# Email recipient: To, Cc and Bcc

> An email recipient is a person or address that receives an email, listed in To, Cc or Bcc. How each field works and how recipients differ from contacts.

Canonical: https://www.cresca.xyz/glossary/email-recipient

An email recipient is the person or address that receives an email. Recipients are listed in the To, Cc or Bcc field. The sender is the one who sends the email, and the recipient is the one who receives it.

## To, Cc and Bcc recipients

- To: the main recipients, the people the email is written for and who are expected to act on it.
- Cc (carbon copy): recipients who are kept informed. Everyone can see who is in Cc.
- Bcc (blind carbon copy): recipients who get a copy without the others seeing their address.

## Email recipient vs contact vs subscriber

A recipient belongs to one email: it is whoever that message was addressed to. A contact is a person stored in your list, whether or not you have emailed them. A subscriber is a contact who has agreed to receive your marketing email.

The difference matters for consent. You can send a receipt to a recipient who is not a subscriber, because it is a transactional email about their own purchase. You should not send that person a newsletter unless they subscribed.

## Why recipient addresses matter for deliverability

Mailbox providers judge a sender partly by its recipients. Sending to addresses that do not exist causes hard bounces, and sending to people who did not ask for the email causes spam complaints. Both lower the reputation of your domain.

For that reason sending platforms keep a suppression list: addresses that hard bounced or complained are blocked from future sends.

## One email to many recipients

Do not put a whole list in the To field: every recipient would see every other address. A marketing platform sends a separate copy to each recipient instead, which also allows personalisation such as the first name and a personal unsubscribe link.

In Cresca

## How Cresca handles the email recipient

In Cresca, a campaign sends one personalised copy to each recipient in the contact list you choose. The API takes to, cc and bcc, and a batch request sends up to 100 separate emails in one call. Addresses that hard bounce or complain are added to the suppression list automatically.

- [Contact management](https://www.cresca.xyz/contact-management)
- [Suppression list](https://www.cresca.xyz/docs/suppression)

FAQ

## Email recipient questions

### What does recipient mean in email?

The recipient is the person or address that receives the email. It appears in the To, Cc or Bcc field.

### Is the recipient the sender or the receiver?

The receiver. The sender writes and sends the email, and the recipient gets it.

### Can other recipients see Bcc addresses?

No. Bcc addresses are hidden from all other recipients. A Bcc recipient can see the To and Cc addresses.

Glossary

## Related email terms

- [Reply-to address](https://www.cresca.xyz/glossary/reply-to-address)
- [Email body](https://www.cresca.xyz/glossary/email-body)
- [Email header](https://www.cresca.xyz/glossary/email-header)

Send email from your own domain with Cresca

Marketing campaigns and transactional email from one account. Free for the first 30 days, no credit card required.

[Start free](https://app.cresca.xyz/signup) [Email glossary](https://www.cresca.xyz/glossary)