Head to head
SendHeronvs
Loops
SendHeron vs Loops
Two email tools built for SaaS, one priced on subscribed contacts with unlimited sends and hosted in the United States, the other priced on contact tiers with a pooled allowance, storing contact data in Germany, and starting from a drafted lifecycle suite rather than a blank canvas. Here is where each one wins.
Loops's prices are as of September 22, 2026, from its own pricing page.
Quick comparison
| At a glance | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | SaaS teams that want the lifecycle suite drafted for them, with contact data in the EU | Product-led SaaS that sends heavily and wants one polished tool for marketing and transactional mail |
| Starting price | €19/mo (Starter, 10,000 contacts, 50,000 emails a month) | $49/mo at 5,000 subscribed contacts; free to 1,000 |
| Billed on | Subscribed contacts, with a pooled monthly send allowance | Subscribed contacts, with unlimited sends on paid plans |
| Free plan or trial | 7-day free trial, 1,000 contacts and 5,000 sends, card at checkout | Free to 1,000 subscribed contacts and 4,000 sends in 30 days, with branding |
| Data residency | EU company; contact data stored in Germany | US-hosted (Astrodon Corporation); no EU hosting option stated |
Lifecycle automation
Both tools run sequences with triggers, delays and branches. The difference is where a sequence comes from: Loops starts empty, SendHeron starts from a drafted suite.
| Feature | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Visual sequence builder with delays and branches | Yes | Yes |
| A lifecycle suite drafted from your website at setup | Yes, as drafts you approve | Agent tooling drafts single campaigns |
| Enroll, pause, resume and bulk-enroll over the API | Yes | Contacts and events API |
Sending and deliverability
Loops's unlimited sends are its strongest card, and this table does not soften it. What SendHeron adds is what happens at the edges: when the allowance is spent, when a bounce lands, when a person unsubscribes from one brand.
| Feature | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Transactional and marketing from one account | Yes | Yes |
| Send allowance | Pooled monthly allowance per tier: 50,000 emails on Starter | Unlimited on paid plans; 4,000 per 30 days on Free |
| Transactional keeps flowing past the allowance | Yes, up to 10% over the pool | Not applicable, no allowance |
| A hard bounce blocks every stream, account-wide | Yes | Bounce suppression built in |
| SPF, DKIM and DMARC per sending domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free DNS checkers, no account needed | SPF, DKIM, DMARC, deliverability test | no |
Templates and editing
| Feature | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Block editor, no HTML required | Yes | Editor built on reusable components and one theme |
| Variables at send time | Yes | Yes |
API, agents and hosting
Both ship a REST API and a Node package. Loops is ahead on agent tooling; SendHeron is ahead on how narrowly a key can be scoped and on where the data lives.
| Feature | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| REST API on every tier | Yes | Contacts and events API, npm package |
| Official Node SDK | Yes | Yes |
| Published rate limits | 100 requests a minute per key, plus organisation ceilings | Send rate only |
| Tooling for AI agents | Scoped tokens and a plain REST surface | CLI and MCP server |
| Where contact data is stored | Germany; EU company | United States; no EU option |
| Published sub-processor list and DPA on request | Yes | DPA and DPF listed in the footer |
| Several products under one subscription | Workspaces; unsubscribes per project, bounces account-wide | Multiple teams, billed separately per team |
| Team seats | Owner, Admin, Editor, Viewer; account-wide roles | Free, unlimited |
Plans and billing
| Feature | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | no | 1,000 subscribed contacts, 4,000 sends in 30 days, branding |
| Trial | 7 days, 1,000 contacts and 5,000 sends, card at checkout | Not needed; the free plan is the trial |
| What is billed | Subscribed contacts; unsubscribed and bounced stored free | Subscribed contacts; unsubscribed not counted |
| Largest published tier | 200,000 contacts (Max, €179/mo) | 1.5 million subscribers ($4,799/mo), custom above |
| Billing period | Monthly | Monthly |
Pricing comparison
Both tools price on subscribed contacts, so the comparison is direct. The difference is the shape: Loops moves in slider steps with unlimited sends, SendHeron in four tiers each with a pooled send allowance.
| Scenario | SendHeron | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000 contacts, 25,000 emails a month | €19/mo (Starter) | $49/mo |
| 10,000 contacts, 50,000 emails a month | €19/mo (Starter, at its ceiling) | $99/mo |
| 25,000 contacts, 100,000 emails a month | €49/mo (Growth) | $199/mo |
SendHeron prices in EUR, VAT included where it applies; Loops in USD. Both on monthly billing. Loops labels its steps approximately (4,958 and 9,900 for the 5,000 and 10,000 tiers). SendHeron's rows assume sends within the tier's pool (50,000 on Starter, 150,000 on Growth); Loops has no send cap on paid plans, so a heavy sender on a small list should weigh that before the price.
Strengths at a glance
Where Loops wins
- 01Unlimited sends on paid plans. Loops caps nothing above the free tier and sends at up to 1,000 emails a second. SendHeron's tiers carry a pooled allowance, generous relative to the contact cap but a ceiling all the same.
