If you have a website hosting package and you set up an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive messages for granted, however, that isn't always the case. Sending e-mail messages isn't always part of the web hosting plans that service providers will offer you and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The abbreviation signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that allows you to send email messages. If you work with an email app, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS records of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server handles its emails. After system data is interchanged, your SMTP server provides the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the matching 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 package, for instance, it is very likely that you won't be able to make use of such a form as many free of charge web hosting companies do not allow outgoing email messages.