Resend vs Loops for Solo Developers

Resend and Loops are both modern email platforms built for developers, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Resend is a transactional email API. Loops is an email marketing platform with transactional capabilities. Understanding where each excels will help you decide whether you need one, the other, or both.

Resend Overview

Resend is a developer-first transactional email API. It handles the emails your application sends automatically: password resets, welcome messages, order confirmations, notification digests, and similar system-triggered communications.

The API is clean and minimal. You make a POST request with a sender, recipient, subject, and HTML body. React Email integration lets you build templates with JSX components. SDKs cover Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, and PHP. The dashboard provides delivery status, open rates, and click tracking.

Resend's free tier includes 3,000 emails per month. Paid plans start at $20/month for 50,000 emails. It is purely focused on sending emails programmatically through your application code.

Loops Overview

Loops is an email marketing platform designed specifically for SaaS companies. It combines transactional email sending with marketing features like drip campaigns, audience segmentation, newsletters, and event-triggered automation. Think of it as a modern alternative to Mailchimp or Customer.io, but built with a developer-friendly approach.

The platform provides a visual email editor, audience management with custom properties, loop sequences (automated email flows triggered by events or time delays), and a transactional email API. You can send both marketing campaigns and transactional emails from the same platform.

Loops offers a free tier with 1,000 contacts. Paid plans start at $49/month for up to 5,000 contacts. Pricing is contact-based rather than email-based, which is standard for marketing platforms but different from transactional services.

Comparison Table

When to Pick Resend

Resend is the right choice when your email needs are purely transactional:

• Your application sends automated emails (auth flows, notifications, receipts) and that is all you need.
• You want the best API and developer experience for programmatic email sending.
• React Email templates are part of your workflow.
• Budget matters and $20/month for 50,000 emails beats contact-based pricing.
• You handle marketing email through a separate tool or do not do email marketing at all.

If you are building a SaaS and just need reliable transactional email, Resend is purpose-built for that. Do not pay for marketing features you will not use.

When to Pick Loops

Loops is the better choice when you need both transactional and marketing email in one platform:

• You want to send onboarding drip sequences to new signups.
• Newsletter or product update emails are part of your growth strategy.
• Audience segmentation (free users vs paid, active vs inactive) matters for your communication.
• Event-triggered automation (user hits a milestone, send an email) is valuable for your product.
• You prefer managing all email from one dashboard rather than juggling multiple tools.

For SaaS solo developers, Loops can replace both your transactional email service and your marketing email tool. That consolidation has real value when you are trying to keep your tool count low.

Verdict

These tools are not really competing. They solve different problems.

Pick Resend if you need transactional email and nothing else. It is cheaper, the API is better for programmatic sending, and React Email support makes template development genuinely enjoyable.

Pick Loops if you need email marketing alongside transactional sending. The ability to run drip campaigns, segment your audience, and send newsletters from the same platform that handles your transactional email is powerful. The $49/month starting price is reasonable if it replaces a separate marketing tool.

Many solo developers use both. Resend for transactional emails (fast, cheap, great API) and Loops (or a similar tool) for marketing campaigns and sequences. If you are just starting out and budget is tight, start with Resend for transactional email and add marketing email later when you have users to market to. You cannot drip-campaign an empty user base.