Inboxes vs Channels vs Aliases to manage multiple email addresses

Do you have multiple email addresses (help@, wholesale@, hr@ and so on) that you want managed by Enchant? There are a couple of different ways to set things up in Enchant. This article will help you decide what approach makes the most sense for your situation.

First, a few definitions

Inbox: A collection of tickets, a team that manages them and a set of settings used by the team to work effectively.
Channel: A service through which Enchant sends and receives messages. A channel is connected to a single inbox. An inbox can have multiple channels.
Alias: An alias belongs to an email channel. It represents an alternate email address at which an email can be received for the email channel. Inbound emails came come from multiple aliases, but outbound email replies always go "From" an email channel's primary address.

One Inbox per email address (RECOMMENDED)

In this configuration, each inbox would have its own inbox and its own email channel.

You should use an inbox to represent an email address:

When there's a separate team for that email address: An Inbox comes all the features needed for the team to manage their own custom business flows - labels, folders, rules and so on.
When you need access restrictions: Because Enchant provides inbox level security, you can use inboxes to segregate tickets when you need limited visibility.
When you want identify the email address at a glance: Inboxes are a top level item that's represented anywhere a list of tickets is shown. Channels and aliases are not represented on a list of tickets. You would have to view a specific ticket to get that information.

Note: unless you have a specific reason to pick another approach, this is our recommend approach.

One inbox with multiple email channels

You should use a single inbox with multiple email channel to represent multiple email addresses:

When you have multiple email addresses for similar purpose: For example, if you have multiple email addresses for the same customer service team. Same team, same processes, but different email addresses provided to different customers.
You're not using much of the powerful features of Enchant: If you're not using inbox specific features like rules and custom folders, you could get away with multiple email channels in a single inbox. However, if the multiple email addresses are for different purposes, it's still usually a good idea to create a separate inbox for each email address.

When to use email channel aliases

You should use an email channel alias to represent an email address:

When you have old email addresses that now route to a new one: Some teams have old info@ addresses that were replaced with newer orders@ or help@ addresses. All emails to the old address just route to the new address and ultimately received in Enchant.
When you're using inbound addresses for rules: Enchant can automatically run rules based on the email address an inbox was received on. You may provide a special address to a customer that they can email to automatically trigger a set of rules within Enchant. You don't actually want to send emails "From" this address, but just make it available externally.