Hello, @alleycat1529
You are welcome to the Docusign Community!
An envelope is like a container where you add your documents and signers. Every time that you need documents to be signed you need to send them inside an envelope.
If you just upgrade to a Personal Plan, perhaps the envelopes were not available yet to your use, on this case contact our Support team, open a ticket so they can verify what’s happened. Here the steps about how to open a support ticket:
https://support.docusign.com/s/articles/How-Do-I-Open-a-Case-in-the-DocuSign-Support-Center?language=en_US
A template is used to make easy the envelope’s sending process, thus if you created a template when you click in Use a template that means a template created by you will be used to send an envelope with documents.
Watch this video to see how to Send an Envelope:
I hope that helps!
Best,
Alexandre