When you've got a web hosting account and you set up an e-mail address, you may consider the option to send out and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this isn't always true. Sending email messages isn't always a part of the website hosting packages that service providers have and an SMTP service is necessary to be able to do that. The acronym represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that permits you to send email messages. If you use an e-mail program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS records of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its email messages. After some system data is exchanged, your SMTP server provides the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you are using some kind of contact page too, so if you work with a no charge hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you will not be able to use such a form as many no charge website hosting companies don't allow outgoing emails.