Many companies still purely rely on Microsoft 365 to send large volumes of business-critical emails. That’s why two new significant changes from Microsoft have caused quite a stir in the community. In mid-April they communicated changes that will come into force in January 2025 where the limits for sending emails from Exchange Online will be even stricter. And earlier this month they launched a public preview of their new High Volume Email (HVE) offering.
But what do these changes mean for companies and what solutions can be used to provide an alternative?
Microsoft’s new High Volume Email offering and its limitations
On April 1st Microsoft announced the public preview (initially available in the US regions only) of their High Volume Email (HVE) for Microsoft 365 designed to offer high volume SMTP-only service to send “predominantly internal messages” over the limits currently imposed by Exchange online and allowed sending to up to 100,000 recipients per day. The service is due to be made generally available “later on” in 2024. Of course, all numbers are still subject to change once the feature is finally released. Pricing of the service is also unknown at this point.
New Exchange Online policy: Only 2,000 external recipients per day
As far as Exchange Online environments are concerned, Microsoft has always limited the number of emails that can be sent or received per day and per account as well. These limits vary depending on the type of Microsoft 365 subscription, even on the premium E5 package, and are intended to help improve the security and stability of the service by making it more difficult to misuse email accounts. Microsoft explicitly points out that Exchange Online is not intended for mass mailing – even if the opposite is often the case in practical terms. On its official website, Microsoft therefore recommends using a “specialized third-party provider for legitimate bulk commercial emails” (see screenshot). Currently, the maximum sending limit with Exchange Online is 10,000 email recipients per day.
This limit will remain in place in the future and become even stricter, as announced by Microsoft this month as well. From January 2025, only 2,000 out of those 10,000 recipients may be external addresses. This new policy is likely to pose major challenges for many companies and with these new restrictions, additional services will become indispensable.
Urgent need for alternative solutions
In order to minimize the effects of the stricter sending limits, companies are advised look for suitable alternatives as soon as possible. However, the new HVE service is unlikely to be right choice in many cases. As mentioned above, according to Microsoft, the new service is rather aimed at application scenarios with mainly internal recipients and is limited in terms of volume respectively as well. Also, Microsoft is focusing on SMTP connections only, which means that API connections from applications cannot be covered within the same solution.
Reputation management and guaranteed performance are crucial
Specialized providers such as Retarus, on the other hand, always keep a close eye on deliverability to external recipients including comprehensive Reputation Management measures and their years of experience. This is especially because the reliable delivery of every single message is particularly important when sending sensitive, transactional emails. The enormous effort put in pays off and is reflected in concrete KPIs that users really appreciate: For example, Retarus was able to achieve an impressive average deliverability rate of 98.74 percent across all emails sent for their global customers over the last two and a half years. To this end, Retarus also benefits not least from its exclusively self-operated, certified data centers in both Europe and the US.
However, choosing a specialist is not only beneficial in terms of delivery quality, but also quantity. Retarus, for example, is the only leading provider to guarantee throughput even by contract. Customers can request a commitment of up to 10 million emails per hour in order to ideally cover peak loads. In addition, it is also possible for Retarus to always guarantee fully local data processing.
Special requirements need specialized providers
As a provider that has been dedicated to email for more than 30 years, there are virtually no special features that Retarus is unfamiliar with. With flexible solutions and in-house support, Retarus can also cater to a company’s specific requirements, especially when it comes to deeper integrations, routing, or automation.
If you have any further questions about how we can support you in not reaching any boundaries despite new sending limits, please get in touch. Our experts will be happy to consult you at any time.
