When you have a cloud website hosting package and you create an email address, you may consider the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, this isn't always the case. Sending emails is not necessarily part of the web hosting plans that providers feature and an SMTP service is required to be capable to do that. The acronym represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the software application that enables you to send out e-mails. If you are using an e-mail program, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then queries the DNS data of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what mail server handles its e-mails. After system information is swapped, your SMTP server delivers the e-mail to the remote IMAP or POP server and then the email is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some sort of contact page form as well, so if you use a cost-free hosting plan, as an example, it is likely that you will not be able to use such a form as most cost-free hosting service providers don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.