When you've got a cloud hosting account and you set up an email address, you may take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, however, this is not always true. Sending e-mails is not necessarily a part of the hosting plans that companies have and an SMTP service is needed to be able to do that. The abbreviation signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out email messages. If you are using an email app, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS data of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its emails. After system data is interchanged, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the e-mail is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you work with some sort of contact page also, so if you use a cost-free hosting package, for example, it is likely that you won't have the ability to use such a form as most free of charge web hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mails.