What Is SMTP ? How it Works !

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP is used when email is delivered from an email client, such as Outlook Express, to an email server or when email is delivered from one email server to another. SMTP uses port 25.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (email) transmission. First defined by RFC 821 in 1982, it was last updated in 2008 with Extended SMTP additions by RFC 5321, which is the protocol in widespread use today.

Although electronic mail servers and other mail transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages, user-level client mail applications typically use SMTP only for sending messages to a mail server for relaying. For retrieving messages, client applications usually use either IMAP or POP3.

SMTP communication between mail servers uses TCP port 25. Mail clients on the other hand, often submit the outgoing emails to a mail server on port 587. Despite being deprecated, mail providers sometimes still permit the use of nonstandard port 465 for this purpose.

SMTP connections secured by TLS, known as SMTPS, can be made using STARTTLS.[1]