ALMOST

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.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is
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

$0

Self-hosted campaigns with a subscriber database and an API.

knadh/listmonkfree · open source

React Email

$0

Build 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

Interest · last 30 days

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.

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