In case you have a cloud website hosting package and you set up an email address, you might take the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, this is not always true. Sending email messages isn't necessarily included in the hosting packages that companies feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be capable to do that. The abbreviation represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out e-mails. If you are using an e-mail program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server deals with its email messages. After system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you work with some sort of contact page form as well, so in case you use a free hosting package, as an example, it's probable that you will not have the ability to make use of this type of form since many free of charge web hosting providers don't allow outgoing emails.