Microsoft to retire Azure Communication Services as a standalone service in 2028

Microsoft to retire Azure Communication Services as a standalone service in 2028

22 September 2026 — Microsoft will retire Azure Communication Services (ACS) as a standalone offering on 30 September 2028. ACS is the Azure platform developers use to add email, SMS, WhatsApp messaging, chat, voice and video calling to their own applications. A retirement guide on Microsoft Learn says the change was announced in September 2026; its first public appearance in Microsoft's documentation repository is dated 22 September, although the page's own metadata carries an earlier August date. Microsoft says it will focus on communications built into Teams, Dynamics 365 and Azure, and on partner providers for the rest.

What changes

From 23 October 2026, new customers cannot sign up for the services being retired. Existing customers can keep using them until the end of September 2028, during which they are in maintenance mode: security and stability fixes, no new features.

Retired outright are ACS Email, SMS, WhatsApp messaging, Chat, Rooms, phone number management (Direct Offer), Direct Routing, Job Router and the UI Library SDKs. After 30 September 2028 they stop working.

A second group stays but changes: the voice and video calling SDK, Call Automation, call recording, audio streaming, call diagnostics and closed captions. After the retirement date Microsoft supports them only alongside a Teams-aligned service, such as Teams Phone Extensibility or Teams meeting interoperability. Standalone calling apps that do not connect to Teams lose support, and the updated SDKs carry a new major version.

Phone numbers are restricted too. A tenant that creates its first ACS resource after the announcement cannot acquire numbers; existing holders can still add them and can port them out through a support request.

Who is affected

Any business that sends transactional email, texts, one-time passcodes or WhatsApp messages through ACS, or runs in-app chat or calling on it. Many software suppliers build ACS into their own products, so their customers can be affected without knowing it.

What to do

• Ask your software suppliers and development partners whether they use ACS, and for which features.
• Start no new project on ACS.
• Price the alternatives. For email, Microsoft points to Microsoft 365 High Volume Email, which sends only inside your own organisation, and Exchange Online; for messaging and calling, to Teams licences, Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Marketplace partners. Microsoft says there is no like-for-like standalone service for call recording or audio streaming.
• Plan the export of chat history and recordings: supporting data is decommissioned after retirement, and built-in recording storage keeps files for 24 hours.
• Put number porting and sender re-verification into the timeline.

Not yet independently verified. This rests on Microsoft’s own documentation. The announcement date is given only as “September 2026”; 22 September is the date the retirement guide first appeared in Microsoft’s public documentation repository, while the page’s metadata says 18 August. No independent report of it was found, so every date here comes from the vendor's own page and is only as reliable as that page. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Sources

• Microsoft Learn: Retirement and breaking changes guide for Azure Communication Services (updated 23 September 2026) — 22 September 2026
• Microsoft Learn: What's new in Azure Communication Services, September 2026 entry — 23 September 2026
• MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs: the commit that first published the retirement guide — 22 September 2026