If you have a shared web hosting plan and you create an email address, you may take the option to send and receive messages for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending e-mail messages is not always a part of the website hosting plans that service providers feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be capable to do that. The acronym signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out e-mails. If you use an email application, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS data of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server handles its e-mails. After system information is swapped, your SMTP server provides the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you use some sort of contact page form also, so in case you use a free hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you will not have the ability to make use of such a form as many free of charge website hosting service providers do not allow outgoing e-mails.