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What is an envelope in e-signatures?

In e-signature services, an envelope is everything sent out together for signature: one or more documents, the people who must sign, approve or receive a copy, the fields each of them fills in, the signing order and the email message. The envelope is tracked as one unit, from sending until every recipient has finished.

Also called: Envelope, Signature request, Signing packet

Updated October 15, 2026 · By the PDFZyro team

What's in an envelope

The name comes from paper: you put the papers in an envelope with a covering note and send it off. An electronic envelope holds the documents, often a contract with its schedules or several forms that belong together, the recipients and their roles, the fields placed for each person, such as signature, initials, date and text, the subject and message of the email, and settings such as reminders, an expiry date and extra identity checks.

Because the documents travel together, each signer completes everything assigned to them in one visit, and the finished envelope is sealed and certified as one set. Some services call an envelope a signature request, a packet or an agreement.

Envelope statuses

An envelope moves through a few stages. It starts as a draft while you prepare it. Once sent, it's out for signature, and you can see who has opened it and who has finished. When the last recipient finishes, it's completed and the signed documents are sealed. It can also end as declined, if a signer refuses, voided, if the sender cancels it, or expired, if it wasn't finished in time.

Correcting and reusing envelopes

Once an envelope is sent, its documents can't be changed, because every signer must see the same version. If something is wrong in a document, void the envelope and send a new one. Contact details, such as a mistyped email address, can usually be corrected without starting over. For documents you send often, a template keeps the documents, roles and fields, so the next envelope only needs names and email addresses.

How to send an envelope in PDFZyro

  1. Click Request signatures on Home, choose one or more documents and click Continue. In PDFZyro an envelope is called an agreement, and it can hold up to 20 documents.
  2. Add the recipients and the signing order, write the message, set reminders and an expiry date, place each person's fields and click Send.
  3. Follow it in Agreements: send a reminder, correct a recipient's details or void it. When everyone has finished, the sealed documents and the certificate of completion are saved to your library.
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