When you have a cloud hosting package and you set up an email address, you might take the option to send out and receive emails for granted, but in fact, that isn't always the case. Sending email messages isn't necessarily included in the hosting packages that providers feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be capable to do that. The acronym signifies Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that allows you to send out e-mails. If you work with an e-mail application, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS records of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what mail server manages its e-mails. After some system data is interchanged, your SMTP server provides the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you are using some kind of contact page also, so in case you use a cost-free hosting package, for example, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to make use of this type of form as many free website hosting companies do not allow outgoing e-mails.
