Current evidence
Treat the retirement timeline as urgent—but keep the wording precise
A German technology publication reported on 7 August 2026 that Teams Live Chat would be retired by mid-October. Microsoft's public setup documentation still described the service on 10 August, while archived Message Center notices show its recent Customer Connect rename and appointment-booking rollout.
Check your own Microsoft 365 Message Center, inventory every deployed widget and prepare a staged replacement rather than relying on one public article alone.
Selection first
A Teams app, a separate live-chat inbox and a contact centre are not the same thing
- Teams-first tools keep the agent conversation in Microsoft Teams.
- General live-chat platforms provide their own inbox and may only notify or embed inside Teams.
- Contact-centre products add voice, complex queues and enterprise reporting at a different level of cost and complexity.
Partner product, transparently labelled
Why WebChat belongs on a Teams-first shortlist
The vendor describes website and social-messaging requests being routed into the appropriate Teams channel, with replies sent from the channel thread. Licensing is described per channel with unlimited users per channel.
That model is relevant when Microsoft Teams must remain the working surface. It is not automatically best for teams that need Slack and Google Chat too, a full contact centre, or a self-hosted stack.