When you have a cloud hosting account and you create an email address, you might take the option to send and receive messages for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending e-mails isn't necessarily part of the website hosting plans that providers offer and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The abbreviation stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that permits you to send out emails. If you use an e-mail application, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS records of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server manages its e-mails. After system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is necessary if you are using some sort of contact page also, so in case you have a no charge hosting plan, for example, it is very likely that you will not have the ability to make use of such a form as most free of charge web hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.