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SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a server-to-server protocol that sends emails between email servers. It doesn't retrieve emails from a server. There are a few considerations to keep in mind with SMTP. It only supports text, not attachments such as PDFs or Word documents. SMTP also only supports negative delivery notifications (when an email is not delivered to a recipient), not positive delivery notifications (when an email is delivered). Because of this, SMTP doesn't comply with electronic data interchange (EDI), the standard for exchanging information over the internet.

What Small and Midsize Businesses Need to Know About SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

Despite these limitations, SMBs might use SMTP because it provides the technology required to send large volumes of text-based emails at once, a helpful application for actions such as sending marketing emails.

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