6 Best Loops Alternatives Tested in 2026
Loops bills marketing and transactional email on one flat $49 a month, and that bundle is why the three cheapest alternatives on this page are not actually cheaper. Resend at $20, MailerSend at $7 and Postmark at $15 are transactional products: run a newsletter alongside one and you pay two bills and reconcile two contact lists, the arrangement Loops exists to remove.
We scored and priced 6 alternatives against Loops, ranked them by our own review score, and matched each to the kind of Loops user it wins for. Read the support column before you move. Loops scores 5.5 there, its lowest category score, and every alternative on this page beats it.
Why look for a Loops alternative in 2026
Two reasons, and the price is not one of them.
Support scores 5.5. It is Loops’ weakest number and the widest spread on this page: Brevo scores 8.0, Customer.io and Kit 7.5, Resend and MailerSend 7.0, Postmark 6.5. For a platform sold as a replacement for two tools, the help you get when the merged setup misbehaves is not a detail.
Deliverability sits at 6.5, in our Medium band. Postmark reaches 9.0, the highest figure in our entire catalogue and the only High score on this page. Brevo and MailerSend both reach 7.5. If your transactional mail is password resets and receipts, that gap is the argument. There is also no official MCP server, where all six alternatives below ship one.
What keeps people is the pricing model. Loops scores 7.5 on pricing value, higher than four of the six here: $49/mo buys 5,000 contacts with unlimited sends and transactional included, $99/mo takes that to 10,000, and the bill does not move when you mail more often. Cheaper entry prices exist; flat bundled ones mostly do not.
6 Loops alternatives at a glance
Ranked by our own review score. Every platform here has a full SMTPedia review, so the Score column is measured rather than invented for this table.
| Platform | Score | Starting $ | Free plan | Best for | MCP | Deliverability | Verdict vs Loops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 7.7 | $9/mo | 300/day, 100k contacts | The same bundle for a fifth of the price | Yes | Medium | Value 8.5 vs 7.5, support 8.0 vs 5.5 |
| Resend | 7.4 | $20/mo | 3,000/mo and 100/day | Transactional only, best API here | Yes | Medium | API 9.5 vs 7.5, but automation 5.0 vs 7.0 |
| Customer.io | 7.1 | $100/mo | No, and no trial | Teams where automation is the product | Yes | Medium | Automation 9.0 vs 7.0, but value 4.0 vs 7.5 |
| MailerSend | 7.1 | $7/mo | 500 emails/mo | Cheapest route into transactional volume | Yes | Medium | Deliverability 7.5 vs 6.5, automation 4.0 vs 7.0 |
| Postmark | 7.1 | $15/mo | 100 emails/mo | Transactional mail that has to land | Yes | High | Deliverability 9.0 vs 6.5, but value 5.0 vs 7.5 |
| Kit | 7.0 | $39/mo | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Creators whose free tier must scale first | Yes | Medium | Free to 10,000 vs 1,000, support 7.5 vs 5.5 |
Score is our overall SMTPedia review rating out of 10, not a score built for this comparison. Deliverability bands come from the same reviews: High 8.0 and above, Medium 6.0 to 7.9, Low below. Loops sits at 7.0 overall, 6.5 deliverability, 7.0 automation, 7.5 pricing value, 5.5 support.
Brevo
Brevo
Better for: the team that wants both halves of Loops without the $49 floor
Brevo is the only alternative here that does what Loops does — campaigns and transactional sending from one account — and it is the highest-rated platform on SMTPedia at 7.7. Entry is $9/mo for 5,000 emails, $29/mo at 20,000. It wins the two axes that send people looking: pricing value 8.5 against 7.5, support 8.0 against 5.5.
What you lose. Automation, from 7.0 to 6.0, and the flat bill: Brevo charges by emails sent rather than contacts held, so a daily send to 5,000 contacts is priced, not absorbed. The free plan also caps at 300 emails a day, a hard daily ceiling where Loops counts 4,000 a month.
Medium
1 to 2 days
Contacts and templates import cleanly. The transactional cutover means re-pointing API calls and re-verifying the domain.
$9/mo
Starter, 5,000 emails
Free tier 300 emails a day, up to 100,000 contacts, CRM and transactional included. $29/mo at 20,000, Business $69/mo. Official MCP server.
Resend
Resend
Better for: the engineering team that only sends product email
Resend scores 9.5 on API and developer experience against Loops’ 7.5, the highest figure on this page. Entry is $20/mo for 50,000 emails against $49 for 5,000 contacts, overage $0.90 per 1,000, free tier 3,000 a month.
What you lose. The marketing half of the product. Automation drops from 7.0 to 5.0: campaigns, subscriber management and visual sequences run elsewhere, on a second bill. The $20 is only cheaper than $49 if you were not using the campaigns you already pay for.
Easy
About a day
An API key swap and a domain verification. Budget separately for the campaign side.
$20/mo
50,000 emails
Free tier 3,000 a month and 100 a day. Overage $0.90 per 1,000. Dedicated IP $30 on Scale. Official MCP server.
Customer.io
Customer.io
Better for: the product team whose lifecycle messaging is the feature, not the channel
Customer.io scores 9.0 on automation against Loops’ 7.0, the deepest builder here, and matches its developer orientation with 9.0 on API against 7.5. Essentials is $100/mo for 5,000 profiles and 1,000,000 emails, so the per-message economics invert at volume.
What you lose. Any cheap way in. Pricing value scores 4.0, the lowest on this page and well below Loops’ 7.5: no free plan and no trial at all, so the first step is $100/mo against Loops’ free 1,000 contacts. Under $10M raised, the startup programme gives twelve months free, the only route in below list price.
