14 Loops Alternatives for Email Automation (2026)

1. Kit

Best for: Coaches and course sellers who ended up on a SaaS email tool. Loops’ own pricing FAQ says that if you send email for a SaaS, Loops is the right choice, and a coach who picked it for its clean editor often wants things it does not advertise: landing pages, a way to sell a digital product, and a free plan that does not stop at 1,000 contacts. Kit’s free plan lists unlimited landing pages and forms, unlimited broadcasts and tagging for up to 10,000 subscribers, and Creator adds sequences and Visual Automations.

Trade-off: Kit costs more than Loops through the middle of the range, so the case for it rests on creator features and not on saving money until the list nears 25,000 subscribers. It also has no per-seat generosity to match Loops, since the Pro plan is where unlimited users appear.

Moving from Loops: Export your Loops audience and import it into Kit, turning contact properties and mailing lists into tags. Kit’s migrations are free and its 14-day trial needs no credit card, so rebuild the welcome sequence first and test it with one segment. Anything your app pushes in by API needs a form, a tag or an integration on the Kit side.

What it costs: Kit Creator is $75 a month at 5,000 subscribers where Loops reads $48, so Kit is $27 dearer at that size. At 10,000 the gap narrows to $17 ($116 against $99), and by 25,000 Kit is the cheaper tool at $166 against $198. Every Kit figure here is billed yearly, and Pro is $158 at 10,000 and $233 at 25,000. See the Kit pricing page.

2. MailerLite

Best for: A clean editor and automations at the lowest paid price. MailerLite gives a Loops user what they probably liked in the first place, a tidy editor and simple automations, in a general newsletter tool with forms, groups and welcome sequences. Comfort undercuts Loops at 10,000 subscribers and sends ten times your subscriber-tier ceiling each month.

Trade-off: The free plan is 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month with 2 seats, far smaller than the unlimited contacts Loops allows, and transactional mail is outsourced to MailerSend, whereas Loops includes it on paid plans.

Moving from Loops: Loops charges no seat fees, so count how many teammates log in before you pick a tier on MailerLite. Rebuild automations by hand, and note that MailerLite states its data storage center is in the European Union with ISO 27001 certification, which can matter if your contacts are mainly European.

What it costs: At 5,000 subscribers Loops reads $48. Comfort is $49 there, so the two are effectively level. At 10,000 Comfort is $89 against $99, and at 25,000 it is $179 against $198. Power adds $20, $40 and $60 over Comfort at those three sizes, reading $69, $129 and $239. See the MailerLite pricing page.

3. ActiveCampaign

Best for: Consultants who need branching, scoring and a pipeline. ActiveCampaign is where a service business goes when the next email has to depend on what a lead did, not just on a signup date. Plus brings standard segmentation and landing pages, and Pro adds advanced segmentation, which gives a consultant a way to follow up on proposals and booked calls.

Trade-off: Loops lets the whole team in without a seat fee, but ActiveCampaign’s tiers carry user limits: Starter and Plus 1 user, Pro 3 and Enterprise 5. Starter also allows 5 actions per automation.

Moving from Loops: Draft each Loops automation on paper with its trigger, delays and exit before building. Whatever your app sends to Loops as an event has to become a form, an integration or a tag in ActiveCampaign, so list those events first.

What it costs: Starter reads $79, $149 and $391 at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 contacts, while Plus reads $145, $189 and $389, so at 25,000 the higher tier is $2 cheaper than the lower one. Starter is not sold above 25,000 contacts, and at 50,000 the page lists Plus at $609 against $249 for Loops at 49,989. See the ActiveCampaign pricing page.

4. Brevo

Best for: Small teams who want campaigns and system mail in one account. Brevo pairs campaigns, basic automation and transactional sending in a workspace a generalist can run. Because it prices by the monthly volume you pick, a large list that is mailed rarely can cost less than a per-contact tool.

Trade-off: Loops’ free plan allows 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, while Brevo’s free plan allows 300 a day, about 9,000 over 30 days, but with marketing automation limited to 2,000 contacts. Check event depth before moving anything sophisticated.

Moving from Loops: Count the emails Loops sends in a typical month, marketing and transactional together, because that figure sets the Brevo tier. Staggering a big first broadcast over several days is the price of the free plan’s daily cap.

What it costs: The free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts. Starter begins at $9 a month and Standard at $18, both from 5,000 emails a month, with automation, A/B testing and advanced reports starting on Standard. Professional starts at $499. See the Brevo pricing page.

5. HubSpot

Best for: Teams whose list belongs next to a sales pipeline. HubSpot earns a place when the decision about email cannot be separated from deals, forms and who owns each contact. A Loops contact is an email address with properties; in HubSpot it becomes a CRM record that sales can see.

Trade-off: It is a long way from a focused lifecycle tool, and the price curve is steep: Starter is $7 per seat while Professional is $800 a month. The automation row reads 1 automated action on the free tools, up to 10 on Starter and unlimited on Professional.

Moving from Loops: Map Loops contact properties to HubSpot properties and decide which mailing lists become lists in HubSpot. If a journey needs more than ten automated actions it will not fit on Starter, so count each flow’s steps before choosing a tier.

