A Recipient object represents a person in your account's recipient directory. Recipients sign the documents in your envelopes; each envelope recipient references a Recipient through its recipientId, which stays the same for that person across envelopes.

Identity is the recipient id, not the email. The same email may map to several recipients in one account, each with its own name and metadata. This is useful for platforms where the same person interacts with several of your customers.

Recipients are being created in two ways. By creating an envelope with an email and name. Creating a recipient explicitly with theCreate Recipient endpoint always adds a new record, even when the email already exists.

This endpoint creates a recipient. Creation never deduplicates. The same email may map to several recipients, each with its own name and metadata, because identity is the recipient id.

To reuse an existing recipient, reference it by recipientId when creating an envelope instead of creating a new one.

The List Recipients endpoint returns every recipient stored in your account with the given email. The match is exact and case-insensitive.

The same email may map to several recipients, so the result is a list. Use it to find the recipientId of a person you have previously included in an envelope.

The Get Recipient endpoint returns a stored recipient.

The Update Recipient endpoint updates the display name or metadata of a recipient. Envelopes are not affected. They keep the recipient name they were created with, including envelopes that are still in progress.

The email cannot be changed after creation.