If you have a shared hosting plan and you set up an e-mail address, you might take the option to send out and receive messages for granted, but in fact, that isn't always true. Sending e-mails isn't necessarily included in the web hosting packages that service providers feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be able to do that. The abbreviation represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the set of scripts that allows you to send out e-mail messages. If you are using an email program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS data of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server deals with its emails. After some system information is interchanged, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you work with some sort of contact page form also, so in case you have a cost-free hosting plan, as an example, it is very likely that you will not be able to make use of such a form as most no charge web hosting companies do not allow outgoing emails.