Microsoft will end support for Basic SMTP authentication beginning March 1st, 2026.
- Customers using Microsoft or Google as their email provider and utilizing Okta’s “Use your own email provider” feature
Microsoft will end support for Basic SMTP authentication beginning March 1st, 2026, with a small number of rejections on day one and reaching 100% rejections by April 30th, 2026. Customers who are currently using Google as their SMTP provider are encouraged to switch to a more secure OAuth 2.0 protocol to connect to your custom email provider.
Beginning in February 2026, Okta’s Use your own email provider feature will introduce support for using a more secure OAuth 2.0 protocol to connect to a custom email provider.
Okta’s “Use your own email provider” feature allows organizations to use outside email providers like Microsoft Exchange Online or Google Workspace instead of using Okta's default email service to send email notifications. Currently, Okta supports Basic SMTP authentication when connecting to those custom SMTP servers. Basic SMTP authentication relies on a username and password to authenticate with an SMTP server when sending emails.
Recently, Microsoft has announced that Exchange Online will permanently remove support for Basic SMTP authentication, beginning with a small percentage of submission rejections for all tenants on March 1st, 2026, and reaching 100% rejections by April 30th, 2026. Google has also deprecated the use of account passwords for Basic SMTP authentication as of March 14, 2025, now requiring app-specific passwords as a stopgap, while recommending OAuth 2.0.
To ensure that email notifications remain operational, Okta plans to introduce OAuth 2.0 based connection mechanisms for its "Use your own email provider" feature. While other SMTP providers do not yet support OAuth 2.0,customers using Google are highly encouraged to switch to this new mechanism once it becomes available as it enhances security. Customers using Microsoft will be required to switch before rejection begins on March 1, 2026.
Support for OAuth 2.0 will be made available as Early Access starting in February 2026. Okta will continue to support Basic SMTP authentication as well. More information on how to configure “Use your own email provider” to use OAuth 2.0 will be provided in Okta’s Early Access product documentation.
