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Microsoft SMTP AUTH Deprecation in 2026: What You Need to Know

5 minute read time · Updated March 25, 2026 · First published March 25, 2026

Microsoft SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication Deprecation

If your MIDAS booking system is currently configured to send emails via Microsoft’s SMTP servers, it’s time to take action.

Microsoft has announced that it will be retiring support for SMTP AUTH (also known as “Basic Authentication” for SMTP) in 2026. Once this change takes effect, any application which is configured to use Microsoft SMTP endpoints for outgoing mail will no longer be able to send emails.

For MIDAS, if you’re using Microsoft’s SMTP servers, this means that booking confirmations, reminder emails, and other automated notifications sent from MIDAS would silently fail – potentially disrupting your organization’s scheduling and communications.

Here’s what you need to know, and what steps to take before the deadline.

What Is SMTP AUTH and Basic Authentication?

SMTP AUTH is a method that allows applications to authenticate with a mail server using a username and password in order to send outgoing email. It has been widely used for decades.

Why is Microsoft removing Basic Authentication and SMTP AUTH?

It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s decision to retire SMTP AUTH is driven by their own platform strategy around modern authentication – it doesn’t mean that sending email via SMTP is inherently insecure. Under the hood, SMTP works the same way it always has, and the username/password authentication used by SMTP hasn’t fundamentally changed. What Microsoft is retiring is the ability to authenticate to their mail servers this way, as they push users towards OAuth-based access within their ecosystem. MIDAS does not currently support OAuth, but this is not a concern — there are plenty of reliable, independent SMTP providers that continue to support standard SMTP authentication without any issues.

Are You Affected?

You may be affected if your MIDAS booking system’s outgoing email settings are currently configured to use any of the following SMTP servers:

smtp-mail.outlook.com — used by personal Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts
smtp.live.com — an older endpoint also associated with Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live accounts
smtp-legacy.office365.com — a temporary fallback endpoint for Microsoft customers that stilled relied on SMTP AUTH after the initial Basic Auth deprecation push.
smtp.office365.com — An Exchange Online endpoint used by Microsoft 365 services.
outlook.office365.com — another Exchange Online endpoint sometimes used in place of smtp.office365.com

You can check your current email sending settings via MIDAS Admin Options > Email.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward, and we’ve made it as easy as possible for MIDAS customers.

For Cloud-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you’re on our cloud-hosted platform, we have the simplest possible solution for you: switch to MIDAS’s built-in Zero-Configuration Email Delivery.

This option requires no SMTP credentials, no third-party accounts, and no technical configuration on your part. MIDAS handles email delivery on your behalf, so you don’t need to worry about SMTP servers at all. You can find full details on how to enable this feature in our dedicated guide:

👉 Zero-Configuration Email Delivery for MIDAS

We strongly recommend all cloud-hosted customers make this switch at their earliest convenience – and certainly before Microsoft’s 2026 deadline.

For Self-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you run MIDAS on your own server or hosting environment, you’ll need to update your outgoing mail settings to use an alternative SMTP provider. Fortunately, there are several excellent options available, many of which offer generous free tiers that would suit most MIDAS installations.

We recommend the following providers:

SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is a reliable, cloud-based email delivery service with a free tier that allows up to 1,000 emails per month. It’s straightforward to set up and works seamlessly with MIDAS’s outgoing mail settings. Simply create a free account, verify your sending domain, and update your MIDAS SMTP settings with the credentials provided.

Mailgun

Mailgun is another popular transactional email service offering a free tier for low-volume sending. It provides robust deliverability, detailed sending logs, and is well-suited for automated system emails like those generated by MIDAS. After signing up and verifying your domain, update your MIDAS SMTP configuration with your Mailgun credentials.

To update your SMTP settings in MIDAS, navigate to MIDAS Admin Options > Email and enter the new SMTP server details provided by your chosen transactional email delivery service.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

According to Microsoft, their revised SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication Deprecation Timeline is as follows:

Now to December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication behavior remains unchanged.
End of December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be disabled by default for existing tenants. Administrators will still be able to enable it if needed.
New tenants created after December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be unavailable by default. OAuth will be the supported authentication method.
Second half of 2027: Microsoft will announce the final removal date for SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication.

While Microsoft’s deadline is the end of December 2026, we recommend customers make this change sooner rather than later.

Email is a critical part of how MIDAS keeps your staff and visitors informed – from booking confirmations to reminders and notifications. A disruption to outgoing mail can go unnoticed until someone realizes they never received a confirmation, which can cause real-world scheduling problems.

