What is a SMTP connection?

Question: What is a SMTP connection?

Answer: SMTP is an acronym for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is an Internet standard outlined by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to be used for sending email messages.

All internet providers nowadays use this protocol to send email. When using SMTP, there should be a client sending the messages and the server receiving them.

Your email program utilizes this protocol and acts as SMTP client to distribute email messages to recipients. In most cases you will configure and use any email client the same way you do with your regular email client like Microsoft Outlook.

You will specify the SMTP server that Internet provider gave you. When the SMTP Client sends email messages, it connects to the SMTP server you have specified and communicates to it using SMTP protocol.