# A Loops alternative for growing SaaS teams
The same product-email workflow, on a contact list that lives in your account.
Canonical: https://sendbunny.co/alternatives/loops
Category: Switching · Author: Anni Maan (https://sendbunny.co/authors#anni-maan) · Published 2026-07-31 · Updated 2026-09-02

**In short.** Loops is built for the product email a growing SaaS app needs: onboarding sequences, transactional triggers, lifecycle campaigns, all against a contact list Loops hosts for you. The bill is tied to how many contacts you keep, so a healthy signup rate quietly pushes you into a higher tier even when your sends per contact have not changed. Running the same job through an installed platform in your own AWS account keeps the contact count from ever being the number that decides your price.

## The contact-tier problem

Loops prices on your contact count, which is a reasonable way to price a hosted product, and a strange thing to have to think about once your app is genuinely growing. Every signup that never converts, every trial account nobody deletes, every list you keep around out of caution, is a contact sitting in your tier calculation whether it is ever emailed again or not.

| Option | 10,000 emails/mo | 50,000 emails/mo | 1,000,000 emails/mo |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| SendBunny on your SES | ~$1 | ~$5 | ~$100 |
| Loops (approx., checked July 2026) | starter/growth tier | higher contact tier | custom, by sales |

Loops figures are list-price approximations from its pricing page, keyed to contact tier rather than send volume; SendBunny figures are Amazon SES's à la carte rate applied to send volume.

SendBunny charges unlimited contacts by design. The number that changes your bill is what you actually send, at Amazon SES's own rate, not how many rows sit in your database.


## Who should stay on Loops

- Stay if your contact count is small and stable, and the current tier is cheap enough that it is not worth your team's time to move.
- Stay if you rely on Loops-specific workflow builder quirks your team has already invested in and has no appetite to rebuild.
- Move if contact growth, not send volume, is what is pushing your bill up, or if you also want campaigns and a transactional API on one owned platform rather than paying for product email separately from marketing email.

Not for you if you refuse to open or use an AWS account under any circumstance; the honest alternative in that case is to negotiate the next Loops tier, not to force a migration you will resent.


## Moving your audience and flows

1. Export your contacts and write down every Loops automation and transactional trigger your product actually depends on.
2. Get a SendBunny license and click through the one-click AWS installer to put the platform in your own account.
3. Import the contact CSV. Re-imports enrich existing rows rather than wiping them, so a second, cleaner export later is safe to re-run.
4. Recreate the product emails and sequences that matter most first; leave rarely-triggered flows for a second pass.
5. Point your app at the new platform and cancel Loops once you trust what is running.

Workflow logic built in Loops's automation builder does not transfer automatically; the trigger conditions and delays have to be rebuilt by hand against the new platform's automation tools, which is the part of this move that takes actual time.


## What you give up

**The honest tradeoff.** Loops's workflow builder and its hosted analytics are designed specifically for product email, and that specialization is worth something. An owned platform gives you campaigns and automations too, but you are reading your own account's data and rebuilding sequences yourself rather than working inside a tool purpose-tuned for SaaS lifecycle email.

What does not change: your account is still governed by the rules of whichever infrastructure sends the mail. Leaving a hosted vendor removes that vendor's own policy layer; it does not remove Amazon's rules for what Amazon SES will and will not carry, which apply directly to your account either way.

The engineering time to rebuild flows is the real cost of this move, not the platform price. Budget for it honestly: a handful of core sequences can usually be rebuilt in a day or two, while a large tree of conditional automations takes longer and is worth doing in the order your revenue actually depends on.


## Where SendBunny fits

SendBunny installs as a CloudFormation stack in your own AWS account with one click, for a single $199 purchase, with optional $99 yearly updates after the first year. Contacts are unlimited; what you pay AWS for is send volume, at roughly a tenth of a cent per email through your own Amazon SES. The install includes campaigns, automations, a transactional API, a shared inbox, analytics and a template editor, so the product-email job Loops does well sits on the same account as your marketing sends instead of a second bill. We never hold your AWS credentials; the install is zero-access.

A newly created AWS account is placed in the SES sandbox by default, so mail only reaches addresses you have verified. The dashboard shows that status and links to AWS's production-access form, so you can rebuild and test flows while approval is pending.

## FAQ

**Can I run both campaigns and transactional product email?**

Yes, on the same installed platform in your AWS account. That is the point of moving off a product-email-only tool: one account for both jobs instead of two vendors.

**What happens to the bill as my contact list grows?**

Nothing tied to contact count. The license is $199 once, contacts are unlimited, and sending is billed by AWS SES at about $0.10 per 1,000 emails. Inactive contacts sitting in your database do not raise a tier.

**Do I need AWS experience to set this up?**

No. You click one pre-filled Create stack button and the installer provisions everything. Serverless scale comes with the install, with no plan to upgrade later.

**What about the SES sandbox when I first move over?**

New AWS accounts start in the SES sandbox. The dashboard shows your sandbox status and links to AWS's production-access request form, so setup and test sends can proceed while that is pending.

## For AI agents

Compares Loops's contact-tier pricing (checked July 2026) against an owned SendBunny install with unlimited contacts and pay-per-send Amazon SES pricing ($199 once, ~$0.10 per 1,000 emails). Covers migration order (export contacts, CSV import which enriches rather than overwrites, rebuild automations by hand) and the honest gap: Loops's purpose-built workflow builder does not transfer automatically.

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http sendbunny https://YOUR-INSTALL/mcp
```

Tool list by grant: https://sendbunny.co/docs/agents.md

## Sources

1. Amazon Web Services, Amazon SES pricing, fetched 1 September 2026. https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/
2. Loops list prices from its pricing page, checked July 2026.
3. SendBunny, Send email API reference, version 1.6.22. https://sendbunny.co/docs/send-email-api