Mailgun vs Loops for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Mailgun Overview

Mailgun is a mature, developer-oriented email platform owned by Sinch. It handles every type of email: transactional, bulk marketing, and operational. The API supports both REST and SMTP, which means you can integrate it whether you are writing code or configuring a CMS. Features include email validation, inbound routing, mailing list management, and detailed delivery analytics.

The platform is built for flexibility. You can send a single transactional email, manage subscriber lists for newsletters, validate email addresses before sending, and receive inbound emails for processing. The SDKs are available for every major language, and webhooks let you track delivery events in real time.

Mailgun's trial starts with a sandbox, and the Foundation plan at $35/month unlocks 50,000 emails with dedicated IP options. For solo developers who need a general-purpose email platform that handles multiple use cases, Mailgun covers the bases without requiring multiple services.

Loops Overview

Loops is built from the ground up for SaaS companies. Instead of being a generic email delivery service, it is designed around the SaaS user lifecycle: signup, onboarding, engagement, conversion, and retention. Every feature supports that workflow.

The visual flow builder is the centerpiece. You create automated email sequences triggered by user events. A user signs up, they get a welcome email. Three days later, they get an onboarding tip. If they have not activated a key feature after a week, they get a nudge. All of this is configured visually without writing scheduling logic in your backend.

Contact management tracks user properties (plan type, last login, features used) and lets you segment your audience for targeted campaigns. Transactional email is supported through the API for one-off sends like password resets. But Loops is really about ongoing user communication, not just individual message delivery.

The free tier supports 1,000 contacts, and the $49/month plan covers 5,000 contacts.

Key Differences

Philosophical approach. Mailgun is an email delivery service. It sends what you tell it to send. Loops is an email engagement platform. It helps you decide what to send, when to send it, and to whom. If you want infrastructure, pick Mailgun. If you want strategy, pick Loops.

Automation depth. Loops has a visual automation builder with triggers, delays, conditions, and branching. You design entire email journeys without code. Mailgun has no automation features. To build a drip campaign with Mailgun, you write the timing and conditional logic in your application and call Mailgun's API at each step. That is a significant amount of custom code.

Contact management. Loops tracks user properties, events, and segments. You can see which users are on free vs paid plans, who has been inactive for two weeks, and send targeted messages to each group. Mailgun has basic mailing list management but nothing close to the CRM-like contact tracking Loops offers.

Email validation and inbound routing. Mailgun validates email addresses and processes inbound emails. Loops does neither. If you need to verify addresses before sending or receive and parse incoming emails, Mailgun handles those use cases.

Pricing model. Mailgun charges based on emails sent. Loops charges based on contacts stored. For a SaaS with 3,000 users sending moderate email, Loops costs $49/month. Mailgun would be $35/month for the same volume. At small scale the costs are similar, but they diverge based on your sending patterns.

Target audience. Mailgun works for any type of application: e-commerce, SaaS, media, internal tools. Loops is specifically designed for SaaS products and their user lifecycle. If you are building a SaaS, Loops speaks your language. If you are building something else, Mailgun is more versatile.

When to Choose Mailgun

• You need a general-purpose email platform that works for any application type
• Email validation is important for maintaining sender reputation
• You need inbound email processing for reply parsing or support flows
• You want SMTP relay support alongside REST API
• You are building something other than a SaaS product

When to Choose Loops

• You are building a SaaS and want purpose-built email tooling
• Visual automation builders save you from coding email sequence logic
• Contact segmentation and user lifecycle tracking are part of your strategy
• You want transactional and marketing email in one SaaS-focused platform
• Speed of setting up onboarding flows and drip campaigns matters more than raw infrastructure features

The Verdict

These tools target different developers with different needs. If you are building a SaaS product, Loops is almost certainly the better choice. The visual automation builder, contact management, and SaaS-specific workflows save you days of custom development compared to building the same thing on Mailgun's API. Setting up a full onboarding email sequence in Loops takes an afternoon. Building it with Mailgun takes days of backend code.

If you are not building a SaaS, or if you need features like email validation, inbound routing, or high-volume bulk sending, Mailgun is the more versatile platform. It handles use cases that Loops was never designed for.

My take for solo SaaS developers: go with Loops. The time savings from the automation builder alone justify the cost. You will ship your email strategy in hours instead of days, and that time goes back into building features your users actually pay for. Mailgun is a solid platform, but for SaaS email, Loops was purpose-built and it shows.