Loops

Loops is the developer-first email platform for SaaS companies, founded in 2022 by Chris Villa (ex-Stripe). The pitch is sharp: every modern SaaS sends transactional emails (welcome, password reset, magic link) AND lifecycle emails (onboarding sequences, upgrade prompts, churn winbacks), but the tools for these are split — Postmark/SendGrid for transactional, Mailchimp/ConvertKit for marketing. Loops merges both into one developer-friendly platform with modern UX, dramatically better deliverability than the legacy options, and pricing built for SaaS scaling. What sets Loops apart is the SaaS-native design. The product assumes you're shipping software, not running a newsletter — features include user properties from your DB, event-triggered campaigns ('when user reaches 3 logins, send onboarding email 2'), audience segmentation by product behavior, and a developer API + webhooks that feel like Stripe's. The interface is the cleanest in the email category — designers love it. The core feature set: • **Transactional API** — send welcome, password reset, magic link, receipt emails via REST API. Stripe-style developer experience. • **Loops + Loops Audience** — combine event-triggered loops (onboarding sequences) with broadcast campaigns (newsletters, product announcements) • **Visual loop builder** — drag-and-drop email sequences with delay nodes, condition branches, A/B testing • **Email editor** — modern block-based editor with branded templates • **User properties** — sync user data from your app to personalise emails (first name, plan tier, signup source, last active) • **Event-triggered campaigns** — trigger emails on custom events ('order_placed', 'feature_used', 'subscription_canceled') • **Audience segmentation** — filter users by properties + events for targeted campaigns • **Native integrations** — Stripe, Supabase, Segment, Webhooks, Zapier • **Analytics** — open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, deliverability dashboards per campaign • **Multi-domain sending** — send from multiple domains with shared analytics For SaaS founders the use cases: • **Transactional email infrastructure** — replace Postmark/SendGrid with API + better UX + same deliverability • **Onboarding email sequences** — 'Day 1 welcome, Day 3 feature highlight, Day 7 upgrade nudge' with conditional branches • **Lifecycle marketing** — feature announcement broadcasts to active users, dormant user re-engagement • **Product-led growth campaigns** — trigger emails on usage milestones to drive upgrades • **Subscription billing emails** — receipt, dunning, cancellation flows tied to Stripe events • **Founder updates / product newsletter** — broadcast to user audience with engagement tracking The pricing is per-contact and surprisingly competitive for the depth offered. Free tier covers 1,000 contacts + 2,000 emails/month — actually usable for early-stage products. Pro starts at $49/month for 5,000 contacts + 50,000 emails. Scale at $279/month covers 50K contacts + 500K emails. The pricing is meaningfully better than Customer.io ($150+ starting) and competitive with Postmark+Mailchimp dual-tool setups while replacing both. Where Loops wins clearly: the cleanest UX in the email category (designers genuinely enjoy using it), SaaS-native features (event triggers, user properties, conditional sequences) that Mailchimp doesn't offer well, modern API that developers want to integrate, deliverability quality comparable to Postmark + dedicated IPs available, and bundles transactional + marketing in one tool. Where it loses: less mature than Customer.io for very complex multi-step lifecycle automations, smaller ecosystem of integrations than Mailchimp's massive plugin library, deliverability for cold outbound (sales prospecting) is not the use case — Loops is for transactional + lifecycle to your own users. My take: for any SaaS founder shipping product email (transactional + lifecycle + marketing to your own users), Loops is the best choice on the market in 2026. The combination of clean UX, developer-friendly API, SaaS-native features, and reasonable pricing makes it the obvious pick. For cold outbound sales prospecting, use Lemlist or Apollo. For traditional newsletter publishing to a public audience, Beehiiv. For everything in between (the entire SaaS email stack), Loops. The 1K-contact free tier is genuinely useful for pre-launch and early-stage products — no good reason not to start there.