Microsoft’s announcement that Azure Communication Services (ACS) Email will be retired on September 30, 2028, gives organizations an important reason to review their email delivery strategy. While existing customers can continue using the service during the transition period, planning a migration early can help avoid last-minute disruption.
For businesses that rely on application-generated emails to reach customers, employees, and partners, choosing the right replacement is more than just finding another SMTP endpoint. It is about ensuring that critical communications continue to reach their destinations reliably.
Retarus: Enterprise-grade transactional email delivery
Retarus Transactional Email offers a compelling alternative for organizations looking for a dedicated, enterprise-grade email delivery service. It enables applications to send high volumes of transactional emails through REST APIs or SMTP, without placing additional strain on existing email infrastructure. All without volume or throughput limitations.
Unlike Microsoft 365 High Volume Email (HVE), which is designed for internal recipients within an organization’s tenant, Retarus supports delivery to both internal and external recipients. This makes it suitable for customer-facing use cases such as order confirmations, invoices, appointment notifications, password resets, and other business-critical communications.
Retarus also provides capabilities designed to support enterprise email operations:
- Scalable delivery: High-volume processing with contractually agreed throughput rates.
- Delivery optimization: Adaptive sending controls designed to improve inbox placement.
- Reputation management: Support for SPF, DMARC, and DKIM, suppression lists, bounce management, and even dedicated IP options.
- Operational transparency: Real-time reporting, monitoring, and ingestible observability metrics
- Enterprise integration: REST API and SMTP connectivity for integration with existing applications and workflows.
Retarus operates its own data centers in multiple regions, including Europe, the US, and Asia, giving organizations options for data processing aligned with their requirements such as GDPR and sovereignty initiatives.
Make your migration a strategic decision
The retirement of ACS is an opportunity to reassess how transactional email is delivered across your application landscape. Rather than replacing one cloud service with another without reviewing the underlying requirements, organizations can use this transition to strengthen delivery, scalability, and operational control.
Retarus combines dedicated transactional email infrastructure with enterprise-focused delivery capabilities and expert support throughout implementation and migration.
Planning your move away from ACS Email? Explore Retarus Transactional Email to see how a dedicated email delivery service can help keep your business-critical communications flowing.
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