needs access to the shared communication — and using the individual email address for each team member.
You can indicate which team members should be involved in which topics by selecting the contact types for each user (Sourcing, Quality, etc)
There are no limits to the number of user accounts you can create for your company.
Using this approach:
- Each user can be assigned the appropriate role(s) (e.g., “Sourcing”, "Quality", etc.).
- Everyone will receive the relevant system notifications directly.
- Each user will be able to respond directly to email notifications and have them automatically routed to the correct person/topic on the buyer side.
See this guide for how to create account for other people at your company: How to Invite Other Users from Your Company
Special Cases: Add Multiple Emails to One Account
If you use generic email addresses, but that email address is just an "alias" for one person, that is acceptable to use as the email address associated with a user account.
For example, if sales@yourcompany.com goes to Jane because Jane handles all front-line sales inquiries, and it is not just a group distribution list, it is reasonable to use that email address as the user email address for an account in Supplios.
But if Jane will also be replying to emails (sent to sales@yourcompany.com) from her own email address (jane@yourcompany.com) then you should add that email address to the account as an additional email address. In this case, both email addresses will be associated with Jane, and replies received from either address will be attributed to her.
If this applies to you, read more here: How to Add Multiple Email Addresses to Your Account
If you have any questions about how to ensure emails are routed to the correct people and email addresses at your company, reach out to the Supplios support team and we'll be happy to help.