When you've got a web hosting plan and you set up an email address, you may consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, that isn't always the case. Sending e-mails is not always included in the website hosting plans that providers feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be capable to do that. The abbreviation stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send e-mail messages. If you work with an email application, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS data of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its email messages. After some system data is interchanged, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some sort of contact page too, so if you use a free of charge hosting package, for instance, it's probable that you will not be able to make use of this type of form since many free of charge hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.