In today’s increasingly digital business environment, it’s becoming more difficult to send large volumes of email efficiently. Whether for marketing campaigns, customer notifications or important alerts, email communication remains a widely used and effective way to reach and interact with a wide audience. Among the players offering these services, Microsoft is one of the best known. Last April, it made two major announcements: a new product, HVE (High Volume Email), and restrictions on sendings to external recipients. These announcements are significant and raise questions for customers.
Two major announcements from Microsoft: High Volume Email and Exchange Online limitations
In April 2024, Microsoft announced major changes to its mass email services. The first announcement was the launch of a new service called HVE. This service is specifically designed to enable the sending of large volumes of internal emails.
High Volume Email for Microsoft 365 is available as a public review since April 2024 and allows emails to be sent to up to 100,000 recipients a day, by tenant, when sent to internal recipients.
Microsoft’s second announcement introduces a significant restriction on the volume of email sent through Exchange Online (Office 365). The limit will be set at 2,000 recipients per day, a drastic reduction from the previous capacity of up to 10,000 emails per day. These new measures are designed to increase the security and stability of the service by reducing the risk of email accounts being used to send spam.
What does this mean for customers?
These new restrictions can have a significant impact on businesses that rely heavily on Microsoft services.
Newsletter mailings often involve sending thousands of emails in a short period of time. The 2,000 external recipients per day constraint imposed by Microsoft Exchange Online can severely limit the reach of these communications, reducing their effectiveness and impact. The same problem occurs for companies that send important transactional notifications, such as order confirmations, delivery updates or security alerts, to large numbers of customers.
The Microsoft Exchange measures will take effect from January 2025 for new tenants and between July and December 2025 for existing tenants. Despite this delay, customers should review their strategies now and consider alternatives. Although High Volume Email for Microsoft offers up to 100,000 messages per day, it is not an interesting option for those who need to send large volumes of mail to recipients outside their messaging domain. In addition, Exchange Online is no longer the right solution for all users. Reviewing needs and considering a change of solution could be beneficial for a large proportion of users.
Choosing the right email solution
There are several aspects to consider when choosing this type of tool to ensure the efficiency and reliability of your communications.
- The first factor to think about when choosing a solution is the purpose of the emails. They are not all handled in the same way and should be managed by different solutions, whether you are sending newsletters, business emails, alerts or transactional emails.
- Reputation and domain name management is critical to ensure that email reaches its destination and is not identified as spam. This management relies on advanced security and verification technologies including strong authentication, SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
- A high deliverability rate is essential for any volume mailing. Innovative technology and a team of deliverability experts ensure that emails reach inboxes instead of being filtered out as junk.
- A real-time dashboard provides complete visibility of your mailings. With an intuitive, comprehensive interface, administrators should be able to track emails without delay. They should also be able to get reports with relevant key performance indicators to analyse mailings and easily understand errors.
- Finally, the scalability of the solution is essential to meet the growing needs of your business. As your traffic evolves, the solution must adapt to that change, whether in terms of sending volume or security.
In conclusion, Microsoft’s recent announcements regarding the limitations of Exchange Online and the launch of HVE highlight the importance of solution choice for organisations. It is imperative that companies review their strategies to ensure they continue to meet their needs.
That’s why it’s essential to look for solutions offering not only high sending capacity, but also advanced reputation management tools, high delivery rates and real-time dashboards. If you’re looking to optimise your mailings and ensure that your messages reach their destination, we invite you to discover our solution, Serenamail, a Secure SMTP Relay.
