If you have a cloud web hosting package and you create an email address, you may take the option to send and receive emails for granted, but in fact, this is not always the case. Sending email messages is not always a part of the hosting packages that providers feature and an SMTP service is necessary to be able to do that. The acronym means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and that is the piece of software that permits you to send out e-mail messages. If you work with an email application, it creates a connection to the SMTP server. The latter then searches the DNS records of the domain name, which is a part of the receiving address to find out which email server handles its e-mails. After some system data is interchanged, your SMTP server provides the email to the remote IMAP or POP server and the e-mail is finally delivered in the corresponding mailbox. An SMTP server is needed if you work with some kind of contact page form as well, so in case you work with a no charge hosting package, for instance, it is very likely that you won't be able to make use of such a form as many free web hosting companies don't allow outgoing e-mail messages.