what does it mean when it says you have reached your limits when I try to send a email to the person who put in a submission?

This means that you are only allowed to send only 2 emails per hour. This limit is for free and guest accounts. Instead of that, you can either grab the email address and utilize your  email client to reply to customers or you can implement an autoresponder.

I hope this answer your question.

Thanks that does help, but is this new?

No, it's not. It's been like that all the time. Paid accounts can send up to 100 emails per hour.  Since your account is on free status, you cannot send more than 2 per hour.