Email Outage Plan for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
Answer a few questions and get a step-by-step plan for the next email outage: what to do in the first 15 minutes, how to keep mail moving, how to recover, and which gaps to fix first. It runs in your browser, and your answers are not sent to us.
What a good email outage plan covers
Outages of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are rare, but when they happen, every business on the platform is hit at once. The plan above is built from the same steps we use with clients:
- One person in charge, with a backup channel to reach staff that does not depend on company email.
- Incoming mail protected by a gateway you control, so nothing is lost or bounced while the provider is down.
- An emergency inbox so staff can keep reading and answering mail, with a login that does not depend on the failed service.
- A safe sending route already in your SPF and DKIM records, so emergency replies are not marked as spam.
- A clean recovery, syncing mail from the outage back to the normal mailboxes.
- A drill, because a fallback nobody has tested usually fails on the day.
For the full design, read how to keep email working during a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace outage, and see how the commercial services compare in Mimecast vs Proofpoint vs Barracuda email continuity.
Frequently asked questions
What should an email outage plan include?
Who leads the response, how you check what is broken, how you reach staff without company email, how incoming mail is protected, how urgent replies go out, how staff see past email, and how mail is synced back afterwards. It should also list the gaps you plan to fix before the next outage.
What should we do in the first 15 minutes of an email outage?
Name an incident lead, confirm what is broken with the official status page and your own test messages, and send staff a first update on a channel that does not depend on company email, such as SMS, a WhatsApp group or a phone tree. Say when the next update will come.
Can we keep receiving email when Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is down?
Only if something you control sits in front of your mailboxes. A gateway that your MX record points to can hold incoming mail, and an emergency mail server behind it lets staff read and answer mail during the outage. Without one, incoming mail waits on senders' servers until the service returns.
What is an email continuity drill?
An email continuity drill is a planned test of your outage plan, run while email is working normally. You act as if Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is down and check that the fallback really works: incoming mail is held or copied by the gateway, a small group of staff can log in to the emergency inbox without Microsoft or Google sign-in, replies sent from it pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC and reach an outside mailbox, staff get updates on the backup channel, and mail syncs back to the normal mailboxes afterwards. Run a drill at least twice a year and after any change to your MX records or gateway, and fix whatever fails before the next real outage.
Is my information sent anywhere when I use this planner?
Your answers are not sent anywhere. The planner runs in your browser, saves your answers only on this device so you can come back to them, and you can clear them at any time.
Want email that keeps working through the next outage?
We design and build email continuity for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace: gateways, an emergency mail server, a safe sending route and sync-back, on servers you own.
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