What it costs: Marketing Hub is priced per seat: $7 a month on Starter, $800 on Professional and $3,600 on Enterprise, with free tools at no cost. Professional and Enterprise both list unlimited actions plus omni-channel marketing automation. See the HubSpot pricing page.

6. Customer.io

Best for: SaaS teams that outgrew simple lifecycle sequences. Customer.io is the move when product events, not a signup list, decide who gets the next message, and when you need push, in-app messages or WhatsApp next to email. It lists a visual workflow builder, an AI agent and an MCP server.

Trade-off: It costs more than Loops at each size: $145 for 10k profiles against $99 at 9,998 subscribers, and a profile counts people and objects. Someone must keep the event stream clean.

Moving from Loops: Point the events your app sends to Loops at Customer.io and rebuild each journey around them. Run one onboarding flow in both tools for a week, and mind the billing rule that a profile existing at any moment in a month counts for that month.

What it costs: Essentials starts at $100 a month for 5k profiles with 1 million emails a month and 2 object types, then reads $145 at 10k, $235 at 20k and $325 at 30k. Premium starts at $1,000 a month billed yearly, with 10 object types. Raised under $10M? The Startup Program gives a free first year. See the Customer.io pricing page.

7. Userlist

Best for: B2B products that sell to companies, not individuals. Userlist models companies and their users, so it suits a B2B product where the question is whether the account is adopting, not whether one person opened an email. It covers marketing and lifecycle email and in-app messages.

Trade-off: For B2C products or individual customers the company layer adds nothing, and $149 at 10,000 users sits well above the $99 Loops reads at 9,998 subscribers.

Moving from Loops: Send a company identifier with every user event so segments can target accounts. Plan around Userlist’s message allowance, 5 times tracked users with a 500,000 floor, rather than around per-contact sends as in Loops.

What it costs: Basic is $149 a month at 10,000 users plus $10 for each additional 1,000, which makes 18,000 users $229 and 32,000 users $369. Professional is $349 at 10,000 users with $12 per extra 1,000 and adds A/B split tests and conversion goals. See the Userlist pricing page.

8. Resend

Best for: Developers who want code-owned receipts and notifications. Resend fits when the main need is dependable application email and developers own the templates. Its Marketing tab covers broadcasts and automations, so a small product can run both sides there, though with less of a marketer-facing journey builder than Loops.

Trade-off: Loops includes transactional sending in its subscriber price, while Resend prices its Marketing and Transactional tabs separately on its slider, so a team using both should read both.

Moving from Loops: Move the transactional stream first, on a fresh sending domain, then decide whether lifecycle mail follows. The free plan allows 3 domains and 100 emails a day.

What it costs: The Marketing tab reads free at 1,000 contacts, then $40 at 5,000, $80 at 10,000, $180 at 25,000 and $250 at 50,000. On the Transactional tab Pro is $20 for 50,000 emails and $35 at 100,000, and Scale is $90 for 100,000. See the Resend pricing page.

9. Postmark

Best for: Transactional mail that must be delivered on time. Postmark does one job: delivering the email people are waiting for, such as receipts, resets and alerts, with message streams that keep that traffic apart from broadcasts. If the pain point with Loops is that its free plan counts transactional and marketing sends together, Postmark moves the system mail out.

Trade-off: It has no audience builder or sequence editor, so moving a Loops newsletter there does not work. Pair it with a list tool.

Moving from Loops: Create a transactional stream for your app’s mail and keep the rest in Loops or its replacement, so neither can slow the other. The free plan holds only 100 emails a month, which is a test, not a home.

What it costs: Basic is $15 for 10,000 emails with extras at $1.80 per 1,000; Pro at $16.50 and Platform at $18 cover the same 10,000. At 50,000 emails the slider reads $55, $60.50 and $66, and at 125,000 it reads $115, $126.50 and $138. See the Postmark pricing page.

10. Mailgun

Best for: Engineering teams who want API control, logs and inbound routing. Mailgun is delivery infrastructure with an API and SMTP relay, webhooks, analytics and inbound routing, for teams that treat email as part of the backend. Its pricing page adds that there is no send button in the product, which tells you who it is for.

Trade-off: A marketer cannot run a campaign there, so a Loops replacement built on Mailgun needs a separate tool for everything non-technical. Log retention is a single day on Free and Basic.

Moving from Loops: You will be re-pointing the app’s sending at an API or SMTP endpoint and rebuilding templates in Mailgun’s template builder, which starts on Foundation. Check how many days of logs you need before picking Basic.

What it costs: The free plan is 100 emails a day on 1 custom domain. Basic starts at $15 for 10,000 emails, Foundation is $35 after a free first month for 50,000, and Scale is $90 after a free first month for 100,000 emails with 5,000 validations included. See the Mailgun pricing page.

11. SendGrid

Best for: Teams that want delivery and campaigns from one vendor. SendGrid splits into an Email API for application mail and Marketing Campaigns for broadcasts, which suits a business wanting separate bills and owners for each. The free Marketing Campaigns plan stores 2,000 contacts and sends 6,000 emails a month.

