What Is the Difference between a Seat and an Alias?
Every user in a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) account has a primary address for signing into their account and receiving mail. A seat (or license) must be purchased for every individual user to have a primary address. If a user wants another email address, you can create an email alias for them.
What does this mean?
This means that you will need to purchase a seat for each set of user credentials. These credentials will give access to a single mailbox, but each mailbox may create up to 30 aliases to receive and reply to emails. With one seat (or license), you can have a total of 31 email addresses associated with it.
Each user will continue to only login using their primary email address. If you wish for multiple users to manage email accounts for your domain name, you will need to purchase a seat for each one.
When should I buy additional seats?
If you need more than one person to access your domain email addresses or manage more than 31 email addresses for your domain, you will need additional seats.
How can I buy additional seats?
There are 2 steps in adding new seats (license) to your Google Workspace account.
- Step 1: Purchase additional seats via the Customer Portal ⤵
- Step 2: Add the new users to your Google Admin console ⤵
Step 1: Purchase additional seats via the Customer Portal
To purchase additional seats:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Click Hosting in the left-hand menu.
- Click Manage under the hosting package where you want to add the additional seat.
- On the Google Workspace card, click Manage.
- Click the gear icon in the top right corner of the Shortcuts area and select Upgrade License Count.
- Select the desired total number of licenses, then click the Upgrade Now button to complete your order.
Step 2: Add the new users to your Google Admin console
After you have purchased additional seats, add them to the Google administrator console. To add users for whom you have purchased seats:
- Log into your Google Administrator Console with your admin account.
- Click the Users icon.
- Click on Add new user in the navigation bar.
- In the new pop-up window, enter all the information for the user you wish to create. If you want to set a password for the user, click Set Password; otherwise, a temporary password will be generated.
- Click the Add New User button in the lower right corner of the pop-up.
- A new pop-up window will appear, confirming the creation of the new Google Workspace seat.
- You can email the login details to the new user by clicking More Actions, selecting Email Login Info, and providing an email address where the new user can receive their login credentials.
The new user will now be able to log into Google Workspace services with the email address and password created for this new Google Workspace seat!