Taking a few minutes now to update your settings will ensure uninterrupted email delivery well into the future. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team – we’re happy to help.

Tags: email, microsoft, smtp

Zero Configuration Email Delivery for Cloud-Hosted Customers

4 minute read time · Updated March 2, 2026 · First published February 24, 2026

The ability to send email is essential for any booking system.

From booking confirmations and reminders, to invoices, notifications, and password resets, booking and scheduling systems rely on email.

MIDAS naturally supports the sending of email, but we’ve made some exciting and significant improvements to email sending for our cloud-hosted customers for v4.42.

But first, let’s look at the existing ways in which MIDAS can send email.

Until now, the sending of email by MIDAS has been through a choice between “Sendmail” or “SMTP”.

What is Sendmail?

Available on Linux-based servers, Sendmail is a built-in server application for sending email directly from the server itself. Read more about Sendmail.

What is SMTP?

SMTP (or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard language used by computers to send emails across the internet. Read more about SMTP.

Sendmail vs SMTP

Both Sendmail and SMTP options have been available in both our cloud-hosted and self-hosted editions.

“Sendmail” has long been the default ‘out of the box’ email transport setting for cloud-hosted customers. However, we’ve always encouraged customers to move over to SMTP as soon as possible.

That’s because generally email deliverability rates are substantially higher when MIDAS is configured to send email through a customer’s own SMTP server, than if instead sent directly through our own servers.

Whilst Sendmail is configured to work ‘out of the box’ for cloud-hosted customers, SMTP requires a little more configuration.

To configure MIDAS to send email via SMTP, you will need:

The address of your SMTP server
The correct port number
The SMTP username and password
The correct SSL, TLS, or STARTTLS encryption method setting

You will also need to ensure that your SMTP server accepts connections from your cloud-hosted MIDAS system. In addition, your organization’s domain must be configured to allow MIDAS to send email on behalf of your domain.

This requires significant configuration and setup. We want to simplify this for our cloud-hosted customers. That’s why we’re introducing cloud email sending.

Introducing “Cloud Sending”

New Zero Configuration Email Sending Option

For MIDAS v4.42, we’ve introduced a new “Cloud” option for sending email. This new option is available to all cloud-hosted customers, and replaces the previous “Sendmail” option. (Sendmail continues to remain an option for self-hosted customers).

With the new cloud email option selected, you won’t need to specify an SMTP host, or enter credentials or specify ports – MIDAS will take care of all of that!

We have partnered with a dedicated transactional email provider specializing in high-deliverability email delivery services, to provide efficient and reliable email delivery for cloud-hosted customers who select the “Cloud” email sending option.

Zero Configuration Email Sending

To complement our new “cloud” email offering, we’ve also included a “Zero Configuration” option.

With this option enabled, MIDAS and Mailgun will seamlessly handle email delivery for your MIDAS system. You won’t need to configure an outgoing email address, nor will you need to update your organization’s domain’s SPF (Sender Policy Framework) DNS record – email will just ‘work’ right out of the box.

Of course, if you wish to customize the “send from” or “reply to” addresses, you can untick the “Zero Configuration” option and change those settings.

But in its simplest form, our new “cloud” email sending and “Zero Configuration” options mean that brand new cloud-hosted email systems can now reliably send email right from the outset.

Migrating from Sendmail to Cloud email sending

For our existing cloud-hosted customers, if you’re currently using the “Sendmail” option in your MIDAS system, you’ll be automatically migrated to “cloud” sending soon after we update you to v4.42.

If you do not wish to use the new “Cloud” sending option, you should update your MIDAS settings to instead send email via SMTP.

You can change your MIDAS email settings via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email.

If your cloud-hosted MIDAS system is currently configured to send email via SMTP, this setting will be unaffected when we update your booking system to v4.42. Of course, you can then always change over to use the cloud email sending option at any time.

Tags: cloud hosted, email, smtp, v4.42

Better support for “shared” email addresses

4 minute read time · Updated February 14, 2025 · First published August 21, 2024

One of the features of our software is that it can allow visitors to your website to check room availability. They can then make an online booking (or booking request) for use of your facilities.

As this can be done without requiring a login or a user account. When making a “public” booking/request, the person simply needs to enter their details. This will typically include their name and contact email address.

When a public web booking/request is made, MIDAS checks the email address that’s been entered against its existing client database.

If a single matching client with the same email address already exists in the client database, MIDAS will associate the booking/request with that existing client.

This negates the need for a person to have to re-enter all their information (i.e. address, phone number, etc) each time they make a web booking or request.

