Your contact form may go quiet after December

A new client finds you in January. She fills in the form on your website, presses Send, and sees "Thank you, we'll be in touch." She waits. Nobody calls. She tries the next business.

You never knew she was there. The message never left your website.

What is changing

In late December 2026, Microsoft starts turning off an old way of sending email through Microsoft 365: signing in with just a username and password. Some website contact forms, booking tools and office copiers that "scan to email" still send that way. An IT admin can switch it back on for a while, and Microsoft will announce the final date in 2027. But the switch-off is coming.

Why owners miss it

Nothing breaks on your side. The form still says "sent." There is no error on the website and no warning in your inbox. The only person who sees the problem is the customer, and she doesn't know it's a problem. She just thinks you never answered.

The two-minute test

• Send yourself a message through your own website form today.
• Do it again in the first week of January.
• If the January message doesn't arrive, ask whoever built your site to switch the form to a sending method Microsoft still accepts.
• Do the same for any copier or scanner that emails documents to you.

That's it. Two test messages can save every lead that comes through your form next year.