--- title: "Help — answers about your shared SMS inbox" description: "Answers to the practical questions teams ask about a shared SMS inbox: setting up, giving access, missing messages, billing, cancelling and limits." canonical: "https://sharedsmsinbox.com/help" --- # Answers to the questions teams ask most > Answers to the practical questions teams ask about a shared SMS inbox: setting up, giving access, missing messages, billing, cancelling and limits. Start with the three things that go wrong most often. Under those, the rest of the questions we are asked, grouped so you can find yours in a few seconds. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) - [Create free account](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ ## Something is not working Three problems account for nearly everything people write to us about. Each one has a short answer you can check yourself in a couple of minutes. ### A message has not arrived. What should I check? Check the number is entered correctly on the account that should be sending the text, then trigger a code yourself and watch the inbox. If a test does not arrive either, the service is most likely refusing the number. ### Why can’t my teammate see the messages? Almost always because they have not been given access to that number. Access is granted number by number, so being a member of your team is not by itself enough to see anything. ### Why has the text of an older message disappeared? The text of a message, and any code inside it, is permanently erased a set time after it arrives: 72 hours by default, and an administrator can change that. The record that the message arrived stays. Work through these in order. The first one is the answer more often than people expect. 1. **Read the number back on the account.** Open the service that sends the text, find the phone number it has on file, and check it digit by digit including the country code. One wrong digit looks exactly like a broken product. 2. **Check the service actually accepted the number.** Some services take a number, save it, and then decline to text it. If you never saw a confirmation step complete, treat the number as unconfirmed on that account. 3. **Send yourself a test.** Ask the service to send a code and watch the shared inbox while it does. A test tells you in a minute what guessing will not tell you in an hour. 4. **Check you are looking at the right number.** If your team has more than one number, the message may have arrived on the other one — and you may not have been given access to that one. If a test does not arrive, the service is almost certainly refusing the number. That decision belongs to the service sending the message, not to us: some accept only certain kinds of phone number, many accept only numbers from their own country, and those rules change without notice. > Leave the old number on the account until you have watched a test message arrive at your company number. Swap it over afterwards, not before. An administrator grants access one number at a time. Until that happens, the number and its messages are not visible to that person at all — there is no locked message and no warning — so “I can’t find it” usually means “I have not been given it”. - **Check they have access to that exact number.** If you have two numbers, access to one says nothing about the other. - **Check they have accepted their invitation and signed in as themselves.** There is no shared login, so reading over a colleague’s shoulder is not the same as having access. - **Check whether the message is older than your retention setting.** The record of a message stays, but its text is erased on a schedule. - **Ask an administrator to look.** Administrators can see every number on the team. If an administrator cannot see the message either, it has not arrived — go back to the question above. The erasure cannot be undone and there is no copy to restore. If you need a code that has gone, ask the service to send a new one. That takes a few seconds, and a code that old would usually have expired anyway. An administrator can change how long the text is kept. Keep it as short as your team can work with: a login code is useful for a few minutes and a liability for the rest of its life. [Security and access](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security) sets out what is kept, what is erased, and what is recorded. > **Test the number before you rely on it** Whether a service accepts your company number is decided by that service, not by us, and it can change without notice. Add the number, trigger a code, and watch it arrive before you take an employee’s mobile off an account that matters. ## Getting started If you have not set your number up yet, start here. ### How long does it take to set up? Minutes, and no technical work. You create an account, choose a number, invite the colleagues who need access, and then enter the number on the company account that sends the texts. There is nothing to install, no phone to buy and nobody from our side to talk to. ### What is a shared SMS inbox? A shared SMS inbox lets several approved team members read the text messages sent to one company phone number. Instead of arriving on one employee’s personal phone, the messages appear in a web inbox that your colleagues open with their own logins. Teams most often use it for the login and verification codes that shared company accounts send. ### How can multiple people receive SMS sent to one number? The number belongs to your company account rather than to a handset, so messages sent to it arrive in an inbox instead of on a phone. Everyone you invite and approve can open that inbox in a browser and read the same message. Nobody has to forward anything, and nobody needs to be holding a particular phone. ### Can I use the number for login codes? Yes — that is the most common reason teams get one. You give your company number to the account that sends the code, and the code arrives in the shared inbox where approved teammates can read it. Whether a particular service accepts the number is decided by that service, so test it before you rely on it. ### Do I need a credit card to sign up? No. You can create your account and invite your team without entering any payment details. You are asked to pay at one point only: when you pick your phone number. That is also the point at which the ${PRICE.display} monthly charge starts. ## Your number and your team Who can see what, how you change it, and what happens when the team changes. ### Can my whole team