In case you have a shared hosting plan and you create an email address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, that isn't always the case. Sending e-mails is not always a part of the hosting plans that service providers offer and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that enables you to send out email messages. If you work with an e-mail program, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS data of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server handles its emails. After some system data is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you are using some sort of contact page too, so if you work with a no charge hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to make use of this type of form as most no charge hosting providers do not allow outgoing e-mail messages.