If you have a cloud website hosting account and you set up an e-mail address, you might consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, this isn't always the case. Sending email messages is not always a part of the web hosting packages that service providers feature and an SMTP service is needed to be able to do that. The abbreviation means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the set of scripts that enables you to send out emails. If you are using an email program, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS records of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its emails. After system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you use some kind of contact page form as well, so in case you have a cost-free hosting package, as an example, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to make use of such a form as most cost-free website hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mails.