Loops vs Mailchimp: the 50% offer, the renewal price and what a SaaS actually needs
At list price Mailchimp Standard is $100 for up to 5,000 contacts, $135 for up to 10,000 and $310 for up to 25,000, while Loops is $48, $99 and $198 at the same sizes. Mailchimp's 50 percent first-year offer closes the gap and even reverses it at 10,000 and 25,000 contacts, but the price returns to list after 12 months. Over two years at 10,000 contacts the totals are $2,430 for Mailchimp and $2,376 for Loops, which makes Loops slightly cheaper.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick Mailchimp if you want popup forms, custom-coded templates, SMS and a familiar tool for a mixed marketing team, and you can budget for the renewal price. Pick Loops if your emails are triggered by product and billing events and you would rather not model a price that doubles at month 13. For a list under 1,000 people that needs automation, Loops' free plan is stronger than Mailchimp's 250-contact one.
List price, first-year price and the two-year total
Mailchimp's numbers are the Standard plan's contact bands on its pricing page, with the "save 50% for 12 months" price beside each, read on 7 October 2026. Loops' are slider readouts from the same day. The two-year column adds twelve months at the offer price and twelve at list for Mailchimp, against twenty-four at the Loops price, assuming the list size and prices stay put.
| Contacts | Loops | Mailchimp Standard list | Mailchimp first 12 months | Two-year totals (Loops / Mailchimp) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,501 to 5,000 | $48 at 4,788 | $100 | $50 | $1,152 / $1,800 |
| 5,001 to 10,000 | $99 at 9,998 | $135 | $67.50 | $2,376 / $2,430 |
| 20,001 to 25,000 | $198 at 24,339 | $310 | $155 | $4,752 / $5,580 |
At list price Loops saves $52, $36 and $112 a month across the three bands, or $624, $432 and $1,344 a year. In year one alone Mailchimp's offer beats Loops by $31.50 a month at 10,000 contacts ($378 over the year) and $43 a month at 25,000 ($516), while at 5,000 contacts Loops is $2 a month cheaper even against the offer. Data: mailchimp.com/pricing and loops.so/pricing.
Three Mailchimp plans, one Loops plan
Mailchimp's plan table splits what a SaaS would need. Essentials starts at $13 a month at 0 to 500 contacts, allows 3 seats and three audiences, sends 10 times the contact count per month and limits automations to 4 flow steps. Standard starts at $20, sends 12 times the contact count, gives 5 seats, 5 audiences and up to 200 flows, and lets you create and send custom-coded templates. On Essentials you can create such templates but must upgrade to send them. Premium starts at $350, with 15 times the contacts in sends and unlimited users. At the 5,001 to 10,000 band, Standard allows up to 120,000 emails a month.
Loops has no plan ladder. Every paid subscriber count gets all features, unlimited sends to subscribers and transactional sending, with no per-seat charge. Mailchimp warns that overages apply when the contact or email limit is exceeded; a Loops subscriber slider is the only variable.
Free plans and trials
Mailchimp's Free plan has one seat, one audience, up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with 250 a day at most. Loops' Early Stage plan allows 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts, all features, a small "Powered by Loops" footer, and 10 emails per second. That is four times the contacts and eight times the sends. Mailchimp also shows a 14-day Standard trial and a free-month Premium offer.
Reacting to Stripe and product events
Mailchimp's strengths are aimed at marketers: segmentation, templates, popup forms, SMS and integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva and Zapier. For subscription events, Stripe's developer docs list a Mailchimp sync in private preview that sends customer and purchase data and can trigger automations and audience tags on purchases, subscriptions or refunds. The page offers no list of event names, so confirm the set of events you need exists before building on it.
Loops publishes its list. Its Stripe app accepts customer.subscription.created, customer.subscription.trial_will_end, customer.subscription.paused, customer.subscription.resumed, customer.subscription.deleted, invoice.paid, invoice.payment_failed and invoice.upcoming, among others, and each can start a workflow. Your own backend can add anything else by POSTing an event with an email or userId.
Which team belongs where
- Mailchimp suits companies where a marketer runs newsletters, promotions and signup forms for a general audience, and where an SMS channel or a large template library matters.
- Loops suits a product team that wants sequences triggered by signups, plan changes and Stripe events, and a price that moves only with subscribers.
- Neither is the right answer for a store; Mailchimp vs Klaviyo covers that.
Switching from Mailchimp to Loops
- Export every audience, keeping subscribed, unsubscribed and cleaned addresses separate, and import the latter two as unsubscribed so they are never mailed.
- Collapse Mailchimp's multiple audiences into one Loops audience, using mailing lists for what the audiences meant and contact properties for tags.
- Rebuild automations as workflows. Loops will not run "Contact added" workflows for CSV imports, so the migration will not mail people a second welcome.
- Move transactional mail last if you use Mailchimp's separate transactional product, and authenticate the new domain first.
Other angles on the same decision:all comparisons, Loops vs MailerLite, Loops vs Klaviyo, Mailchimp vs Brevo and Mailchimp vs MailerLite.
Loops vs Mailchimp: common questions
Is Mailchimp cheaper than Loops?
Not at list price. Mailchimp Standard lists $100 for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts, $135 for 5,001 to 10,000 and $310 for 20,001 to 25,000. Loops is $48, $99 and $198 at about the same sizes. Mailchimp's 50 percent offer for the first 12 months turns those into $50, $67.50 and $155, which beats Loops for year one at 10,000 and 25,000 but not at 5,000. After the offer ends, the price doubles.
How do the free plans compare?
Loops' free plan covers the 1,000 newest contacts and 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, with all features. Mailchimp's free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with a daily maximum of 250, one seat and one audience. Mailchimp says sending is paused when the contact or send limit is exceeded.
Can Mailchimp react to Stripe subscription events?
Stripe's developer documentation describes a Mailchimp sync, in private preview when read on 7 October 2026, that sends customer and purchase data to Mailchimp and can trigger automations and manage audience tags on purchases, subscriptions or refunds. Loops has a live Stripe app that forwards events like invoice.payment_failed and customer.subscription.deleted into workflows.
Does Mailchimp include transactional email?
It sells it as a separate product: the pricing page has an Email Marketing tab and a Transactional tab. Loops includes transactional sending on its paid plan at no additional charge, and on the free plan counts it against the 4,000 rolling sends.