When you have a web hosting plan and you set up an email address, you might take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending email messages isn't necessarily a part of the web hosting packages that providers have and an SMTP service is necessary to be capable to do that. The acronym signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that allows you to send e-mails. If you work with an email application, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS records of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server manages its e-mails. After system information is exchanged, your SMTP server provides the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you use some sort of contact page too, so if you work with a free of charge hosting package, as an example, it's probable that you won't have the ability to use this type of form as many no charge web hosting service providers don't allow outgoing emails.