In case you have a cloud website hosting package and you create an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending e-mails is not always part of the hosting packages that companies have and an SMTP service is needed to be able to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send out e-mail messages. If you use an email program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS records of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server handles its email messages. After system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you work with some sort of contact page too, so if you use a free of charge hosting plan, for instance, it is very likely that you will not be able to use this type of form as many cost-free hosting service providers do not allow outgoing e-mail messages.