When you've got a website hosting plan and you set up an email address, you might consider the option to send out and receive messages for granted, however, that isn't always the case. Sending e-mail messages is not necessarily part of the web hosting plans that service providers feature and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The acronym signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send e-mails. If you use an email program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what mail server manages its emails. After system data is exchanged, your SMTP server provides the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you use some kind of contact page form too, so if you use a free hosting plan, for instance, it is likely that you will not have the ability to make use of this type of form as many free of charge website hosting service providers don't allow outgoing e-mails.