When you have a shared website hosting account and you create an e-mail address, you may take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this isn't always the case. Sending e-mails isn't necessarily a part of the website hosting plans that service providers will offer you and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that permits you to send emails. If you use an e-mail app, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS records of the domain, that is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server deals with its e-mails. After some system data is exchanged, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the e-mail is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you use some sort of contact page form as well, so in case you work with a free hosting package, as an example, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to make use of this type of form since many free web hosting service providers don't allow outgoing email messages.