If your business or organization uses Microsoft’s Exchange Online to handle your bulk email messages. The bad news is that the company is going to place limits on the number of emails sent to external sources. The good news is that this new restriction won’t happen for at least a few months, and some won’t have to deal with it for more than a year.

in a blog post, Microsoft announced that the external recipient rate limit for Exchange Online will be limited to 2,000 recipients every 24 hours. The post explained the reasons for this new outer limit:

Exchange Online does not support bulk or high volume transactional email. Until now we have not enforced a bulk email limit, but we plan to do so with the introduction of an External Recipient Rate (ERR) limit. The ERR limit is introduced to help reduce unfair use and abuse of Exchange Online resources.

Currently, Exchange Online has a recipient rate limit of 10,000 recipients per day. The new system will define the external recipient rate as a sublimit of the recipient rate limit.

The good news is that the new ERR limit will not be enforced until at least January 1, 2025. When that date arrives, the sublimit will be placed on new tenants for cloud-based email systems. Sometime between July and December 2025, the EER limit will be enforced on existing tenants.

Businesses and organizations that need higher message volumes for bulk email services that will not be available for Exchange Online are encouraged to switch to Microsoft. Azure Communication Services for email. Depending on the service plan purchased, it can handle millions of emails per month.

Microsoft announced just today that the standalone Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 applications will lose support, along with the rest of the Office 2016 and 2019 applications, on October 14, 2025.