Microsoft’s Exchange Online ‘High Volume Email’ Service Expands Sending Limits

Cloud Computing

Key Takeaways:

  • Microsoft has introduced High Volume Email (HVE) service in public preview for Microsoft 365 customers.
  • HVE increases the outbound message limit to 100,000 recipients per day and removes previous message rate restrictions.
  • Microsoft plans to add per-account controls for IT admins later this year.

Microsoft has announced the public preview of a new High Volume Email (HVE) service for Microsoft 365 customers. The new offering enables commercial users to send large volumes of emails beyond the current limits of Exchange Online.

Up until now, Exchange Online allowed users to send emails to a maximum of 10,000 internal recipients per day. Additionally, users were limited to sending a maximum of 30 messages per minute via SMTP from Exchange Online.

The new High Volume Email service increases the outbound message limit to 100,000 recipients per day (per tenant). Additionally, Microsoft has removed the previous limitation of 30 messages per minute, giving users more freedom to send emails without encountering any message rate restrictions.

“HVE is a new service designed primarily for line of business applications and other high-volume SMTP Auth submissions that enables you to send internal messages beyond the current limits of Exchange Online. Customers using on-premises servers in an Exchange hybrid configuration to send a large volume of internal messages can use this service instead and decommission their on-premises servers,” the Exchange team explained.

High Volume Email Service
High Volume Email Mailbox Limits (Image credits: Microsoft)

High Volume Email supports SMTP Basic Authentication

With High Volume Email, Exchange Online customers can create up to 20 accounts that can send messages via a specific SMTP endpoint. Moreover, IT admins will need to log in to the Exchange admin center to manage HVE accounts and track usage metrics. Currently, the service only supports SMTP Basic Authentication, but OAuth authentication will be available later this year.

Microsoft plans to expand the outbound limits when the High Volume Email service becomes generally available for all organizations worldwide. Furthermore, IT admins will be able to configure the volume threshold on a per-account basis. Microsoft also plans to introduce a consumption-based billing model for commercial customers.

Microsoft is currently rolling out support for High Volume Email to Microsoft 365 customers in the North American region. The company will gradually expand this capability to more regions in the next few months. We invite you to check out this support page to learn more about how to get started with the High Volume Email service.