You don’t need to get into the weeds of SMTP to start sending emails. If not, the server uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to identify the recipient’s domain and then send it to the right server.If they are, it sends the email right away.The Mail Transfer Agent or Message Transfer Agent (MTA) checks to see if both email addresses are from the same email domain, such as : (The SMTP connection is built on something called a TCP connection, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol.)įrom there, the SMTP client uses commands to tell the server what to do and transfer data, like the sender’s email address, the recipient’s email address, and the email’s content. When the user hits “send” on an email message, the email client opens an SMTP connection to the server so it can send. Once an SMTP server is established, email clients can connect to and communicate with it. Still, we’ll do our best to condense this protocol down into easy-to-digest chunks. Fair warning: This is where things start to get technical. The best way to explain how SMTP works is to go over the sending process, the individual rules and commands that power it, and the errors you may encounter. You might have also come across the term SMTP port. Those are the communication endpoints that handle the transfer of email data over SMTP as it moves through a network, from one server to another.
The same happens with SMTP servers-though instead of taking days, the process takes a few minutes at most. When you send a letter from city A to city B, it first reaches a local post office in city A here, it gets processed and sent on the post office in city B, which is in charge of delivering it to its final destination.
You can think of servers as your real-life post offices. Specifically, an SMTP server handles the sending, receiving, and relaying of email. Like all servers, an SMTP server is an application that provides a service to other applications within a network, called clients. Most email clients-including Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail-rely on SMTP to “push” or send messages from a sender to a recipient. It is also the only dedicated protocol for sending emails. SMTP, which stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is an email protocol used for sending email messages from one email account to another via the internet.Įmail protocols are sets of rules that let different email clients and accounts easily exchange information, and SMTP is one of the most common ones alongside POP and IMAP. using a third-party email service: What’s best? How is SMTP different from other protocols (POP and IMAP)?.At the center of it all is an email protocol known as SMTP that’s critical for sending emails… and you’re about to learn everything you need to know about it. There’s a complex process going on behind the scenes to get your emails where they need to be. It’s one of the most common communication methods for businesses and individuals alike, but have you ever stopped and wondered what goes on after you click “send”? How does your message go from you to your recipients? It is probably one of the most capable email programs you can find and an excellent alternative to Outlook Express (can import Outlook messages).We send emails to one another all the time-a whopping 306.4 billion emails are sent and received every day. The Express Send feature enables you to send mail directly to the recipient, using the built-in SMTP server, thereby bypassing your ISP.įoxmail includes many other features, including a remote mail viewer to manage mail on the server, as well as a small scroll ticker that displays message subjects as they arrive in your inbox.
The program also offers filter options, allowing you to act upon incoming mail that meets certain criteria - you can delete messages, forward them, auto-respond to them and more based on keywords appearing in the subject, address, text, etc.
FOXMAIL SMTP FREE
Foxmail is a free lightweight email application that offers you many useful features and a user-friendly interface and supports POP3 accounts, as well as Hotmail accounts, with support for HTML email, mailbox encryption, multiple accounts and more.įoxmail also comes with a WYSIWYG tool to compose nice-looking HTML emails from templates or scratch.