Kit vs Loops

Kit, known as ConvertKit until its 2024 rebrand, is an email marketing platform built for creators: newsletter writers, course creators, podcasters, coaches and YouTubers who earn money directly from an audience. Founded by Nathan Barry in 2013 and based in Boise, Idaho, the company has stayed focused on one job, helping a single creator or a small media business grow and monetize an owned email list.

The product favors substance over design. The editor is text-first, which keeps emails personal and helps deliverability, while subscribers are organized with tags and segments rather than separate lists, so one person is never counted twice. A visual automation builder reacts to form signups, link clicks and purchases, and landing pages, forms and a link-in-bio page are included. Kit Commerce sells digital products, paid newsletters and tips; the Creator Network lets other newsletters recommend yours, and a referral program rewards readers who share. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends; Creator and Pro plans are priced by list size and add unlimited automations, integrations, subscriber scoring and deeper reporting.

Kit fits independent creators who value simple, reliable automation and built-in monetization. It is a poor match for image-heavy retail campaigns or B2B lead management. beehiiv is the main rival for media-style newsletters with an ad network, Substack suits writers who want a social platform and take a revenue share, and Mailchimp or Klaviyo are better for online stores.

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.