Overview
- The rollback follows months of delays to a 2024 plan that would have imposed a per-mailbox External Recipient Rate of 2,000 per 24 hours.
- Existing Exchange Online limits remain in place, including a 10,000 total-recipient cap per mailbox and a 5,000-per-day external recipient cap at the tenant level.
- Microsoft said the scrapped cap was intended to curb abuse from compromised accounts, but customers warned it would break integrations and legitimate bulk-sending workflows.
- The proposed counting method would have tallied each send to each recipient, meaning 100 messages to the same five contacts would count as 500 external recipients.
- Microsoft suggested Azure Communication Services for Email for high-volume needs, though coverage notes it does not meet all use cases and the company has not detailed its replacement approach.