When you've got a cloud website hosting account and you set up an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this isn't always the case. Sending email messages is not always included in the web hosting plans that service providers feature and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The acronym means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out e-mails. If you use an email app, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS records of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server deals with its e-mails. After some system data is exchanged, your SMTP server delivers the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the matching mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some kind of contact form too, so if you use a cost-free hosting plan, for example, it's probable that you won't be able to make use of such a form as many free of charge website hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.