MIDAS can also be configured to allow individuals to update their information each time they make a web booking or request.

Multiple clients with the same email address

But what if there is more than one existing client with the same email address as the person making the web booking / request?

In these instances, MIDAS will not only compare the email address given, but also the client and organization names provided.

If there is a single exact match based on this additional information, MIDAS will associated the booking/request with the one matching client.

Again, MIDAS can be configured to update the existing client record at time of web booking / request with new details supplied by the individual.

The problem

There is however an “edge case” where the above options don’t quite go far enough.

Take for example an individual who uses their personal email address to make web bookings or requests for multiple different organizations they’re associated with.

That’s no problem if there are existing client records for the client for each of their organizations. But it becomes an issue if this is a brand new client. It’s also an issue if this is a person with just a single existing client record under one of their organizations.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

Let’s say Jeff is associated with two organizations – let’s call them “A” and “B”.

Let’s also assume that Jeff is a brand new client. There is therefore currently no client record with the same email address existing in your MIDAS system.

Jeff makes a booking request using his personal email address on behalf of organization “A”. A new client record is created for Jeff using this information.

A short while later, Jeff makes another booking request. He uses his personal email address again, but this time he’d like to make a request for organization “B”.

When Jeff makes his second request, MIDAS will see that there is already a single client in its database matching Jeff’s email address. One of two things will then happen, depending whether the “Allow client record updates” setting has been enabled in MIDAS.

If the “Allow client record updates” option is disabled, MIDAS will reuse Jeff’s original details (i.e. organization “A”). This will result in both his booking requests being for organization A.

If the “Allow client record updates” option is enabled, MIDAS will update Jeff’s original details (i.e. to become organization “B”). This will result in both his booking requests being for organization B.

…but that’s not what we want! We want his first request to be for organization A, and his second for organization B.

The solution

Instances of someone making web bookings / requests on behalf of multiple organizations using the same email address are uncommon. But we still wanted to better accommodate this scenario.

So for MIDAS v4.37 we’ve introduced a new “Account for multiple clients/organizations sharing the same email address” setting.

Enabling this setting will automatically create additional client records for each client/organization variant using the same email address.

The result – in our illustrative example above – would be that Jeff can make booking requests for either organization A or B (or even a future organization C) using his personal email address without issue.

Tags: email, public booking requests, v4.37

How to send invoices as PDF attachments

3 minute read time · Updated February 11, 2025 · First published November 30, 2022

We first introduced invoicing capabilities to our MIDAS room booking software way back in 2009.

Since then, it’s fair to say that invoicing has been the area that we receive the most suggestions from our customers for new features and capabilities.

That’s why over the years we’ve been constantly expanding and improving the invoicing capabilities in MIDAS.

In the past 12 months alone, we’ve allowed customers to set even more flexible venue rates. We’ve also added Zoho Invoice to the growing list of 3rd party platforms you can export MIDAS invoices to. Additionally, we also added a couple of handy invoice tools too.

Now, the ability to be able to directly email an invoice to a client from within MIDAS is something that’s not new. In fact, it’s been available in our software ever since invoicing was first introduced.

This feature allowed a user to send an email to a client, with a copy of their invoice included in the body of the email.

For many of our customers this has worked well for many years, and continues to do so.

However, as the web continues to evolve, sadly many email clients haven’t kept up with more modern formatting and layout standards. This prompted us to recently introduce an new “Email Compatibility” setting. This setting helps ensure that invoices sent via email to your customers display correctly in the body of the email when it’s viewed.

Whilst this means that everyone can view a correctly formatted invoice contained within an email sent from a MIDAS system, we know that some customers would still prefer to send an invoice as a PDF file to their clients.

Until now, in order to send an invoice from a MIDAS system to a client in PDF format, a user would need to “save” the invoice to a PDF file. This file would then need to be attached and sent via an external email program.

Let’s be honest, this isn’t ideal! It would be far simpler if you could send PDF versions of invoices to clients directly from within MIDAS.

That’s why starting from MIDAS v4.32, you’ll now have the option to be able to send invoices to your clients as PDF attachments, rather than “inline”.

Send PDF versions of invoices as email attachments

To enable this option, cloud hosted customers can go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email → Advanced. On this screen, tick the “Send invoices as PDF attachments” option and save changes.

For self-hosted customers, you’ll need to be running at least MIDAS v4.32. In order to enable this functionality, there’s also a couple of additional prerequisets you’ll need to install on your server first.

We’re also providing you with controls over the page size and orientation of generated PDFs. You can also control page margins too.

Tags: attachments, email, invoicing, pdf, v4.32