ActiveCampaign vs Loops

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and marketing automation platform headquartered in Chicago. Jason VandeBoom founded it in 2003 as on-premises software before it moved to SaaS. Its core job is to send the right email, SMS or WhatsApp message at the right time based on what a contact does, using a visual automation builder with branching logic.

The automation builder handles multi-step journeys with waits, conditions, goals and split tests, triggered by site visits, purchases, form fills, tags or CRM events. Campaigns use 250+ templates and, on Pro, predictive sending, conditional content and attribution. Since 2025 the Active Intelligence layer adds AI agents that build segments, automations and brand kits, a conversational workspace, and a remote MCP server; every plan includes 500 AI credits a month. Plans are priced by contacts: Starter ($19/month for 1,000 contacts billed monthly) covers email and automation, Plus adds landing pages, generative AI and SMS, Pro adds advanced segmentation and three seats, and Enterprise adds SSO, HIPAA support and custom objects. CRM pipelines, WhatsApp and transactional email are add-ons.

ActiveCampaign suits SMBs, ecommerce stores and agencies that need deep automation without HubSpot pricing. Mailchimp is easier for simple newsletters, Brevo and MailerLite are cheaper at large lists, and HubSpot is stronger as an all-in-one CRM.

Buying tip: prices rise steeply with contact count, so clean inactive contacts before upgrading. The 14-day trial needs no card, and annual billing saves roughly 17 to 21%.

Loops is an email platform built specifically for SaaS companies by a small team focused on lifecycle email. It brings marketing campaigns, event-triggered onboarding sequences (called loops) and transactional emails into one product, so a startup does not need Mailchimp for newsletters and a separate API service for password resets.

Contacts and their properties are synced through the API, SDKs and integrations such as Segment, Zapier, Stripe and Supabase, and product events trigger loops that branch on behavior. The editor is minimal and Notion-like, encouraging clean emails that look personal and land in the inbox, with optional styling and components. Transactional emails share the same contacts and domain setup, with separate unsubscribe handling. Pricing is based on the number of contacts, with a free tier for early products and paid plans that include unlimited sends.

Loops fits early and growth-stage SaaS teams that want lifecycle email done well without a complex marketing automation suite. Its limits are design depth, advanced segmentation, A/B testing and channels: there is no SMS or push. Customer.io is the step up when you need multichannel messaging and complex logic, Resend and Postmark are developer-first transactional services, and Brevo or Mailchimp suit businesses that need e-commerce features and heavy template design.