When you have a cloud website hosting package and you set up an e-mail address, you might consider the option to send and receive messages for granted, but in fact, this isn't always the case. Sending e-mail messages is not necessarily a part of the website hosting plans that service providers feature and an SMTP service is needed to be capable to do that. The acronym represents Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and this is the piece of software that enables you to send out e-mails. If you use an e-mail program, it connects to the SMTP server. The latter then looks up the DNS data of the domain name, that is a part of the receiving address to find out what email server manages its e-mails. After some system data is swapped, your SMTP server provides the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the related mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you are using some sort of contact page form also, so if you use a no charge hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you won't have the ability to use this type of form as most cost-free web hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mails.