When you have a cloud hosting account and you create an email address, you may consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, that isn't always true. Sending e-mails is not necessarily a part of the web hosting plans that service providers have and an SMTP service is necessary to be able to do that. The abbreviation stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send out email messages. If you are using an e-mail app, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what mail server handles its emails. After some system information is exchanged, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you work with some sort of contact page also, so if you use a no charge hosting package, as an example, it's probable that you will not have the ability to make use of such a form since many free of charge web hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.