- 02A real free plan. 1,000 subscribed contacts and 4,000 sends in any 30 days, all features, with a small footer. SendHeron has a 7-day trial and nothing free after it.
- 03A bigger brand and a longer customer list. Loops's customer page names Framer, Linear, Perplexity and Clerk. SendHeron's proof is that it runs PostFast's lifecycle email in production.
- 04Agent tooling. A CLI and an MCP server, positioned at a developer installing the SDK. SendHeron's answer is scoped tokens and a plain REST surface, which an agent can use but which is not built for one.
- 05Free, unlimited team seats. SendHeron has four account-wide roles and no per-workspace permissions.
- 06Scale. Loops publishes prices to 1.5 million subscribers. SendHeron's largest tier is 200,000 contacts.
- 07The editor and the integrations list. Reusable components with one theme, and native connections to Stripe, Supabase, Clerk, PostHog, Segment, Auth0, Zapier and Make.
Where SendHeron wins
- 01The suite is drafted, and a person approves it. Paste a website URL and the setup proposes the tag schema and drafts welcome, trial, win-back and cancel-save as sequences with real branches. Nothing activates until you switch it on. Loops starts empty.
- 02Contact data stored in the EU. An EU company with the database in Germany, a published sub-processor list and a DPA on request. Loops's privacy policy transfers data to the United States with no EU option.
- 03Price. Starter is €19 a month for up to 10,000 subscribed contacts and 50,000 emails; Loops is $49 at 5,000 and $99 at 10,000.
- 04One allowance, and transactional never stops. Marketing and receipts share one pool, one reputation and one suppression list, and transactional mail keeps flowing up to 10 percent past a spent pool.
- 05Scoped keys. 12 scopes, so a key that reads contacts cannot send, and an agent or a cron job gets exactly the surface it needs.
- 06Several products, one subscription. A workspace per product with its own contacts, tags, sequences, templates, sending domains and keys; unsubscribes per project, bounces account-wide. Loops bills each team separately.
- 07Free deliverability tools. SPF, DKIM and DMARC checkers, a DMARC record generator and a deliverability test, with no account.
Which tool is right for you?
Choose Loops if:
- You send heavily to a small or medium list and unlimited sends matter more than the price per tier
- You want a free plan to grow into rather than a trial
- Your team lives in the CLI and wants agent tooling the vendor built
- US hosting is fine for your customers and your buyers
- Your list is, or will be, above 200,000 subscribers
Choose SendHeron if:
- Your customer data has to be stored in the EU and you want that to be structural, not contractual
- Your lifecycle suite is unbuilt or half-built and you would rather approve drafts than design from scratch
- You run several products and want one subscription with a workspace each
- You want a key that can read contacts without being able to send
- You want €19 a month to cover 10,000 contacts and 50,000 emails
Switching from Loops to SendHeron
Export your subscribed contacts from Loops's Audience page, then upsert each one over the API with the tags your sequences will trigger on; the Node SDK wraps the calls and the API reference states the rate limits to pace against. Loops's contact properties become SendHeron properties, and the events your product sent to Loops become tags or tracked events, whichever your sequences branch on.
Load your unsubscribes as suppressions before anything sends, so nobody who opted out of Loops's mail hears from you by accident; a suppressed address is refused at send time with a stable reason. Templates paste in as HTML, from Loops's editor, and you can keep them as HTML or rebuild them in the block builder.
Loops themselves are rebuilt, because the two tools model branching differently. That is the part the setup is for: paste your website URL, edit the proposed tag schema, and read the drafted suite before you activate anything. Run both tools in parallel for the length of the trial, new signups into SendHeron and Loops draining down, and we help map the old flows onto the new ones during onboarding.
Weighing more than these two?See every Loops alternative
Frequently asked questions
Learn more
- The REST API, scopes and rate limits
- Transactional and marketing on one account
- Templates: blocks or HTML, compiled on the server
- The API reference
- GDPR, data residency and the sub-processor list
- Roles and permissions
- Loops vs Customer.io for SaaS
- SendHeron pricing, with the competitor comparison
- How the visual sequence builder works
- Tags and segments
- EU data residency, and what we can and cannot prove
Compare other platforms
The same figures, from another vendor's side.
- AlternativesLoops alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- AlternativesCustomer.io alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- AlternativesPlunk alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- AlternativesSequenzy alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- Head to headSendHeron vs Customer.ioSendHeron vs Customer.io at 5,000 and 10,000 contacts: €19 a month on SendHeron Starter against $100 and about $145 on Customer.io Essentials, with feature tables and where each one wins.
- Head to headSendHeron vs PlunkSendHeron vs Plunk: €19 a month with 50,000 emails included on SendHeron Starter against $0.001 an email with unlimited contacts on Plunk, with feature tables and where each one wins.
- BlogLoops vs Customer.io for SaaSA longer read from the SendHeron blog.
- Every comparison, in one place/alternatives
Loops's name and logo are trademarks of its owner, shown to identify the product compared. Live pricing drifts, so confirm on the vendor's site before you commit.