If you have a shared web hosting plan and you set up an email address, you may take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this isn't always true. Sending e-mails is not necessarily part of the website hosting packages that providers have and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The abbreviation represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send e-mail messages. If you are using an e-mail application, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS data of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its email messages. After system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you work with some kind of contact page form as well, so in case you use a free of charge hosting package, as an example, it's probable that you will not be able to use such a form as many no charge web hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mails.
