In case you have a shared hosting account and you create an e-mail address, you may take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, however, that isn't always true. Sending emails is not always a part of the hosting plans that service providers feature and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The acronym represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send out emails. If you use an e-mail 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 what email server deals with its email messages. After some system information 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 necessary if you work with some sort of contact page form also, so in case you use a free hosting plan, for instance, it is very likely that you will not have the ability to use such a form since many no charge hosting companies do not allow outgoing emails.