Shared mailboxes being assigned licenses in Exchange Online?

Iron Contributor

I just noticed that my Shared mailboxes are being assigned M365 licenses (Microsoft Business Standard) from my pool of licenses. It was my understanding that as long as the Shared mailbox is under 50GB and doesn't require compliance, that the Shared mailboxes don't require licenses? Why would they be getting issued licenses from my license pool, upon creation, and can these licenses be removed safely?

5 Replies
How exactly are you creating the shared mailbox? No automatic assignment should be happening, and you definitely dont need a license (unless you require specific functionality, as detailed in the service description: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/e...). You can check the Unified audit log for any entries corresponding to license changes in order to figure out what's happening.
I'm creating them directly through the M365 Portal using the Shared Mailbox wizard, so nothing special, and the Shared Mailboxes were meant to be nothing more than the basic function of allowing more than one user to monitor emails that arrive for specific email aliases.

I will definitely check the Unified Log to see if I can identify why licenses were assigned to these Shared mailboxes.
You can also create them shared mailbox directly via PowerShell and compare the behavior.
I’ve got the same problem. Just unassigned licence and it will be resolved. I confirm to you that all your shared mailbox will works like before. I have more than 20 shared mailbox and I’ve just unassigned their licences to save more than 300$/month!
This is certainly strange ! Any chance you are using group based licensing and the user account corresponding to Shared mailbox is added in the group ?