see the same SMS? Yes. Every teammate you invite and give access to sees the messages that arrive at your company number, at the same time, in the same inbox. You decide who that is. Anyone who has not been given access to the number cannot see its messages at all. ### Do my teammates need to share a password? No. Each teammate signs in with their own account, so there is no shared password to pass around or change when somebody leaves. It also means you can see exactly who has access, and remove one person without disturbing anyone else on the team. ### How many people can use one number? As many as you like. There is no per-user charge and no cap on team members, so the price is the same whether three people need the messages or thirty. You still choose individually who can see the number, so “everyone can be invited” does not mean “everyone can see everything”. ### Can I remove someone’s access? Yes. An administrator can remove a person’s access at any time, and they stop being able to open the number’s messages. Because everyone signs in as themselves rather than sharing one login, removing one teammate changes nothing for the rest of the team and no password needs to be reset. ### What happens if an employee leaves? Nothing breaks. The number belongs to the company account rather than to the person, so it does not leave with them. An administrator removes their access, and everyone else keeps receiving messages exactly as before. There is no shared password to change and no account to reconfigure in a hurry. ### Can we see older messages? Yes. Messages stay in the shared inbox so your team can look back at what arrived and when, and the inbox records activity so you can see who has been reading messages. Because these messages can contain login codes, the inbox does not keep them forever — see the security page for what is stored and for how long. ### Can I have more than one number? Yes. Each number is $49 a month, and teams often take a second one to keep departments apart — one for finance, one for marketing — so the people who need one set of messages are not reading the other. Each number has its own list of approved teammates. ## Money and cancelling One price, one moment you start paying it, and no contract to get out of. ### How much does it cost? $49 a month per phone number. That covers the number itself, the shared inbox, unlimited teammates with their own individual logins, message history and access controls. There is no setup fee, no annual contract, no per-user charge and no minimum team size. A second number is another $49 a month. ### When do I have to pay? You pay when you choose and activate your phone number. Creating an account, looking around and inviting colleagues costs nothing and asks for no payment details. Billing starts at the moment the number becomes yours, at ${PRICE.perMonth} for that number, and stops when you cancel it. ### Can I cancel anytime? Yes. There is no contract and no minimum term — you cancel from your account settings and the monthly charge stops. Before you do, move any company account that still uses the number across to a different one: a phone number you have given up should not be relied on to come back. ## Limits and compatibility What the product does not do, and when something else is the better answer for your team. ### Will the number work with every website? No. Some services accept only certain kinds of phone number, and many accept only numbers from their own country. That decision belongs to the service sending the message, not to us, and it can change without notice. Before you depend on the number for an important account, add it there and send yourself a test message. ### Can I send SMS from the number? No. This is a receive-only service: the number takes text messages in and does not send any out. It is built for teams who need to receive codes and notices for shared company accounts, not for messaging customers, running campaigns or replying to people. ### Is this an inbound-only number? Yes. Receiving text messages is all the number does, there is nothing to configure to keep it that way, and no teammate can text somebody by accident. If your team also needs to send messages — to customers, candidates or suppliers — this is not the right tool for that job. ### Is this a customer support or marketing tool? No. It receives text messages for accounts your company shares — it does not send anything, so it cannot be used to reply to customers, run campaigns or send bulk messages. If you are looking for a way to talk to customers by text, you want a different kind of product. ### Is this better than using an employee’s personal number? For an account a team genuinely shares, usually yes: the company keeps the number, and several people can read the message. It is not an upgrade to the security of SMS itself. Where a service offers each employee their own login, or supports an authenticator app, that is normally the better choice. ## Pages that answer this in more depth - [How it works](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/how-it-works) — The four setup steps in detail, if you are still getting your number working. - [Security and access](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security) — Who can read your messages, how long the text is kept, and what we do not claim. - [Login codes for teams](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/login-codes-for-teams) — What to do about codes going to one employee’s phone, and when to use something else. - [Shared phone number for teams](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/shared-phone-number-for-teams) — Why it matters that the company owns the number rather than a person. - [Pricing](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/pricing) — $49/month per phone number, and what happens when you add a second one. - [Use cases](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/use-cases) — How finance, marketing, operations and agency teams set theirs up. ## Ready when you are Create your account, choose a number, and invite the colleagues who need the messages. You can move one account across this afternoon and see whether it helps. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _$49/month per phone number. No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ --- Canonical: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/help Every page of this site is also available as Markdown. Site map: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/llms.txt