# Submissions

> The raw form responses behind your audience. A contact is the deduplicated person; a submission is a single thing they filled in.

Source: https://getlaunchlist.com/help/docs/manage-waitlist/submissions

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A **submission** is one raw form response: exactly what someone typed, kept as they sent it. It is the
record behind the tidy contact row, and the two are deliberately different things.

## Submissions vs contacts

- A **contact** is the **deduplicated person**: one row per identity, with a status, a stage, tags and
  a referral graph. This is your audience.
- A **submission** is a **single response** to a form. It is append-only: never edited, never merged.

One contact can have **many** submissions: they signed up, then answered a survey, then filled in a
second form. Each is preserved, so the contact stays clean while nothing anyone sent is ever lost.

> [!NOTE] A repeat signup is a new submission, not a new contact
> If the same person signs up again, they are deduplicated into their existing contact, but the
> repeat is still recorded as its own submission. You keep the full history without a duplicate in
> your audience.

## Reading them

Open a contact to see every submission behind them, with the form each came through and the answers
it captured. To pull them in bulk, [export your audience](/help/docs/audience/importing) or read them
through the [API](/help/docs/api/contacts-submissions).

## Next

- [Your audience](/help/docs/audience/segments): the deduplicated people submissions roll up into
- [Building your signup form](/help/docs/forms/form-builder): what a submission captures

## Common questions

### What is the difference between a contact and a submission?

A contact is the deduplicated person in your audience, one row per identity. A submission is a single form response. One contact can have many submissions, and every submission is kept exactly as it came in.

### If someone signs up twice, do I get two contacts?

No. The second signup is deduplicated into the same contact, but it is recorded as a second submission, so you never lose what they sent.