Hard
3 to 5 days
The builder is event-driven: you model your product events before a single message sends.
$100/mo
Essentials, 5,000 profiles, 1,000,000 emails
Premium from $1,000/mo annual. No free plan, no trial. Startup programme: twelve months free under $10M raised. Official MCP server.
MailerSend
MailerSend
Better for: the app sending transactional mail on a small budget
MailerSend is the cheapest entry on this page at $7/mo for 5,000 emails, and it still beats Loops where product mail counts: deliverability 7.5 against 6.5, API 9.0 against 7.5, support 7.0 against 5.5. Starter at $35/mo carries 50,000 emails, overage $0.90 per 1,000.
What you lose. Automation, almost entirely: 4.0 against Loops’ 7.0, tied with Postmark for the lowest here. MailerSend is a sending platform with templates, not a lifecycle tool: the sequences and contact model that make Loops a marketing product have no equivalent. As with Resend, the saving is real only if you were not using that half.
Easy
About a day
Templates and API calls port quickly. Price the Hobby overage of $1.50 per 1,000 before committing.
$7/mo
Hobby, 5,000 emails
Free tier 500 a month. Starter $35/mo at 50,000, overage $0.90 per 1,000 against $1.50 on Hobby. Official MCP server.
Read our MailerSend review
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Postmark
Postmark
Better for: the product whose receipts and password resets cannot go missing
Postmark scores 9.0 on deliverability against Loops’ 6.5, the only High band entry here and the highest figure in our catalogue. Entry is $15/mo for 10,000 emails, and the separation of transactional and broadcast streams is the mechanism behind that score.
What you lose. The bundle and the price curve at once. Automation falls to 4.0 from 7.0, and pricing value scores 5.0 against Loops’ 7.5: overage runs $1.80 per 1,000, twice what Resend and MailerSend charge, and 50,000 emails costs $55/mo. The free tier of 100 emails a month is a test harness, not a plan.
Easy
About a day
Clean API and good docs. Splitting your streams the way Postmark expects takes the thought.
$15/mo
10,000 emails
$55/mo at 50,000 emails, overage $1.80 per 1,000. Free tier 100 emails a month. Official MCP server.
Read our Postmark review
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Kit
Kit
Better for: the creator whose list outgrows a free tier before it earns anything
Kit and Loops score identically at 7.0, and the difference is where the free plan stops. Kit carries you to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, forms and landing pages; Loops stops at 1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month with its footer attached. Support is better at 7.5 against 5.5.
What you lose. Transactional email entirely: Kit is a creator platform, so the product mail Loops handles on the same account needs a separate sender. Deliverability slips to 6.0 from 6.5, pricing value to 6.0 from 7.5, and the free plan has no visual automations, so the automation you are comparing against Loops’ 7.0 starts at $39/mo.
Medium
1 to 2 days
Subscriber import is simple. Splitting a merged Loops setup back into two tools is the real work.
$39/mo
Creator, 1,000 subscribers, billed monthly
$33/mo annual. Free to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts but no visual automations. Pro $79/mo. Official MCP server.
Read our Kit review
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Leaving Loops: what transfers and what breaks
Contacts move in an afternoon. Unpicking the bundle is the part that costs days.
You are probably replacing one tool with two. That is the structural cost of this move: four of the six alternatives here do transactional only, Kit does marketing only, and only Brevo replaces Loops on its own. Add both line items before concluding anything here is cheaper.
Transactional sending is the easy half. An API key, a verified sending domain, and templates re-pasted. A day, and it can run in parallel with Loops while you compare bounce and open rates on real traffic.
Automations do not migrate anywhere. No export format survives the trip, so every sequence is rebuilt by hand. Count your live automations before comparing prices: past a dozen, the rebuild costs more than a year of the saving. Contacts, tags and templates do transfer, as CSV and HTML.
Loops alternatives: common questions
Which Loops alternative also does marketing and transactional in one place?
Brevo, and on this page only Brevo: campaigns and transactional mail from one account with a CRM attached, 7.7 overall against Loops’ 7.0, from $9/mo. Resend, MailerSend and Postmark are transactional products; Kit has no transactional sending at all.
Is anything here genuinely cheaper than $49 a month?
On the sticker, five of the six; in practice it depends on whether you use both halves. MailerSend at $7, Postmark at $15 and Resend at $20 cover transactional only, so a newsletter means a second subscription. Brevo at $9 is the one unambiguous saving; Customer.io at $100 is twice the price.
Which one is best for deliverability?
Postmark at 9.0, the highest score in our catalogue, against Loops’ 6.5. Brevo and MailerSend follow at 7.5. If transactional mail landing is why you are here, Postmark is the answer and its pricing value of 5.0 is what it costs.
Which has the best automation?
Customer.io at 9.0 against Loops’ 7.0, and it is the only entry here that beats Loops on that axis. Everything else is level or below: Kit 6.5, Brevo 6.0, Resend 5.0, MailerSend and Postmark 4.0. Customer.io also scores 4.0 on pricing value against 7.5, so that automation is bought, not found.
Should I leave Loops at all?
If you use both halves and mail your list often, the case is weak: the flat $49 with unlimited sends is why Loops scores 7.5 on pricing value, above four of the six here, and replacing it usually means two subscriptions. The case is strong on two counts: if support has failed you, where 5.5 is the worst number on this page, or if transactional deliverability matters more than the bundle, where Postmark’s 9.0 is another class of product.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
