Exchange Server Subscription Edition: It's happening (in Q3 2025)

Mary Jo Foley is the Editor in Chief at Directions on Microsoft. Before joining Directions, Mary Jo has worked as... more

It’s been quite a while since Microsoft provided an update on its plans for the next release of on-premises Exchange Server. But on May 7, in a blog post entitled “Exchange Server Roadmap Update,” Microsoft broke its two-year silence.

Microsoft officials said the coming next release will be named Exchange Server Subscription Edition, or Exchange Server SE. It will be generally available “early in the third quarter of calendar year 2025,” they added. And the first Cumulative Update for Exchange Server SE will be out in late 2025.

In 2020, Microsoft officials said the next versions of its on-premises Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server would be available in the second half of 2021. But the only two of these that materialized as planned were SharePoint Server SE and Project Server SE. (Microsoft has not provided any information about when and whether there still will be another on-premises Skype for Business Server release.)

In 2022, Microsoft officials said they had decided to hold off on a new version of Exchange Server until sometime in 2025 in the name of getting its security house in order. In the interim, the company said it would offer more new features for Exchange Server 2019 and advised customers to move to the 2019 version of Exchange Server as soon as possible.

Microsoft is planning to end support for Exchange Server (both the 2016 and 2019 versions) on October 14, 2025. Officials said today they are not going to extend the end-of-life date or offer Extended Security Updates for either version. That doesn’t give organizations much time to move to the coming Exchange Server SE release in Q3 2025.

Ready, set, upgrade

In today’s blog post, officials described the process they are planning “to allow for rapid adoption and deployment” of the next on-premises release of Exchange Server. They said Exchange Server SE will be “code equivalent to (e.g., the same exact code as) Exchange Server 2019 CU15,” except for the following:

The License agreement, a file shown only in the GUI version of Setup, will be updated.
The name will change from Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 to Microsoft Exchange Server Subscription Edition.
The build and version number will be updated.

Additionally, Microsoft will support two types of upgrades to Exchange Server SE from previous versions: An in-place upgrade and a legacy upgrade. The fastest and easiest will be the in-place upgrade, which Microsoft officials said will be “identical to installing a CU.” A legacy upgrade will require customers to build out a new infrastructure and move namespaces and mailboxes to the new infrastructure. Microsoft recommends customers still on Exchange Server 2016 do a legacy upgrade to Exchange Server 2019 soon to prepare for the coming new release.

Exchange Server SE CU1: October 2025

Going forward, Microsoft plans to continue releasing two CUs per year for Exchange Server SE. The first CU, due in October next year, will include the following changes:

Kerberos for server-to-server communication
Adding support for an Admin API and deprecating Remote PowerShell (RPS)
Removing Outlook Anywhere
Removal of support for co-existence with earlier versions

Officials said that Exchange Server SE will initially support the same supported clients as Exchange Server 2019. Support for the new Outlook for Windows (“Monarch”) won’t happen until Exchange Server SE CU1 or later, they added.

Licensing: Think SharePoint SE

Microsoft did not release any specific pricing information today for Exchange Server SE. Officials did say that Exchange Server SE will be available for download from the Microsoft 365 admin center (previously the Microsoft Volume License Service Center) in the early part of Q3 of 2025.

The licensing model used by Exchange Server SE will be the same as SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, which requires subscription licenses or licenses with active Software Assurance for server and user licenses. The hardware and operating system requirements for Exchange Server SE are the same as Exchange 2019 CU15, which adds support for Windows Server 2025.

The required subscriptions for SharePoint Server SE and Exchange Server SE give customers access to support, security, and product updates and patches while customers are current on their payments.

“My interpretation is that the Exchange Subscription Edition is essentially Extended Security Updates (ESUs), which is actually favorable for the customer. ESU annual subs cost about the same as a new perpetual server license whereas continuing Software Assurance (SA), which gets you Subscription Edition, costs one quarter of that amount,” said Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Horwitz.