# Audiences

> Audiences are the lists your campaigns send to. Create audiences, manage subscribers, check your plan's subscriber limit and use audiences through the API.

An audience is a named list of contacts, such as "Newsletter" or "Product updates". You choose one or more audiences as the recipients of a [campaign](/docs/campaigns/), and you can add people to an audience by hand, from an import, through the API or with a hosted sign-up URL.

## How audiences work

Each person on an audience is a **subscriber**: a link between one [contact](/docs/contacts/) and the audience, with its own **Subscribed** flag. The same contact can be on several audiences and be subscribed to some and unsubscribed from others.

- **Campaigns** send to subscribers whose **Subscribed** flag is on, whose contact isn't globally unsubscribed and whose address isn't suppressed. A contact on several selected audiences gets one copy.
- **Unsubscribing** turns the flag off but keeps the subscriber on the list, so you keep the history. See [Unsubscribes](/docs/audiences/unsubscribes/).
- **Deleting a subscriber** removes the person from the list. The contact stays in your workspace.

## The Audiences list

Go to **Email Marketing → Audiences** to see your audiences with their **Name**, **Subscribers** and **Created** date. The **Subscribers** column shows how many subscribers each audience has against your plan's limit, for example `1.2k/10k`. Use the row menu to **Manage subscribers**, **Rename** or **Delete** an audience.

To create one, select **Create audience**, enter a **Name** and select **Create**. Names must be unique in the workspace.

## The audience page

Open an audience to manage its subscribers. The header shows the subscriber count and the limit badge, with these actions:

| Action | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Rename** | Changes the audience name. |
| **Subscribe URL** | Shows the hosted sign-up URL for this audience and lets you reset it. See [Subscribe URL](/docs/audiences/subscribe-url/). |
| **Add subscriber** | Adds a person by email address. Replaced by **Upgrade** when a Pay as you go audience is full. |
| **Delete** (in the menu) | Deletes the audience and all of its subscribers. The contacts stay in your workspace. This can't be undone. |

Below it, the subscribers table lists **Email**, **First name**, **Last name**, **Subscribed** and **Created**, with search, filters and a row menu to **Edit** or **Delete** each subscriber. See [Manage subscribers](/docs/audiences/subscribers/).

## Limits

Each plan limits how many subscribers one audience can hold. The number of audiences isn't limited.

| | Pay as you go | Pro | Business | Custom |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Subscribers per audience | 10,000 | 50,000 | 250,000 | Unlimited |

The limit counts every subscriber on the audience, including people who unsubscribed. To make room, delete subscribers you no longer need, [upgrade your plan](/docs/billing/plans/) or request a higher limit with **Request Increase** on the **Sending Limits** card of the dashboard home page.

When an audience is full, **Add subscriber** is disabled and every way of adding people, including the API, imports and the subscribe URL, is rejected with `422` and a message such as "Pro includes 50,000 subscribers per audience.". The API error includes the current `usage`:

```json
{
  "error": "Pro includes 50,000 subscribers per audience.",
  "usage": { "used": 50000, "limit": 50000, "plan": "pro" }
}
```

## Use the API

The [Audiences API](/docs/api-reference/audiences/) lets you [create](/docs/api-reference/audiences/create/), [retrieve](/docs/api-reference/audiences/get/), [rename](/docs/api-reference/audiences/update/), [list](/docs/api-reference/audiences/list/) and [delete](/docs/api-reference/audiences/delete/) audiences, and the [Subscribers API](/docs/api-reference/audiences/subscribers/) manages the people on them. You can use an audience's name instead of its `aud_` ID in the URL. The API needs an API key with **Full Access**.

```bash
curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/audiences \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "name": "Newsletter" }'
```

Audience responses include `subscribers_count` and a `usage` object with `used`, `limit` and `plan`. Creating, retrieving and updating an audience also returns its `token`, the secret part of its [subscribe URL](/docs/audiences/subscribe-url/). A duplicate name returns `409`.

## Events

Audience and subscriber changes produce events that you can receive with [webhooks](/docs/webhooks/) and that start [automations](/docs/automations/):

| Event | When |
| --- | --- |
| [`audience.created`, `audience.updated`, `audience.deleted`](/docs/webhooks/events/audience/) | An audience is created, renamed or deleted. Deleting an audience doesn't send an event for each of its subscribers. |
| [`subscriber.created`](/docs/webhooks/events/subscriber/) | Someone is added to an audience from the dashboard or the API. Starts **Added to audience** automations. |
| [`subscriber.updated`](/docs/webhooks/events/subscriber/) | A subscriber's details or **Subscribed** flag change. |
| [`subscriber.deleted`](/docs/webhooks/events/subscriber/) | A subscriber is removed. Starts **Removed from audience** automations. |

Imports and the subscribe URL don't send subscriber events.

## Next steps

  - [Manage subscribers](/docs/audiences/subscribers/): Add, edit, unsubscribe and remove people.
  - [Subscribe URL](/docs/audiences/subscribe-url/): Collect sign-ups from your own site.
  - [Unsubscribes](/docs/audiences/unsubscribes/): How opt-outs work across audiences.
  - [Send a campaign](/docs/campaigns/create/): Email the subscribers of your audiences.

---
Source: https://emailit.com/docs/audiences/