Loops Alternatives for SaaS Teams in 2026

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

Why teams leave Loops

Start with the free plan, because that is where the first move usually happens. The Loops pricing page gives free accounts unlimited contacts but only 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, to the 1,000 newest contacts, with a small "Powered by Loops" footer and a limit of 10 emails per second. Marketing and transactional sends count together against that cap. A four-email onboarding series for 1,000 new signups is exactly 4,000 sends, which leaves nothing for password resets until the window rolls over.

The paid plan is priced by subscribed contacts and nothing else. The slider reads $48 at 4,788 subscribers, $99 at 9,998, $198 at 24,339 and $249 at 49,989. Unsubscribed contacts are not counted, sends are unlimited, there is no per-seat fee, and transactional email is included. The curve also flattens as lists grow: doubling from 24,339 to 49,989 subscribers adds $51. So a large list is not Loops' weak point. A dormant list that is still marked subscribed is, because it is billed the same as an engaged one.

The real friction is scope. Loops' documentation describes contacts as individual users identified by an email and an optional user ID, with properties such as name, user group and source, and workflows that start from a trigger and branch on those properties. Nothing in that description is a company or account object, and the pricing page mentions no push, SMS or in-app channel, while Customer.io's page lists push, in-app and WhatsApp. A team whose onboarding depends on the workspace rather than the person, or that wants one tool to reach users outside the inbox, meets that edge first.

If your complaint is the bill, check the table below before you migrate. At 25,000 and 50,000 contacts only Resend lands within $1 to $18 of Loops, and every other option costs more. Capability is the strong reason to leave; cost seldom is.

The alternatives, one by one

1. Customer.io: add channels and heavier branching

Pay for Customer.io when email stops being the only channel. Its pricing page lists a visual workflow builder, email, push, in-app messaging and WhatsApp, an AI agent, and two object types on Essentials, which is how it models things such as companies. Essentials reads $100 a month at 5,000 profiles, $145 at 10,000, $235 at 20,000 and $505+ at 50,000 and above, billed monthly; Premium starts at $1,000 a month billed yearly.

Set against the Loops slider, that is $100 against $48 near 5,000, $145 against $99 at 10,000 and $505 against $249 at 50,000. Customer.io includes transactional email in every plan, so you do not lose that feature, but you pay for the depth. Customer.io's page also marks managed deliverability as not included at Essentials, so ask what that means for your sender reputation before you rely on it. Read the Customer.io vs Loops page for the full side-by-side.

2. Userlist: accounts, not just people

Userlist is the alternative built around the workspace. It treats users and companies as separate records, so an onboarding email can go to everyone on an account while a renewal nudge goes only to the owner. Its plans are Basic at $149 a month for up to 10,000 users and Professional at $349, each adding $10 and $12 per extra 1,000 users, with A/B split testing and conversion goals starting on Professional.

Do the arithmetic at your size. At 25,000 users Basic is $149 + 15 × $10 = $299 against $198 on Loops; at 50,000 it is $149 + 40 × $10 = $549 against $249. The Userlist billing docs say your invoice follows the peak tracked-user count of the previous cycle, with an allowance of five times your users in messages (500,000 minimum) and $1 per 1,000 beyond it. See Userlist vs Loops for the head-to-head.

3. Encharge: a visual canvas and billing connectors, at a price

Encharge appeals to teams that want to see a flow drawn out and hook it straight to Stripe or Chargebee. Its pricing page lists those connectors, Zapier, webhooks and the flow builder on Growth, which reads $179 at 5,000 subscribers, $249 at 10,000 and $389 at 25,000. Premium adds API events, event-based segmentation, custom objects, transactional email and CRM integrations at $269, $399 and $649.

Moving from Loops at 10,000 subscribers means $249 instead of $99, which is $150 a month or $1,800 a year, and Loops' bundled transactional sending becomes a Premium feature at $399. Pay it only if the canvas and connectors save real engineering time. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial. More detail sits on the Encharge alternatives page.

4. Resend: the price twin for developer-run teams

Resend is the only option here that matches Loops on cost. On the marketing tab, contacts are free to 1,000 with unlimited broadcasts, 10,000 automation runs and three segments, then $40 at 5,000, $80 at 10,000, $180 at 25,000 and $250 at 50,000. Transactional email is priced on its own tab: Pro is $20 for 50,000 emails and $35 for 100,000.

So the all-in comparison at 10,000 contacts is $80 + $20 = $100 against $99 on Loops. What changes is the working style. Resend is built for developers: contacts, properties, segments and topics are managed from the dashboard or through the API, SDKs and CLI, and the page lists automations at $0.0015 per run. If a marketer, not an engineer, edits your emails, the move may cost more in time than it saves. Loops vs Resend covers that trade.

5. Brevo: price by volume when the list is large and quiet

A product with 40,000 sign-ups that it mails twice a month is the case where Loops' contact-based billing hurts and Brevo's volume-based billing helps. Brevo's pricing page shows a free plan of 300 sends a day, Starter from $9 a month at 5,000 emails, and Standard from $18, which adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports.

Work out the real number before you compare: 40,000 contacts mailed twice is 80,000 emails a month, and that is the volume to set on Brevo's selector. Brevo is a campaign-first tool, so test product-event triggers and per-user personalisation in a trial before relying on it for onboarding. Transactional email is part of the same account.

