When you've got a cloud web hosting plan and you set up an e-mail address, you may consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, that isn't always true. Sending e-mail messages is not necessarily a part of the web hosting plans that service providers have and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The acronym means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the software application that permits you to send email messages. If you work with an e-mail program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS data of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server handles its emails. After some system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides 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 required if you use some kind of contact page as well, so in case you work with a free hosting package, for example, it's probable that you won't be able to make use of this type of form as many cost-free website hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.