Email Marketing · head to head
Loops vs Sailthru
Sailthru
Email Marketing
Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Loops has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Loops free plan limited to 1000 subscribed contacts; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Loops and Sailthru actually diverge.
Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Email Marketing).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Loops
Nothing recorded that Sailthru does not also cover.
Only in Sailthru
- Interest profiles
- Personalisation engine
- Prediction Manager
- Site personalisation
- Zephyr templating
- Lifecycle optimiser
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Loops
- Setting up lifecycle email from onboarding to winbacknot Sailthru
- Consolidating product, marketing, and transactional emailsnot Sailthru
- Designing email themes picked up automaticallynot Sailthru
- Tracking revenue attribution to specific emailsnot Sailthru
Sailthru
- A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Loops
- A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Loops
- High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Loops
- Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Loops
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Loops
- Free plan limited to 1000 subscribed contacts
- Free plan limited to 4000 sends per month
- Free plan includes Powered by Loops branding footer
- Paid plan pricing not publicly specified, requires using pricing calculator
Sailthru
- The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
- Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
- On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
- Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
- It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.
Pricing, plan by plan
Loops
Free- FreeFree
- Up to 1000 subscribed contacts
- Up to 4000 sends per month
- Up to 10 emails per second
Sailthru
On request- Sailthru$undefined/year
- Priced on stored profiles and send volume
- Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
- Annual contract through Marigold
Which should you pick?
Choose Sailthru if
- You need interest profiles.
- You work on Web, REST API.
- You also want personalisation engine.
Questions people ask
- Is Loops or Sailthru better?
- Neither clearly leads. Loops starts at Free and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Loops or Sailthru?
- Loops has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Loops and On request for Sailthru.
- Does Loops or Sailthru run on more platforms?
- Loops runs on Web. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
- Can I use Loops for free?
- Yes. Loops has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Sailthru starts at On request.
- What is Loops best used for?
- Loops is most often used for setting up lifecycle email from onboarding to winback, consolidating product, marketing, and transactional emails, designing email themes picked up automatically, tracking revenue attribution to specific emails. Of those, setting up lifecycle email from onboarding to winback and consolidating product, marketing, and transactional emails are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
- What can Loops do that Sailthru cannot?
- Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Loops: Does Loops have a free plan?
Yes, Loops is free to start with no credit card required. The free plan supports up to 1000 subscribed contacts and up to 4000 sends per month, with up to 10 emails per second.
SourceSailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?
Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.
Loops: What are the limitations of Loops' free plan?
The free plan includes all features but is limited to 1000 subscribed contacts and 4000 sends per month. The free plan displays a Powered by Loops footer in emails.
SourceSailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?
It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.
Loops: How much do Loops paid plans cost?
Loops paid plans use contact-based pricing, meaning costs scale with the number of subscribed contacts synced to Loops. Exact pricing requires using Loops' pricing calculator based on your subscriber count.
SourceSailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?
For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.
Related pages
Other head to heads
- Loops vs EmailOctopus
- Loops vs Brevo
- Loops vs ActiveCampaign
- Loops vs AWeber
- Loops vs MailerLite
- Loops vs Resend
- Loops vs Amazon SES
- Loops vs Mailjet
- Loops vs Klaviyo
- Loops vs Flodesk
- Loops vs Omnisend
- Loops vs SendGrid
- Loops vs Zoho Campaigns
- Loops vs Attentive
- Loops vs Dotdigital
- Loops vs SAP Emarsys
- Loops vs GetResponse
- Loops vs Moosend
- Loops vs Ortto
- Loops vs Sendy
- Loops vs RD Station Marketing
- Loops vs Shortwave
- Sailthru vs EmailOctopus
- Sailthru vs Brevo
- Sailthru vs ActiveCampaign
- Sailthru vs AWeber
- Sailthru vs MailerLite
- Sailthru vs Resend
- Sailthru vs Amazon SES
- Sailthru vs Mailjet
- Sailthru vs Klaviyo
- Sailthru vs Flodesk
- Sailthru vs Omnisend
- Sailthru vs SendGrid
- Sailthru vs Zoho Campaigns
- Sailthru vs Attentive
- Sailthru vs Dotdigital
- Sailthru vs SAP Emarsys
- Sailthru vs GetResponse
- Sailthru vs Moosend
- Sailthru vs Ortto
- Sailthru vs Sendy
- Sailthru vs RD Station Marketing
- Sailthru vs Shortwave