Today, July 1st, 2025, Microsoft released Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) as the successor of Exchange Server 2019.

Exchange Server SE in itself is not that exciting, it is 100% binary compatible with Exchange 2019 CU15 with the latest May 2025 Hotfix Update, except for the license agreement (EULA) and the build and version number.

This makes it very easy to do an in-place upgrade from Exchange 2019 CU14 or CU15, or a regular migration where Exchange Server SE is installed in an existing Exchange 2016 environment. Please note that Exchange Server SE cannot be installed in an existing Exchange 2013, just like Exchange 2019 CU15.

The last couple of months I did several presentation on Exchange Server SE and did several project to prepare for Exchange Server SE. The most asked question was “what about the subscription?”.

That’s not too difficult. The subscription is in the license, not in the product. The perpetual license has been discontinued and replaced with a subscription license. As for Exchange Server SE, there’s no online license checking or revocation (for now), and there’s still no need to connect your Exchange SE servers directly to the Internet (but it has some advantages, especially for services like the EEMS or the Feature Flighting service).

Why is this an important update and important timing? On October 14, 2025 which is less than four months from now, Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange 2019 will reach end-of-life and will no longer be supported by Microsoft. These products will of course continue to run, but Microsoft will no longer release any security updates for both products.

If you are still running on an older version of Exchange Server, you are running out of time and you must start an upgrade project soon and upgrade to Exchange 2019 CU14/CU15 of Exchange Server SE when possible.

More information regarding Exchange Server SE can be found here Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) is now available and can be downloaded from the VLSC or the Microsoft download center.