Role based accounts and mailing list, both are the email addresses with different function and purpose. The purpose of a role-based account is to share emails within a group of people. For example there are 5 people in HR team, all of them share one single email address i.e. ‘hr@example.com’. On the other hand mailing list is also an email address which is used to send one email to multiple recipients. For example ‘group@example.com’ is the mailing list of a company and there are about 50 employees in that list. So, by sending an email to ‘group@example.com’, the list eventually sends it to 50 employees.
Role based accounts are the emails addresses like support@, webmaster@, info@, sales@, etc. such accounts are built for functions, not people. these accounts are defined by a job rather than a person. Role-based accounts are used / operated by multiple people in an organization. So, sending a newsletter to a role based account can lead to spam complaints that jeopardize the deliverability of your system. These accounts are often created for administrative work, research or any other shared work.
One important difference between Role-based Account and a personal email account is that a role-based account is not tied to or associated with any particular person, although all role accounts have an ‘owner’ or registered keeper who is formally responsible for the account. Any authorized member of staff may access a role-based account in order to send or read email on behalf of their group.
Whereas, a Mailing List is essentially a list of email addresses of people associated with a particular activity, project or group. It is this email address which is used to communicate with all those decision makers. A Mailing List is NOT an ‘account’ to which you login. A mailing list is a collection of names and email addresses used by an individual or an organization to send newsletter etc. to multiple recipients.
It is a single address which expands to deliver to all the addresses of the people in the list. A Mailing List will also usually have restrictions preventing its unauthorized use, and usually only one or two people will be authorized to do administration work on the list.