| Litigation Hold | Retention Policy | |
| Automatically Applied to all users | No, only manual application is allowed | Yes, can be applied to all or individual user |
| Features | Prevents a user from hard deleting emails and entire mailboxes | Prevents hard deletion of emails and entire mailboxes |
| Office 365 License | Exchange online plan 1 along with Exchange online Archiving (although it seems to work without EOA on Exchange online Plan 1). Exchange online plan 2 or higher | Exchange online plan 1 along with Exchange online Archiving (although it seems to work without EOA on Exchange online Plan 1). Exchange online plan 2 or higher |
| Easy recovery of deleted data | Yes | Yes |
| Limitations | A Limit cap of 1,000 mailboxes in one hold with a total limit of of 10,000 holds | A Limit cap of 10 companywide policies and 1000 specific polices per tenant is allowed |
| Permissions level to carry out tasks | E Discovery Manager role is required | E Discovery Manager role required |
| Advanced Search | Yes, Search for data from eDiscovery search or search mailbox command (users think they can delete data but once under hold, data is recoverable and is not deleted) |
Yes, search for data from eDiscovery search or search mailbox command |
| How long it takes for changes to propagate | Up to 60 minutes to get hold fully functional | Up to 24 hours for a retention policy to start working |