On 13 November 2026, a major global Microsoft outage disrupted services including Outlook, Teams and Copilot (see the BBC News report). Many of our clients use Microsoft 365 for email, and the outage showed how much day-to-day work depends on it.
The same advice applies whichever provider you use. Google Workspace and other email services have outages too.
This page sets out what an email outage affects, what you can do to prepare, and how to reach us if your email isn’t working.
If your email is down now and you need our help, see how to contact Square Eye without email.
What happens when your email goes down
You can’t easily reach others. Messages to clients, colleagues, clerks and suppliers may fail to send. They may also sit in an outbox without anyone noticing.
Others can’t reach you. Incoming messages may be delayed or returned to the sender. Website contact form notifications usually arrive by email, so new enquiries may go unseen.
You may be locked out of other systems. If your two-step verification codes or password resets are sent by email, you may not be able to log in to your website, hosting account or other tools until the outage ends.
Your website may stop sending emails too. Some websites send their own emails through the same provider as your inbox, such as form confirmations, password resets and membership renewals. If that provider is down, those emails may not reach your website visitors either.
Your usual fallbacks may be affected too. If your organisation uses Microsoft 365, Teams, calendars and shared files can go down at the same time as email.
What to do if your email is down
Check whether it’s an outage
Before taking action, confirm whether the problem is a wider outage or something local to your organisation. Your IT team or IT provider should be able to tell you. Most email providers also publish service status updates on their website and social media accounts.
Let your website visitors know
Your website is normally hosted separately from your email, so it usually keeps working when email doesn’t. This makes it the best place to tell people what’s happening.
- Add a short site-wide notice, such as a pop-up or banner message, that links to a fuller post. Ask us to set you up with an alert banner system if you don’t already hacve one.
- In the post, explain which services are affected, give other ways to contact your organisation (such as phone numbers), and say when you’ll next update it.
- Remove the notice once normal service returns.
Use other channels you control
Your website isn’t the only place to share the message. Consider:
- updating your phone voicemail greeting
- posting on LinkedIn or other social media accounts
- adding an update to your Google Business Profile
Check enquiries in your website dashboard
On many WordPress sites, two things happen when someone fills in a contact form. The submission is saved in your website dashboard, and an email notification is sent to your team.
If your email is down, the submission is still saved, but the notification won’t reach you. This means new enquiries can arrive without anyone knowing about them.
If you can log in to your website, check the form entries in the dashboard regularly until your email is working again, so that no enquiries go unanswered.
Consider a back-up email address
If every account you rely on is linked to one email address, an outage can cut you off from all of them at once. That includes the people who need to reach you and the services that send you login codes and password resets.
A back-up address on a separate provider, registered in advance, gives you another way in. You could add it to:
- key suppliers and service providers, including us
- your website and hosting accounts, as a secondary or recovery contact
- other business tools that use email for login or account recovery
We aren’t suggesting anyone set up a new email account without their organisation’s approval. However, now may be a good time to discuss a back-up address with your IT team or management.
Note that people with a Google-hosted email were able to use it today when Microsoft-hosted email system were down. So having one of each is a good idea, even if your backup one is just a Gmail address.
Why it should be named, not shared
A back-up address should also belong to a named individual, such as jane.smith@, rather than a generic or shared address such as info@ or admin@.
- You can see who did what. Websites and other systems record actions against the account that made them. With a shared address, there’s no way to tell which person made a change.
- Access is easier to control. Shared login details tend to spread, and are rarely changed when someone leaves. A named address can simply be removed.
- Two-step verification works properly. Passkeys and authenticator apps are tied to one person’s device. Shared accounts often end up with weaker protection, or with verification switched off altogether.
- Generic addresses are bigger targets. Addresses like info@ and admin@ are easy to guess, so they attract more phishing and password-guessing attempts.
Review how you log in
- Where a service supports passkeys, consider using them. A passkey lets you log in by unlocking your device with a fingerprint, face scan or PIN, so day-to-day logins don’t depend on email.
- If passkeys aren’t available, use an authenticator app for two-step verification instead of codes sent by email.
- Store backup or recovery codes somewhere secure that doesn’t rely on email.
- Make sure more than one person in your organisation can access critical systems.
For more on the options, see Beyond passwords: 2FA, MFA and passkeys explained.
Watch out for scams
Fraudsters often take advantage of outages. Be wary of emails, texts or calls that claim to come from Microsoft or IT support and ask you to log in, reset a password or install software. Check any such request through a channel you already trust.
The same applies to messages that claim to come from a client or colleague and ask you to use a new email address or change payment details. Confirm any such change by phone, using a number you already hold.
Keep contact details somewhere other than your inbox
Keep a short list of key phone numbers somewhere you can reach without email or Outlook contacts.
When your email is back
Once service returns:
- Expect delayed messages to arrive in a rush, and check for anything urgent.
- Check your sent items and outbox for messages that failed to send, and resend them where needed.
- Remove any website notice and reset your voicemail greeting.
- Note what worked and what didn’t, so you’re better prepared next time.
How to contact Square Eye without email
As we don’t manage email for our clients, we won’t be able to help if your email system goes down. But if you need urgent help with your website:
- Call us on +44 (0)20 3389 7888 and leave a message. Your message will be turned into a support ticket.
- If you have an alternative email address registered with us, you can email [email protected] from that address as usual.
- Or log in to the Zendesk web interface to view and open tickets. Project clients can also log in to Basecamp and reach us that way.
Our core support hours are 10am to 6pm (UK time), Monday to Friday. Messages left outside these hours will be picked up on the next working day.
Please note that on days when multiple clients ask for assistance all at once (for example with today’s Microsoft outage), we do not have the capacity to return phone calls; we’ll respond to you in writing when we can.
Why every request becomes a ticket
Support requests are delegated to different people at our end, and may involve multiple people. We also need a written paper trail and somewhere to record our activity. Our target response rates on support requests also vary depending on your support package. For all these reasons, requests need to be turned into tickets, even if made by phone.
Next steps
If you’re a Square Eye client, there are three things we can help with now:
- Share an alternative email address with us. Send it to [email protected] so we can reach you if your main email goes down. Please make sure it’s an address your organisation has approved.
- Ask us to set up a system for emergency alert messages on your website, if you don’t already have one. We can add a banner system to your website that you can switch on and update yourself, so it’s ready the next time you need it.
