Loops unlocks every feature on the free plan, then meters the sends

54 places Loops at the top of our Limited band, and the pillars pull hard in opposite directions. Feature depth scores 70 because everything is included, which is genuinely unusual. Generosity scores 48 because 4,000 sends is a development-stage allowance once transactional traffic starts drawing on it, and freedom scores 48 because Loops branding sits in every free footer and the free plan has been revised more than once.

That last point is the one we weigh most heavily, and it is worth saying plainly rather than burying: a free tier whose numbers have moved before can move again, and people build onboarding flows on these things. Our verdict below still lands a step above where a 54 would normally sit, and the reason is that the free plan is the complete product rather than a sampler of it.

The caps are simple and they interact in a way that surprises SaaS teams (as of July 2026):

• Under 1,000 contacts.
• 4,000 sends per 30 days. Four emails per contact if your list is full.
• Transactional email counts against that same allowance. This is the important one. Receipts, password resets, magic links and invite emails all draw on the marketing budget, so an app with real users burns the allowance far faster than the contact number suggests.
• Loops branding sits at the bottom of every free email.

What is not limited is the feature set, and that deserves saying. Automation loops, segmentation, the editor and the transactional API are all on the free plan with nothing held back to force an upgrade.

The gaps are in the product rather than the plan: no landing pages, no popups, no paid-newsletter features, and segmentation that is simpler than a dedicated marketing platform's. Loops assumes you have an application sending it events, so a writer with a newsletter gets very little from the way it is designed.

One paid plan, $49 a month for 5,000 contacts, and it is the steepest first step in this category with nothing in between. What it buys is coherent, at least: unlimited sends, no branding, transactional email included at no extra charge, and team seats that are not billed separately. Price is purely a function of contact count, so there are no tiers to decode and no feature you are being upsold.

That absence of a middle rung is the real pricing story. Every other tool here has a $7 to $13 step you can take when the free plan tightens. Loops asks you to go from nothing to $49, which is fine for a funded product and awkward for a side project at 1,100 contacts. Work out where you will be in six months before you wire the transactional API into your app, because migrating that later is more work than migrating a newsletter.

Against running a marketing tool and a separate transactional provider, $49 including both is competitive rather than expensive. Judged as an upgrade from free, it is a cliff.

The thing people upgrade for is the send allowance, and usually because transactional volume ate it.

Yes, within limits, which is one band above where a score of 54 would normally land. The reason for the departure: the free plan is the entire product with nothing switched off, and a pre-launch or early-stage SaaS can run its onboarding sequences, its receipts and its newsletter on it for months without paying or handing over a card.

Who lives here comfortably: a product in private beta with a few hundred users, a small team validating an idea, anyone whose app sends fewer than a few thousand emails a month in total. That covers a real slice of the audience this tool is built for.

Who cannot: any product with traction, because transactional volume and marketing volume share one 4,000-send meter and users generate transactional email whether you are campaigning or not. Anyone who needs the branding gone. And any newsletter writer, because Loops is designed around applications sending events and offers no landing pages or popups.

If your emails are marketing rather than product, Sender's free plan hands out nearly four times the sends, and Brevo's free plan does transactional alongside marketing with a much larger contact allowance. Free Loops alternatives has the full list, and the best free email marketing tools ranks the category.