In case you have a cloud web hosting plan and you create an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, this is not always true. Sending e-mail messages is not always included in the web hosting packages that service providers will offer you and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The acronym means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that allows you to send e-mails. If you work with an e-mail application, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what mail server deals with its email messages. After system data is interchanged, your SMTP server delivers the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you use some sort of contact page too, so in case you work with a free of charge hosting plan, for example, it is likely that you will not be able to use this type of form as most free of charge hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mails.