Subscribers vs contacts

These two words sound similar but mean different things in rasa.io. Knowing the difference helps you understand who's on your lists, who you're emailing, and what your reports are measuring.

The short version

• Contact — anyone in your contact database
• Subscriber — a contact who's opted in to receive at least one of your subscription types

Every subscriber is a contact. Not every contact is a subscriber.

What's a contact?

A contact is any person in your rasa.io account. Contacts have:

• An email address
• A name (usually)
• A status (active, bounced, unsubscribed, etc.)
• Engagement history (opens, clicks)
• List memberships
• Subscription preferences

Contacts come from imports, sign-up forms, integration syncs, or manual entry.

What's a subscriber?

A subscriber is a contact who's actively opted in to one or more of your subscription types. They've said: "Yes, I want to receive [this type of email] from you."

A contact might be:

• A subscriber — they receive your newsletter
• Not a subscriber — they're in your database but haven't opted in to anything
• A former subscriber — they unsubscribed

Why this matters

A few practical implications:

Counting your audience:

When you see "I have 10,000 contacts" — that's everyone in the database. When you see "I have 8,500 subscribers" — that's only people opted in. Your sends go to subscribers, not all contacts.

Billing:

Your rasa.io plan tier is based on contact count, not subscriber count. If you have 5,000 contacts but only 4,000 subscribers, you're billed at the 5,000 tier.

Adding people without sending to them:

You can have someone in your database (as a contact) without sending them email. This is useful for:

• People you might send to in the future
• People who unsubscribed but you want to keep their record
• Reference data tied to email addresses

Subscription type behavior

Each subscription type has a behavior setting — either opt-in or opt-out based:

• Opt-out — contacts on the right list receive the email unless they specifically opt out. Default for newsletters.
• Opt-in — contacts only receive the email if they've specifically opted in. Used for promotional or secondary email types.

You set this in Newsletter → Audience tab → Subscription Type dropdown (e.g., "Opt-out — send unless subscriber has opted out").

How contacts become subscribers

Several ways:

• They sign up via a sign-up form
• They're imported with a subscription assignment
• An integration syncs them with a subscription
• You manually add them and assign them to a subscription type

How subscribers become unsubscribed

• They click the unsubscribe link in an email
• They mark you as spam (which auto-unsubscribes them)
• You manually unsubscribe them
• An integration syncs an unsubscribe from a connected system

What you can see for any contact

Click any contact in Contacts → All Contacts to see their detail panel:

• Engagement stats (opens, clicks, average articles)
• List memberships
• Subscription history
• Recent activity (last open, last click, when they subscribed)

What's next

• Importing contacts — adding contacts to your account
• Subscriber permission and consent — legal requirements
• Subscription types — setting up subscription categories