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SMTP stands for "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", and it is the standard mechanism for delivering e-mail across the Internet. Unless your organization uses Microsoft Exchange, your e-mail program probably uses SMTP. Even if you do use Exchange, when it sends e-mails to systems outside your organization, it likely uses SMTP. This makes SMTP widely supported and nearly ubiquitous.
MAPI stands for "Messaging Application Programming Interface", and it's the primary tool for automating Microsoft Outlook.
How do you choose between the two? If you don't use both Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express, and not Microsoft Mail), the choice is made for you: SMTP. If you do use both Exchange and Outlook, then there are trade-offs to consider.
SMTP |
MAPI |
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Pro |
Con |
Pro |
Con |
Easy to diagnose if there are problems by using a protocol analyzer. |
Most Exchange installations don't support SMTP out of the box. |
Send messages appear in your Outbox. |
"From" and "Reply-to" addresses cannot be set on a letter-by-letter basis: all appear to come from the Outlook account used to send the messages. |
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Harder to diagnose problems. |