When you have a shared hosting package and you set up an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, this is not always the case. Sending email messages isn't always a part of the hosting plans that companies have and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The acronym means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that permits you to send e-mails. If you work with an email program, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS data of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which mail server manages its e-mails. After some system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is required if you work with some sort of contact page too, so if you use a no charge hosting plan, as an example, it is likely that you won't have the ability to make use of such a form since many free of charge website hosting companies don't allow outgoing emails.