Microsoft will remove any grace period for all expired subscriptions, including Microsoft 365, from 4 May 2026. This means you will need to take action and/or make payment in advance of a subscription’s end date, to ensure the subscription and its services continue.

Microsoft previously offered a short grace period where services continued to be available and renewal was still possible after a subscription had expired. This allowed some flexibility and time to make belated decisions regarding accounts, licenses, etc.

This grace period will now be replaced by a paid option, the Extended Service Term (EST), where services can remain active after a subscription expires only at additional cost. Under EST, subscriptions are billed at the monthly uplift rate of the license(s) at ~20% plus a further 3% surcharge. For license(s) without a monthly plan available the surcharge is 23%.

From 4 May 2026, organisations will need to choose from the following options at the end of a subscription term:

• Renew the subscription and ensure payment is made before the renewal date
• Cancel the subscription with the service stopping immediately at the renewal date
• Move to Extended Service Term (EST) with surcharges applied

The removal of the grace period means that subscription management now requires more proactive planning and payment to be made in advance of the renewal date in order to avoid losing access to services and incurring unwanted surcharges.

Please note that Microsoft has recently revised the original enforcement date, moving it from 1 April 2026 to 4 May 2026. The overall process and intention remain unchanged.

Microsoft has announced the end of Basic Authentication for sending email via Microsoft 365 in early 2026. Applications and devices will no longer be able to use Basic Authentication when using Client Submission (SMTP AUTH) to send email via Exchange Online.

Previously Microsoft removed the ability to receive email using Basic Authentication in late 2022. Removal of the ability to send email using Basic Authentication was scheduled for September 2025, but was delayed to give more time for this transition.

This is part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to strengthen account security and reduce the risk of phishing, brute-force attacks etc. But this also forms part of Microsoft’s more subtle move to ensure Microsoft 365 email be used for comms only, and not for other applications such as multifunction devices and programmatic messages. Restricting these other uses will help manage abuse on their platform, but will also reduce the volume of email overall thereby likely reducing their operating costs – e.g. if all organisations can no longer use Microsoft 365 email for scan-to-email or notifications functionalities.

Key dates

• 1 March 2026 31 December 2026
  Basic Authentication will be disabled for existing customers, although it can be re-enabled if needed. Basic Authentication will be unavailable for new customers, with no recourse.
• 30 April 2026 H2 2027
  Microsoft will announce the final depracation date for Basic Authentication.

If you’re still using Basic Auth to send emails — for example, from websites, applications, scanners, multifunction printers — you’ll need to update your configuration. After the cut-off date, all these systems will no longer be able to send email via Exchange Online (Microsoft 365) until they use a supported authentication method.

You will need to switch to OAuth to continue using Microsoft 365 to send emails in this way, if your systems support modern authentication methods. Otherwise, you may need to switch to another solution that allows for sending programmatic and high message volumes.

Microsoft is offering a new pay-as-you-go high volume email sending service via their Azure Communication Services. And we offer a fixed rate high volume email sending service: please see our SMTP Email here.

Update 12 February 2026

Microsoft has announced a change to this deprecation timeline, and we have updated the dates above accordingly. The overall process and intention remains, but Microsoft has said that more time is being given following customer feedback and to provide additional runway for adoption progress.