What is Email Autodiscovery?

When someone joins your team and needs to set up their work email on their laptop, the traditional process looks like this: call IT, get a list of server settings, enter them manually into Outlook or Apple Mail, get an SSL error, call IT again.

Email autodiscovery eliminates this. Enter your email address and password — and the client configures itself.

How autodiscovery works

Email clients that support autodiscovery look up your domain's DNS records when you enter an email address. Based on the DNS records they find, they automatically configure:

• The incoming mail server (IMAP) and port
• The outgoing mail server (SMTP) and port
• Whether to use SSL/TLS or STARTTLS
• The authentication method

There are two main protocols:

RFC 6186 (SRV records — Thunderbird, Apple Mail, most IMAP clients)

Your DNS registrar needs these SRV records:

_imaps._tcp.yourdomain.com  IN SRV  0 1 993 imap.yourdomain.com
_submission._tcp.yourdomain.com  IN SRV  0 1 587 smtp.yourdomain.com
_submissions._tcp.yourdomain.com  IN SRV  0 1 465 smtp.yourdomain.com

When Thunderbird or Apple Mail sees yourname@yourdomain.com, it looks up _imaps._tcp.yourdomain.com and finds the IMAP server automatically.

Autodiscover (Outlook)

Outlook uses Microsoft's Autodiscover protocol. It looks for an XML file at:

https://autodiscover.yourdomain.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

Or it checks:

https://yourdomain.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

The XML file describes your mail server settings. Your web server (or the Kerabie Mail backend) serves this file automatically.

Mozilla Autoconfig (Firefox/Thunderbird)

Thunderbird also checks:

https://autoconfig.yourdomain.com/mail/config-v1.1.xml

This XML file provides IMAP and SMTP configuration in Mozilla's format.

Why it matters for your business

For IT teams: Onboarding a new employee takes 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes. No support tickets about server settings.

For small businesses without IT: Anyone can set up their email on any device without instructions.

For multi-device users: Every time you add your email to a new device, it just works.

Kerabie Mail's autodiscovery implementation

Kerabie Mail provides full autodiscovery support for all Kerabie-hosted domains:

• RFC 6186 SRV records — pre-configured for imap.kerabie.email:993 and smtp.kerabie.email:587
• Autodiscover XML — served at autodiscover.kerabie.email for Outlook
• Mozilla autoconfig — served at autoconfig.kerabie.email for Thunderbird

For custom domains on Kerabie Mail, autodiscovery works automatically once you've added your domain's DNS records. No additional setup needed.

Setting up autodiscovery for your custom domain

If you're hosting email yourself (not on Kerabie Mail), here's what you need:

Step 1 — Add SRV records to DNS

At your registrar, add:

The _imap._tcp record pointing to . (a period) tells clients that unencrypted IMAP is disabled — forcing IMAPS.

Step 2 — Serve the Autodiscover XML

Create or configure your web server to serve an Autodiscover XML at: /autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Autodiscover xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/responseschema/2006">
  <Response>
    <Account>
      <AccountType>email</AccountType>
      <Action>settings</Action>
      <Protocol>
        <Type>IMAP</Type>
        <Server>imap.yourdomain.com</Server>
        <Port>993</Port>
        <LoginName>%EMAILADDRESS%</LoginName>
        <DomainRequired>off</DomainRequired>
        <SPA>off</SPA>
        <SSL>on</SSL>
        <AuthRequired>on</AuthRequired>
      </Protocol>
      <Protocol>
        <Type>SMTP</Type>
        <Server>smtp.yourdomain.com</Server>
        <Port>587</Port>
        <LoginName>%EMAILADDRESS%</LoginName>
        <DomainRequired>off</DomainRequired>
        <SPA>off</SPA>
        <Encryption>TLS</Encryption>
        <AuthRequired>on</AuthRequired>
        <UsePOPAuth>off</UsePOPAuth>
        <SMTPLast>off</SMTPLast>
      </Protocol>
    </Account>
  </Response>
</Autodiscover>

Step 3 — Test it

Use testconnectivity.microsoft.com to verify Autodiscover is working.

For SRV records, use dig _imaps._tcp.yourdomain.com SRV from a terminal.

Summary

Email autodiscovery is a simple but powerful feature that eliminates manual configuration. If you're running email for a team or business, setting up SRV records and an Autodiscover endpoint is worth the 20 minutes it takes.

If you're on Kerabie Mail, autodiscovery is already set up for you — for both @kerabie.email addresses and custom domains.