Loops vs Drip: what a software company pays for a tool built around stores
Drip charges for the number of active people on your list, from $39 for up to 2,500 to $699 at 50,000. Loops charges by subscribers too, but its slider reads $99 at about 10,000 and $249 at about 50,000, and it has a free plan. The gap is $55 a month at 10,000 and $450 at 50,000. Drip's extra cost buys store features, so a pure software product is paying for tools it will not use.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick Loops for a SaaS product: it is cheaper at every list size read, from $41 less at 5,000 to $450 less at 50,000, and its paid plan includes transactional sending. Pick Drip when the business also sells goods online through Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce and wants revenue traced back to each email. Drip's own pricing page says to pay for list size, not features you never use, so the question is whether your product needs store features at all.
The price curve side by side
Drip's figures are slider readouts for each list size, and Loops' are slider readouts a few contacts under the round number, all taken on 7 October 2026. The last column converts the monthly gap into a yearly cost.
| List size | Loops | Drip | Drip minus Loops, per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 5,000 | $48 at 4,788 | $89 | $492 |
| About 10,000 | $99 at 9,998 | $154 | $660 |
| About 25,000 | $198 at 24,339 | $369 | $2,052 |
| About 50,000 | $249 at 49,989 | $699 | $5,400 |
Drip's price at 50,000 is 2.8 times Loops', where at 5,000 it is 1.9 times. Drip also publishes stops in between, for example $49 at 3,000 people; $124 at 7,500; $209 at 15,000; $289 at 20,000; $449 at 30,000; and $609 at 40,000, so you can price an in-between list on its own page: drip.com/pricing. Loops' slider is at loops.so/pricing.
No free tier on one side, a hard cap on the other
Drip gives a 14-day trial without a card, then a paid plan from $39. Loops gives a standing free plan with every feature, but it sends only to the 1,000 newest contacts, up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days. For a product still validating its onboarding emails, that cap is rarely the problem; for a list that already has 3,000 people, it is, and the paid slider reads $48 at 4,788 subscribers.
What Drip bundles
The lower half of Drip's pricing page lists what comes at every list size: marketing across email, social and onsite popups, segmentation that follows browsing, buying and returning, one-click integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and more than 90 others, ready-made playbooks for welcome series, abandoned cart and win-back, revenue traced to the email that earned it, and an MCP connection for AI tools. The tiers up to 10,000 people cite up to 50 workflows. SMS is sold separately and priced by subscribers and message segments, and transactional email is billed inside Drip's usage model.
Support scales with the list: email support at 5,000 people, chat and email at 10,000, then free migration and personalized onboarding at 25,000. If you will be a Drip customer at 25,000, ask for the migration help in writing, because that is where the page promises it.
Product and billing events
Loops' Stripe app listens for checkout, customer, subscription and invoice events and lets you start a workflow from any enabled one. Its supported list includes customer.subscription.created, customer.subscription.paused, customer.subscription.deleted, invoice.paid and invoice.upcoming. For anything else, you POST an event with an email or userId to its events endpoint and the contact is created if it does not exist.
Drip's API reference lists calls to record an event, to record a batch of events, to create or update subscribers, to apply tags and to subscribe someone to an email series campaign. It also has cart, order and product endpoints, which shows where its model comes from. A SaaS using Drip would send its own named events for trial and payment states and treat the order and cart objects as unused. Drip lists Stripe as an integration, though I could not read its Stripe page on 7 October 2026, so the depth of that sync is not stated here.
Who should pick which
- A pure SaaS with onboarding, trial and billing sequences: Loops, and the savings compound as the list grows.
- A SaaS that also runs a shop, for example merchandise, templates or physical kits sold through Shopify or WooCommerce: Drip, because the store data and the product users sit in one account, at the price above.
- A creator or agency business that sells services and runs popups on its own site: Drip's onsite campaigns are a feature Loops does not list.
- A pre-revenue product with fewer than 1,000 users: Loops' free plan, with no trial clock.
Switching from Drip to Loops
- Export people with tags and custom fields. Map tags that mean "plan" or "stage" to Loops contact properties, since its workflows can start when a property changes from one value to another.
- Import suppressed and unsubscribed people as unsubscribed. A CSV import into Loops will not start "Contact added" workflows, so there is no accidental welcome blast.
- Recreate email series as workflows with timers. Cart and order based flows have no Loops equivalent and can be dropped for a product business.
- Keep Drip active for one month while the new domain settings, SPF and DKIM, build sending history.
More head-to-heads that use the same price curves:all comparisons, Klaviyo vs Drip, Encharge vs Drip, Omnisend vs Drip, Drip vs Userlist and Loops vs Klaviyo.
Loops vs Drip: common questions
Why is Drip so much more expensive than Loops at larger sizes?
Drip's price per person stays high as the list grows: $89 at 5,000 people; $154 at 10,000; $369 at 25,000; and $699 at 50,000. Loops' slider flattens, reading $48, $99, $198 and $249 at about the same sizes. At 50,000 the difference is $450 a month, or $5,400 a year. Drip's price includes store-oriented features such as onsite campaigns and revenue attribution, which a software product may never use.
Does Drip have a free plan?
No. Drip offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, then the paid tier for your list size, which starts at $39 for up to 2,500 people. Loops keeps a standing free plan: every feature is on, but delivery goes to the 1,000 newest contacts only, and sends stop at 4,000 in any rolling 30 days.
Does Drip limit how many emails I can send?
The slider reads unlimited email sends from the 2,500-person tier up to 30,000 people. At 40,000 people it lists 480,000 sends and at 50,000 people 600,000, which is twelve per person. Loops' paid plan states unlimited sends to subscribers.
Can Drip handle Stripe subscription emails?
Drip lists Stripe among its integrations, and its API has calls to record an event and to record events in batches. I could not open Drip's own Stripe integration page on 7 October 2026, so how much subscription data it syncs is not covered here. Loops documents a Stripe app that forwards invoice, checkout and subscription events straight into workflows.