Trade-off: Two products mean two sets of limits, and an unclear owner for each message leads to duplicates or gaps.

Moving from Loops: Decide which product sends which message before migrating: onboarding triggered by app events goes through the API, newsletters through Marketing Campaigns. Twilio publishes a data protection addendum for customers.

What it costs: The Email API trial gives 100 emails a day for 60 days, then Essentials reads $19.95 at 50,000 emails and $34.95 at 100,000, and Pro is $89.95 at 100,000. Marketing Campaigns starts at $15 for Basic and $60 for Advanced, after a free plan for 2,000 contacts. See the SendGrid pricing page.

12. Klaviyo

Best for: Stores whose automations follow orders and browsing. Klaviyo is built around products, orders and customer value, so a store that picked Loops for its looks can use Klaviyo’s segmentation on purchase behavior instead of SaaS events.

Trade-off: If your product is software, Klaviyo’s store-first model may force your events into a shape that does not fit. At 10,000 profiles it is $150 against $99 for Loops at 9,998 subscribers.

Moving from Loops: The work is connecting the store and rebuilding flows such as abandoned cart and post-purchase around orders. Profiles are counted differently from Loops’ subscribed contacts, so reconcile the two numbers first.

What it costs: The free plan covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month. The Email plan is $20 at 500 profiles, $30 at 1,000, $100 at 5,000 and $150 at 10,000. See the Klaviyo pricing page.

13. Drip

Best for: Online stores that want purchase-based retention flows. Drip aims at commerce teams that want retention built around purchase behavior and product interest without adopting a heavy enterprise suite. It prices on active people and the emails you send in the month.

Trade-off: There is no ongoing free plan, only a 14-day trial, and Drip is a poor match for an application where the data is subscriptions and feature use.

Moving from Loops: Use the trial to rebuild a single flow before you commit. If you track subscription state instead of orders, there is less in Drip to model.

What it costs: The tiers read $39 up to 2,500 people, $89 at 5,000, $154 at 10,000, $369 at 25,000 and $699 at 50,000, which includes 600,000 email sends. Loops reads $249 at 49,989 subscribers. See the Drip pricing page.

14. Braze

Best for: Enterprises coordinating mobile, push and in-app messaging. Braze suits an organization with data engineering and lifecycle operations teams that wants push, in-app, SMS and large-scale experiments next to email. It is a different class of project from a Loops swap.

Trade-off: It is the wrong move if the motive is saving money: the cost and the implementation load are well above those of any tool listed with a price here.

Moving from Loops: Begin with a statement of work and the identity model, then channels, and leave templates for last.

What it costs: Braze’s pricing page shows no price and offers a free-trial request, and it says billing follows the volume of users engaging with your brand, so pricing is on request (quote-based). See the Braze pricing page.

What to inventory before you leave Loops

Loops often holds both your marketing list and your app’s system mail, so the inventory is longer than a contact export. Keep the Loops account running until each row below passes.

Verdict: which Loops alternative to choose

For coaches, course creators and consultants, choose Kit. The reason is fit, then price. Kit’s free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with landing pages, forms, broadcasts and tags, so a coach with 3,000 people stops hitting Loops’ 1,000-contact free ceiling, and Creator adds the sequences that run a launch. Loops stays cheaper through about 10,000 subscribers, so if price is the whole reason you are leaving, MailerLite Comfort at $89 for 10,000 is the only plan in the table below Loops’ $99. A consultant whose follow-up depends on pipeline stages should test ActiveCampaign, whose Plus plan lists landing pages and segmentation.

For the exceptions: a SaaS team that wants deeper event logic should move up to Customer.io ($145 for 10k profiles), and one that sells to companies should test Userlist. A developer who only needs delivery should use Resend or Postmark and keep a list tool beside it. A store belongs on Klaviyo ($150 at 10,000 profiles) or Drip ($154 at 10,000 people). Stay on Loops if you run software, your list is under about 10,000 subscribers, and the combined send count fits what you pay for. The Customer.io alternatives page covers the same SaaS shortlist from the other side, and the creator guide compares the tools coaches use most.

A worked example: a coach with 10,000 subscribers

Take a coach whose list has 10,000 subscribed contacts, a welcome sequence of five emails and one newsletter a week. On Loops that is the $99 plan, which is $1,188 over twelve months. On Kit the same coach has two routes. If the welcome sequence can be replaced by a form that tags the person and a broadcast, the free plan, which runs to 10,000 subscribers, costs $0. If the sequence matters, Creator at $116 a month billed yearly costs $1,392 a year, $204 more than Loops. MailerLite Comfort at $89 a month is $1,068 a year, $120 less than Loops, with automations included.

The same arithmetic at 25,000 subscribers points the other way: Loops reads $198 a month ($2,376 a year) against $166 for Kit Creator ($1,992) and $179 for MailerLite Comfort ($2,148). The lesson is that a list size, not a brand, decides which of the three is cheapest, so price your own number on each slider before you start a migration.

Leaving Loops without breaking system mail

The riskiest part of a Loops migration is not the newsletter, it is the mail your app sends through the same account. Do the steps in this order and the sign-up flow never goes quiet.