When you have a shared hosting plan and you create an e-mail address, you might consider the option to send out and receive emails for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending emails is not always part of the website hosting packages that service providers feature and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The abbreviation stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the set of scripts that allows you to send out e-mails. If you work with an e-mail program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS records of the domain, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server handles its email messages. After system information is exchanged, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you use some sort of contact page as well, so in case you use a free of charge hosting plan, for example, it is likely that you won't be able to make use of this type of form as most cost-free website hosting service providers don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.