If you have a website hosting plan and you create an e-mail address, you may consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, this is not always the case. Sending email messages isn't always included in the hosting packages that service providers will offer you and an SMTP service is required to be able to do that. The acronym stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out email messages. If you use 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 email server deals with its email messages. After some system information is interchanged, your SMTP server delivers the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you are using some kind of contact page as well, so if you work with a cost-free hosting package, as an example, it is likely that you won't be able to use this type of form as many free of charge hosting service providers do not allow outgoing email messages.