Loops
A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.
Email for software companies: one place for marketing campaigns, product loops and transactional mail, with events sent from your app driving who receives what.
Build me one email system for both marketing and transactional mail.
STACK
- Postgres, a worker process, and Resend or SES for delivery
ONE CONTACT
- A single contacts table keyed on email, with properties as JSON and an array of tags
- Every send — campaign, sequence or transactional — writes to one messages table against that contact
EVENTS FROM THE APP
- POST /event {email, name, properties}
- Events are appended, never updated, and are what sequences read
SEQUENCES
- Steps: wait, send, branch on a property or a recent event, exit
- A scheduler pass every few minutes finds due steps; a contact can be in one sequence at a time
FREQUENCY, WHICH IS THE POINT
- A global rule: no more than N marketing emails per contact per week
- Transactional mail ignores that cap; marketing never does
TEMPLATES
- MJML compiled at build time, plain-text part always generated
Include the schema, the scheduler and a README on the frequency rule.What you lose
- One contact record shared by campaigns, sequences and transactional mail, so a person is never emailed twice by two systems
- Deliverability on a managed sending domain, warmed for you
- A visual sequence builder with branching on events your app sends
If you would rather not build
- Customer.io, for the same shape as a service
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Listmonk
$0Self-hosted campaigns with a subscriber database and an API.
knadh/listmonkfree · open source
React Email
$0Build email templates as components; renders to Outlook-safe HTML.
resend/react-emailfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
54/100
Verdict kinda at 54. The single contact record is the good idea here and is easy to copy; the branching builder and deliverability are the weekend.
History
tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
Questions about Loops
answered from the record above
Is Loops free?
No — the plan we track is $49 a month. Pro from around $49/month billed monthly for 5,000 contacts, rising with the contact count.
Can you replace Loops by building your own?
ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 54 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Loops cost?
$49 a month on Pro — $588 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Loops?
One contact record shared by campaigns, sequences and transactional mail, so a person is never emailed twice by two systems; Deliverability on a managed sending domain, warmed for you; A visual sequence builder with branching on events your app sends. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Loops?
Yes: Listmonk, React Email. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
Related entries
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