Loops vs Woodpecker in 2026: SaaS product email vs cold outreach priced by prospect
Loops runs on subscribed contact count with no per-seat fee, for people who already use your product. Woodpecker runs on active prospect count, from 500 to 20,000 a month, for people who have never heard of you and need warming up before they will reply.
Loops
Woodpecker- Woodpecker prices by active prospect count, from $35/month for 500 prospects to $329/month for 20,000; Loops prices by subscribed contact count with no per-seat fee and a free tier up to 1,000.
- Woodpecker includes free email warmup and free email verification on every plan for cold-sending reputation; Loops has no warmup feature since its recipients already opted in.
- Loops handles transactional email like password resets in the same account as marketing email; Woodpecker's own feature list has no transactional email capability, since it is a cold-outreach tool.
- Woodpecker offers LinkedIn automation as a paid add-on at every tier; Loops has no LinkedIn feature at all.
- Woodpecker's Lead Finder runs on a separate credits system for prospecting; Loops has no prospecting feature of any kind, since its contacts arrive through product signup.
- Woodpecker offers a 7-day free trial and white-label access on its higher prospect tiers; Loops does not describe a comparable trial or white-label option in its own data.
- Loops includes an MCP server for AI-agent workflows; Woodpecker's own data does not describe an MCP integration.
Loops and Woodpecker both have pricing models built around counting something, contacts for Loops, prospects for Woodpecker, but they are counting entirely different populations. Loops sends marketing, lifecycle, and transactional email to a SaaS product's existing users, and it has a genuine free tier. Woodpecker, running since 2015, sends cold email and LinkedIn sequences to people who have never interacted with you, with free warmup and verification bundled into every tier from $35/month. There is no shared use case between the two beyond both technically sending email.
The tools at a glance
Loops
Unified email platform for SaaS teams covering marketing, product, and transactional email from a single simple interface
Loops reduces marketing automation to four concepts: contacts, contact properties, events, and event properties, a model built to mirror real SaaS product triggers directly, signup, trial start, payment, feature activation. The API follows the same logic, with SDKs for Node, Next.js, Ruby, PHP, and NuxtJS.
Marketing campaigns, lifecycle sequences, and transactional sends run from one account, priced by subscribed contact count with no per-seat fee, and the free plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 sends a month. Framer, Linear, and Perplexity all use it for product email.
There is no cold-outreach dimension to Loops whatsoever, no domain warmup, no LinkedIn steps, no prospect-finding tool, because it was never built to solve the problem of reaching people who have not opted in.
| Feature | Free $0/mo | Paid (contact-based) Starts at ~$49/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Email warm-up | ✗ | ✗ |
| LinkedIn automation | ✗ | ✗ |
| Transactional email | Limited | ✓ |
| Team seats | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Woodpecker
Cold email and LinkedIn outreach platform with built-in warm-up, inbox rotation, and GDPR-safe sending
Woodpecker has run cold email campaigns since 2015, and its pricing model reflects a very different unit of measure than Loops: active prospects, not subscribed contacts, from $35/month for 500 up to $329/month for 20,000. Free email warmup and free verification are included at every tier, alongside inbox rotation and adaptive sending limits.
Condition-based campaigns branch sequences depending on whether a prospect opened, clicked, or replied, and a domain audit tool flags DNS or blacklist issues before they hurt deliverability. A centralized inbox consolidates replies across multiple sending accounts.
Woodpecker has no transactional email capability, no product-event triggers, and LinkedIn outreach requires a separate paid add-on. It is scoped entirely to reaching people who have no existing relationship with the sender, the opposite of who Loops is built to email.
| Feature | 500 prospects $35/mo | 2,000 prospects $67/mo | 4,000 prospects $99/mo | 10,000 prospects $188/mo | 20,000 prospects $329/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email warm-up (free) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email verification (free) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| LinkedIn automation | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on |
| White-label | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Available | Available |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Loops | Woodpecker |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | SaaS product lifecycle and transactional email | Cold email and LinkedIn outreach |
| Recipient type | Existing, opted-in product users | Cold prospects, no prior relationship |
| Pricing unit | Subscribed contacts | Active prospects contacted |
| Email warm-up | Not applicable; not a cold-sending tool | Yes, free on all plans |
| LinkedIn automation | No | Available as a paid add-on at every tier |
| Transactional email | Yes, included on all plans | Not a listed feature |
| Free tier / trial | Yes, free plan up to 1,000 subscribers | 7-day free trial |
| Prospecting tool | None; contacts arrive via product signup | Lead Finder, on a separate credits system |
| API access | Yes, all plans, REST API with SDKs | Yes |
| Starting price | ~$49/month | $35/month |
Which should you choose?
LoopsWoodpeckerLoopsWoodpeckerLoopsWoodpeckerThe pricing units alone, subscribed contacts versus active prospects, tell you these tools were never meant to compete. Loops has zero mechanisms for reaching someone who has not opted in, and Woodpecker has zero mechanisms for triggering email off a product event. There is no realistic scenario where a team debates between the two for the same task.
Bottom line
Choose Loops for onboarding, lifecycle, and transactional email sent to people who already use your product. Choose Woodpecker for cold email and LinkedIn prospecting to a defined list, with free warmup and verification included at every tier. A company running outbound sales alongside a live SaaS product should expect to pay for both, using Woodpecker to generate new leads and Loops to manage the relationship once those leads convert into users.
Frequently asked questions
Does Woodpecker include transactional email like Loops does?
No, Woodpecker's own feature list has no transactional email capability; it is scoped entirely to cold email and LinkedIn outreach sequences. Loops handles transactional email natively alongside marketing and lifecycle email in the same account.
Can Loops be used for cold outreach the way Woodpecker is?
No, Loops has no email warmup, LinkedIn automation, or prospect-finding capability. It sends only to contacts who already opted in by signing up for the connected product. Woodpecker is purpose-built for reaching cold prospects with warmup and verification bundled into every plan.
How does pricing compare between the two platforms?
The pricing units are different by design. Loops charges by subscribed contact count with no per-seat fee, free up to 1,000 subscribers, then roughly $49/month. Woodpecker charges by active prospect count, from $35/month for 500 prospects to $329/month for 20,000, regardless of team size.
Is LinkedIn automation included in either tool's base price?
Neither includes it for free by default in the same way. Woodpecker offers LinkedIn automation as a paid add-on at every prospect tier. Loops has no LinkedIn feature at all, since it is strictly an email platform for existing product users.
Which tool has a free trial, Loops or Woodpecker?
Woodpecker offers a clearly stated 7-day free trial. Loops does not describe a time-limited trial in its own data, but it has a standing free plan covering up to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 sends per month, which functions as an ongoing way to validate the platform rather than a countdown trial.
Should a SaaS company use both Loops and Woodpecker?
Yes, if the company runs both cold outbound prospecting and a live product with existing users. Woodpecker would handle finding and reaching new prospects through cold email and LinkedIn, while Loops would separately manage onboarding sequences and transactional email once those prospects convert into signed-up users.