6. ActiveCampaign: when the sales team needs the same record

ActiveCampaign earns its place when trial users are handed to salespeople with a score attached. With annual billing, its pricing page shows Plus at $95 for 2,500 contacts, $145 for 5,000, $189 for 10,000, $389 for 25,000 and $609 for 50,000. Starter is not offered above 25,000 contacts, and sends are capped at ten times the contact limit on Plus. Against Loops that is $189 against $99 at 10,000 and $609 against $249 at 50,000.

The extra money buys CRM objects, lead scoring and a mature automation builder, not a better onboarding email editor. Transactional email is a separate add-on, so keep your existing sender for resets. The ActiveCampaign alternatives page covers the reverse trip.

7. HubSpot: only when sales already lives there

HubSpot's Marketing Hub page lists free tools with one automated action, Starter at $7 with up to ten, and Professional at $800 a month with unlimited actions. Pricing is per seat. For a Loops user the free tier is a useful way to put forms and a CRM next to existing lifecycle email, but real flows need Professional, which is eight times the $99 Loops charges at 10,000 subscribers. Treat it as a CRM decision first and an email decision second.

8. Kit: if the product is sold through a newsletter

Kit comes from the creator world, and it fits SaaS companies whose audience grows through content. The pricing page offers a free plan up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited forms, landing pages and broadcasts, and puts Visual Automations and sequences on Creator. Creator reads $33 at 1,000 subscribers, $75 at 5,000, $116 at 10,000 and $166 at 25,000 at the yearly-billing rate; Pro is $158 at 10,000 and $233 at 25,000. It is cheaper than Loops only while you stay on the free tier and send broadcasts alone, because automated onboarding takes you to Creator at $116 against $99.

What each option costs at 10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 people

Vendors count different things, so the units are subscribers, profiles, users or contacts. A cell says which stop was read when there is no exact match for the volume.

Among the plans that include automations, Loops is the cheapest or second-cheapest in every column. At 10,000 only Resend marketing is below it, and that is before Resend's separate transactional plan. At 50,000 Resend sits $1 above Loops and every other row with a price at that stop costs at least twice as much. Those gaps are what you buy depth with: Customer.io's extra $256 a month at 50,000 buys more channels and deeper branching, and Userlist's extra $300 buys the account model.

Remember what the table omits. Loops includes transactional sending; Resend charges for it on a separate tab, ActiveCampaign sells it as an add-on, and Encharge reserves it for Premium. On the other side, a smaller list on Brevo's volume-based plans, or a Loops free account for a 1,000-contact product, can undercut every row here.

A year at 10,000 people, and what each tool counts as a person

Monthly figures hide the definition behind the unit you are billed on. This table prices the same 10,000-person audience for twelve months at the stops above and names the counting rule next to each figure.

The spread from $1,188 to $2,988 is $1,800 a year, and that is the dollar value of everything the heavier tools add. Moving from Loops to Customer.io at this size costs $552 more a year ($1,740 minus $1,188), and moving to Userlist costs $600 more. Weigh those figures against the engineering hours an event model or an account record would save you; if nobody can name the hours, the lighter tool is still the right one.

Which one for which situation

• Your onboarding runs on events and you want push or in-app too: Customer.io, accepting $145 instead of $99 at 10,000.
• Customers are teams, and one admin decides on upgrades: Userlist, because users and companies are separate records.
• You want a drawn-out flow wired to Stripe: Encharge Growth, on the understanding that API events need Premium.
• Your engineers run email and the bill matters: Resend, which lands within $1 to $18 of Loops at 25,000 and 50,000 contacts.
• You have a big list and mail it twice a month: price Brevo on actual volume before anything else.
• Sales picks up trials from a CRM: ActiveCampaign Plus, or HubSpot only if the team already lives there.
• Everything works and the bill is the only complaint: stay, and prune subscribed contacts who never open anything.

Migrating off Loops

The steps below follow what a Loops account actually contains. The general migration guide covers what is common to every platform.

1. Export the audience. Loops' export documentation describes opening the menu in the filter box on the Audience page and choosing Download. The CSV has a column for each contact property, default and custom, and you can filter or use a saved segment first to export only part of the list.
2. Check the subscribed state. Loops' own CSV upload page shows that subscribed status is a column and that uploads default to subscribed. Make sure the new tool receives unsubscribed contacts as unsubscribed, because the usual failure is a re-mailed opt-out.
3. Map properties. Loops contacts carry an email, an optional user ID, name, user group and source plus any custom properties, and segments are built by filtering those properties (see the Loops quickstart). Decide where each lands in the destination, and which become company-level fields in an account-based tool.
4. Rebuild workflows by hand. Loops' documentation describes building workflows from a trigger with branches, but gives no way to export them, so write down each trigger, wait, branch and exit before you cancel anything. Rebuild trial and activation flows first.
5. Replace the transactional calls. Each Loops transactional email has an ID and data variables and is sent through its API. Recreate the templates in the destination, swap the API call in your code, and check whether sending to an address outside your audience creates a billable profile there.
6. Re-instrument events. Search your code for every place that sends an event or contact update to Loops, and add the matching call in the new tool before cutover so triggers fire from day one.
7. Run both for one cycle. Send new signups through the new tool on a set date and let people already inside Loops workflows finish there. Merge SPF into one record and add the new DKIM before the first send.
8. Downgrade, then close. Loops has a free tier, so move down to it once the last workflow empties and keep the account a month as a fallback before deleting data.

Our pick

If you are leaving because Loops has run out of road, Customer.io is the first one to price: it adds channels and branching while keeping transactional email in the plan. Userlist is the runner-up for B2B products with workspaces. If the real complaint is cost or the free-plan cap, Resend is the one that actually moves the number. Related pages: email for early-stage SaaS and email platforms for developers.