SMTP

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is the basic set of rules email servers use to send messages across the internet. When you click send, your email tool talks to an SMTP server, which passes the message along to the recipient's mail server. Without SMTP, your campaigns would never leave your platform.

For email marketers, SMTP is what turns a finished campaign into real emails in inboxes. It affects how fast messages go out, how errors show up, and how bounces are reported. Most email platforms manage the server side for you, but all of that activity still runs on SMTP behind the scenes. Knowing this helps you have clearer conversations with deliverability or engineering teams.

If you ever need to plug your email tool into a custom system, you will probably work with SMTP settings. These include the server address, port, login details, and security method. Get those wrong and messages will fail or get blocked. Get them right and your emails send smoothly from the first test.