Microsoft 365 bringing High Volume Emails to Exchange Online, free until May

Microsoft 365 is introducing High Volume Email (HVE) for large-scale internal communication, bringing dedicated SMTP endpoints, new admin controls, and reporting. This feature is now available in Public Preview and is tentatively planned for General Availability in March. Microsoft plans to offer this feature in a free promotional period until May when it will bring in a transaction pricing model.

By default, Exchange Online has email-sending limits based on recipient rate limit, recipient limit, and message rate limit. If you surpass these then you can’t send more emails until the limits reset. This doesn’t work for some organizations though so Microsoft is adding High Volume Email (HVE) for Microsoft 365 to enable internal communication needs that exceed these standard limits.

The M365 implementation of High Volume Email is designed for large-scale internal comms and can integrate with business applications and devices so that it supports operational and mass-mailing scenarios. The feature will use a transactional pricing model that adjusts based on the number of recipients, the feature will be free until May.

Once the feature is available, a new High Volume Email page will appear under Mail flow in the Exchange admin center. From there, admins can create and manage Mail User accounts enabled for HVE. When enabled, a new High Volume Email report will be created under Reports > Mail flow to help with monitoring. This feature is opt-in and doesn’t modify the default sending limits of existing mail flow behavior.

The Redmond giant says that no action is required to prepare for this change, however, you may still want to check and update any internal documentation that describes email-sending processes. To learn more about this update, check the Microsoft 365 Admin Center message ID MC1243552. You can find out more about Exchange Online limits here.