When you've got a website hosting account and you create an email address, you may consider the option to send out and receive emails for granted, however, that isn't always true. Sending email messages is not always part of the hosting packages that companies offer and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The acronym stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that enables you to send out email messages. If you use an e-mail app, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS records of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server handles its emails. After system information is interchanged, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you are using some kind of contact form too, so if you work with a no charge hosting package, for example, it is likely that you won't have the ability to make use of such a form as many cost-free web hosting service providers do not allow outgoing email messages.
