When you have a cloud hosting plan and you create an e-mail address, you may consider the option to send and receive messages for granted, however, this isn't always true. Sending e-mails is not necessarily included in the hosting packages that companies feature and an SMTP service is needed to be able to do that. The abbreviation stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the set of scripts that permits you to send out email messages. If you are using an email app, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then requests the DNS records of the domain, which is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server manages its e-mails. After some system information is exchanged, your SMTP server delivers the message to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some kind of contact form too, so in case you use a free of charge hosting plan, for example, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to use this type of form since many no charge web hosting providers don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.