In case you have a shared web hosting plan and you create an e-mail address, you might consider the option to send and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this is not always the case. Sending emails is not necessarily included in the website hosting packages that companies offer and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the set of scripts that permits you to send email messages. If you work with an email program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS records of the domain, that is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server deals with its e-mails. After system data is exchanged, your SMTP server delivers the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you work with some sort of contact page also, so in case you work with a no charge hosting plan, as an example, it's probable that you won't be able to use such a form as most no charge website hosting providers don't allow outgoing emails.