When you have a shared website hosting account and you create an email address, you may take the option to send out and receive emails for granted, however, this is not always true. Sending email messages is not necessarily a part of the website hosting plans that companies will offer you and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send emails. If you use an e-mail app, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server manages its emails. After system data is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you work with some sort of contact page form too, so in case you work with a free of charge hosting plan, for instance, it is very likely that you won't be able to make use of this type of form as many free of charge website hosting companies do not allow outgoing e-mail messages.