When you have a hosting account and you create an e-mail address, you might take the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, that isn't always true. Sending e-mail messages is not always a part of the web hosting packages that providers feature and an SMTP service is needed to be able to do that. The abbreviation represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send out e-mails. If you are using an e-mail program, 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 what email server handles its emails. After some system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the e-mail is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some sort of contact page form too, so in case you work with a no charge hosting plan, for example, it is very likely that you won't be able to make use of such a form since many no charge web hosting service providers do not allow outgoing email messages.