In case you have a website hosting plan and you set up an e-mail address, you might consider the option to send out and receive emails for granted, but in fact, that isn't always the case. Sending email messages is not necessarily a part of the website hosting packages that providers have and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the set of scripts that enables you to send out e-mail messages. If you are using an email 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 mail server deals with its email messages. After some system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you use some sort of contact page form also, so in case you work with a cost-free hosting plan, as an example, it is likely that you won't be able to make use of such a form as many cost-free web hosting service providers do not allow outgoing emails.