ActiveCampaign vs Loops for SaaS: Pricing and Fit (2026)

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from. ActiveCampaign's plan cards are billed annually, and its figures are the selector's readout at each contact count; Loops' figures are the dated slider readouts at the subscriber counts shown.

A founder comparing these two is usually choosing between a lightweight tool built for software products and a big marketing suite that also happens to send product email. Loops describes one price that includes marketing, product and transactional sends, with a free plan for early products. ActiveCampaign's plan cards describe marketing automation, email, landing pages, a CRM, predictive content and AI features, with four tiers that gate segmentation, automation depth and seats.

The question is how many of those extras you would really use in the next year. A team that never touches a sales pipeline is paying for CRM it does not need; a team that runs demos from its website will outgrow a pure product-email tool quickly.

What each one costs at 5,000, 10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 people

Loops has one paid plan whose price follows subscribers, so a single number covers a given audience. ActiveCampaign's price depends on the tier. The table lists Starter and Plus, since Plus is the first tier with unlimited automation actions, and adds Pro for the 50,000 row because Starter is not offered there.

The gap on a comparable automation tier is $97 a month at about 5,000 people ($145 against $48), $90 at about 10,000 ($189 against $99), $191 at about 25,000 ($389 against $198) and $360 at about 50,000 ($609 against $249). Across a year at about 10,000 people that is 12 × $90 = $1,080. ActiveCampaign's entry Starter plan is cheaper than Plus at small sizes, but note that at 25,000 contacts Starter reads $391, which is more than Plus at $389, so Starter stops being the budget option.

The send cap needs its own arithmetic. At 10,000 contacts, Plus allows 10 × 10,000 = 100,000 sends a month. If you send a weekly update, an onboarding series and a few product alerts, you may stay inside that; a product that emails every user daily will not. Loops lists unlimited sends to subscribers on paid plans, so volume does not change the price, only the subscriber count does.

Loops' free plan is limited in a way that matters for early products. It stores unlimited contacts but sends only to the 1,000 newest of them, with 4,000 sends in a rolling 30 days. A newsletter to 3,000 people would not reach everyone on the free plan, so the first paid step comes sooner than the contact limit suggests.

What you get for the extra money on ActiveCampaign

The plan cards list marketing automation, email, landing pages from Plus, a standard CRM on every plan and premium CRM on Enterprise, attribution and conversion tracking from Pro, predictive and conditional content, and "Active Intelligence" (limits apply on Starter and Plus). Tiers differ mainly in segmentation (limited, standard, advanced, premium), automation actions (5 per automation on Starter, unlimited above) and seats (1, 1, 3, 5).

For a sales-assisted SaaS business those are the right things to pay for. A lead that comes in from a pricing-page form can be tagged, scored, nurtured and assigned to a rep, and the rep sees the email history in the deal. Loops has no equivalent: it assumes the person is already a user or subscriber, and anything about a deal lives in another tool.

The limits to read before buying: Starter's 5-action cap is tight for an onboarding series that branches, and the 1-user seat on Starter and Plus means a second teammate forces Pro at $79 or more, a 3-user plan whose price at 5,000 contacts reads $205.

What you give up with Loops

Loops is deliberately narrow. Its paid plan includes workflows triggered by what users do, templates for jobs such as a welcome series, and transactional email sent by API to people who are not on your audience. The pricing page lists no per-seat charge, so a designer and a marketer can both work in it.

The things it does not list are the reasons some teams leave. There is no CRM, so sales follow-up needs another tool. Channels are email only, so SMS or WhatsApp needs another vendor. And the audience-based price means a large list of mostly inactive people still raises the bill, so a clean-up of dormant subscribers is part of cost control.

Moving between them

ActiveCampaign to Loops starts with a decision about the CRM: if a sales team still needs deals and tasks, that function has to be kept somewhere else before the email tool is replaced. Export contacts with custom fields and tags, keep only the properties your onboarding and update emails really use, and import unsubscribed addresses so those people stay suppressed. Rebuild each automation as a workflow triggered by an event your application sends, rather than by a tag. Retire landing pages and forms last, because they are the entry points to the funnel.

Loops to ActiveCampaign is a build-up exercise. Import subscribers, create the tags or fields that stand for lifecycle stages, and rebuild workflows as automations, watching the Starter 5-action cap if you expect branching. Check the monthly send cap for the plan against your real volume, and set up the transactional add-on or keep sending password resets from a separate sender, since Loops' included transactional endpoint goes away with the Loops plan.

Whichever way you go, run the old and new tool in parallel for a cycle, one flow at a time, starting with the one that carries least revenue.

Verdict

For most early and mid-size SaaS products, Loops is the better value: it costs $48 to $249 across the 5,000 to 50,000 range read here, includes transactional sends and charges no seat fee. Choose ActiveCampaign when the funnel is sales-assisted and a CRM, landing pages and richer segmentation will actually be used, accepting a bill roughly double Loops' at 10,000 contacts.

Compare other pairings: ActiveCampaign vs Customer.io, Loops vs Resend, Customer.io vs Loops and Userlist vs Loops. If you are leaving one of them, see ActiveCampaign alternatives or Loops alternatives. For early teams, email tools for early-stage SaaS narrows the list further.