If you have a web hosting account and you create an e-mail address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, however, that isn't always true. Sending e-mails isn't always part of the website hosting plans that companies have and an SMTP service is necessary to be able to do that. The abbreviation represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the set of scripts that permits 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, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server handles its emails. After some system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some kind of contact page form too, so in case you work with a free hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you won't be able to use this type of form as many free of charge hosting service providers do not allow outgoing e-mails.